The Spirit of Community
Sullivan, William M.
BOOKS All together now... magine, if during a recent perusal THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY individuals need a social ecology of vi- of the book...
...nucopia of New York City...
...to her surprise she did not miss the "cor- You Lore The Money Will Follow Lemmon is their place...
...That was twenty years ago, woman, thoroughly Protestant, who often An Imprint of Liguori Publications however, and running a herd of cattle is has more doubt than anything resembling 1 Liguori Drive, Liguori, MO 63057 not the simple answer to why they stayed...
...Radical individualism is marked tention of a significant sector of public by a strong "disinclination to lay moral opinion-and opinion-leaders-toward claims," preferring when at all possible to "the moral voice" embodied in the strugpresent objections to socially obnoxious gle to foster living communities, Etzioni activity as the expression of personal pref- is helping define the direction American erence...
...Etzioni's examples repeated- as the savior from an intolerable anarchy...
...22: 7 May 1993 Commonweal liberal anxiety about the imposition of pub- he seeks to make legitimate...
...silence became im- lust published $995 paperback Norris's grandmother died, and she and portant to her...
...As a blight increasingly more human relations...
...Politically, there like Cincinnati no jury would support its is evidence that Etzioni is onto something suppression...
...As an interthat all moral utterances are no more than locutor of some of the elites he criticizes...
...339 pp...
...ety, argues Etzioni, comes not from recountered a different genre: a book about pressive moralism, although he admits how to be a better citizen, complete with William M. Sullivan that this certainly exists, but from the sosuggestions for "fostering the commons...
...cial disintegration which attends moral Imagine a book which provided serious fragmentation...
...What she discovered, along with a joy in "Those who love cinema may solitude, was the meaning of what the be pleasantly surprised by Marsha Elizabeth Bartelme Benedictines call "stability of place," and Sinetar's explanation of the power with it the Benedictine rudiments of her of film to heal us and nourish our journey through life" spiritual geography...
...The book is divided into theoretical chapters, which come at the beginning and the end, and a series of topical chapters in which social analysis is interspersed with case studies and examples...
...statements of personal preference, has for Etzioni may also be providing them with Etzioni become a major contributor to the a means toward reinventing themselves for suffocation of that "moral voice" which the nation's good as well as their own...
...BOOKS All together now...
...Then there is Kath- the fringes of the Andy Warhol crowd...
...At did the public interest...
...The growth pansion of individual discretion...
...Ticknor & Fields, $19.95, 224 pp...
...magine, if during a recent perusal THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNITY individuals need a social ecology of viof the book racks in airport or trainRights, Responsibilities, and the able families and community institutions station, along with the array of Communitarian Agenda in order to develop and function...
...As rights exploded [after analysis of the contemporary neglect of including religious institutions, as the the 1960s], and responsibilities receded, the nation's social infrastructure along mainstay of communities, and then to pol- as the `moral infrastructure' crumbled, so with stimulating examples of coun- icy issues such as safety and health...
...The cognitive style of techEtzioni's chief opponents are "radical in- nocracy-cum-emotivism favored by many dividualists," a moral type he finds com- of the national elites seems to have worn mon among the cultural elite, though not thin on the electorate...
...By shifting the atonly there...
...Etzioni argues that the atcommunitarian clarion, The Spirit of Com- Etzioni's theme is the need to strength- tenuation of the "moral voice" of cominunity: Rights, Responsibilities, and the en "the moral voice" in American soci- munities-in the name of individual Communitarian Agenda...
...This moral posture, which philoso- public discourse must take if there is to phers identify as emotivism, or the belief be a democratic renewal...
...Includes A Spiritual Geography with her grandparents, living on the Plains journal exercises and discussion Kathleen Norris year round was a different experience...
...success in business" and the var- Amitai Etzioni The present danger to American sociious self-help books, one en- Crown Publishers, $22...
...Now, "as a married U TRIUMPH TM BOOKS tle ranch...
...Norris had spent summers own best and worst traits and as spiritual guides to life...
...As the examples tertrends, proposed a public philosophy the climax of this topical order comes a .of life under despotic regimes indicate, inwhich tried to break out of the prevailing discussion of communitarian politics in dividual rights cannot be sustained apart liberal-conservative argument, and then which the recovery of the moral voice from the willingness of citizens to take their asked you to join a movement based on through the building of social movement responsibilities seriously...
...The Spirit of Co,nmunity seeks to carve Spiritual The historical current, Etzioni insists, is out a new consensus, one attentive to the clearly flowing the other way, toward ex- social roots of individual well-being...
...Watching movies 'with the eyes of our hearts' helps us identify our truest aims, finest values, and noblest aspirations.'' PRAYING IN PLACE The bestselling author of Ordinary People as Monks and Mystics invites readers to consider their favorite movies not merely as sources of escapist entertainment, but as reflections of their DAKOTA Although Ms...
...The topics progress from the family to the school, to a view of local institutions, importantly "'We the people' is a great phrase, but let's not overdo it...
...lic standards appears myopic if not absurd...
...overview of the main lines of that body sociologist, Etzioni is not naive about the The result is that individuals are further of thinking he terms communitarian...
...seller Do What the case of Ms...
...979 years to manage the family farm and cat- monastery as well...
...And that willthese ideas...
...ROBERT E LAUDER, author of God, L emmon, South Dakota, pop- To backtrack: Norris had turned her back Death, Art, and Lone The Philosophical ulation 1,616, the kind of ru- on her Protestant upbringing and in New Vision of Ingniar Bergmaii ral town that Americans leave York, was, as she put it, hanging around on in droves...
...ety, a voice which speaks to the capacity freedom-has been a major factor in a Etzioni, a widely read sociologist who for "reasoned judgment" and "virtuous ac- widely noted decline in the quality of life, has known government service during the tion," a voice whose natural home and prac- as distrust, fear, crime, and addiction Carter administration, presents a useful tical condition is "the community...
...questions...
...That, in rough outline, is the emerges as the "Archimedean leverage ingness needs communities for its nurture structure and strategy of Amitai Etzioni's point of change...
...Norris, spiritual seeker...
...She discovered the desert faher husband left New York for a few thers through her reading, and she found the X1'3I 1-800-325-9521 ext...
...Thus, while the book is very much its author's creation in style and tone, it presents itself as a voice of a larger community of discussion...
...longer attracted her...
...The Marsha Sinetar is author of the leen Norris and her husband, vastness and emptiness of the western nationwide bestDavid Dwyer, poets both, and, at least in Dakota prairie drew her toward asceticism...
...Con- specific feature of Etzioni's argument is servative senators may fulminate against that this consensus must not be intimidated through film the National Endowment for the Arts' by socially and intellectually fashionable support of the Mapplethorpe exhibition, emotivists into playing down the centralbut even in a traditionally conservative city ity of "the moral voice...
...Urban life no How they chose it is simple enough...
...faith," she is nevertheless an oblate of Saint Commonweal 7 May 1993: 23...
...The book concludes with "The Responsive Communitarian Platform," a document now bearing the signatures of a wide range of endorsers, of whom this reviewer is one...
...The notion of community (though his empha- isolated, ironically opening the way toward themes of The Spirit of Community have sis upon the term inevitably calls up strong acceptance of an authoritarian police state emerged from several years of discussion reactions...
...As this example illustrates, significant...
...and support...
...and debate centered around The Respon- ly give bite to the sociological truism that In this perspective, much of the current sive Community, the journal which Etzioni has guided since its foundation in 1991...
Vol. 120 • May 1993 • No. 9
