The Spirit of Community: Rights, Responsibilities, and the Communitarian Agenda

by Amitai Etzioni

America needs to move from me to we.
 
In The Spirit of Community, renowned professor and former White House Fellow Amitai Etzioni, the founder of the Communitarian movement, lays out a blueprint for how in the 1990s Americans can move forward—together.
 
The Spirit of Community calls for a reawakening of our allegiance to the shared values and institutions that sustain us—from our marriages and families to our schools and our neighborhoods, and extending to our nation itself. In proposing a new balance between our rights as individuals and our social responsibilities, this controversial, groundbreaking book articulates the emerging social attitudes of the nineties.
 
We have many rights as individuals, Etzioni declares, but we have responsibilities to our communities, too. The right to be tried before a jury of our peers, for instance, is connected to our willingness to serve on one. We as a nation have in recent years forgotten such basic truths of our democratic social contract. And what we need now is a revival of the idea that small sacrifices by individuals can create large benefits for all of us.
 
We must have the moral responsibility to respect our families and fight to preserve them, to value our children and their futures, and to be willing to espouse and teach commonly held moral values. Etzioni faces the tough issues that arise when the rights of individuals are weighed against those of the community, from free speech versus restrictions on hate speech to the right of police to conduct random checks of motorists’ sobriety, from drug and HIV testing to mandatory national service.
 
A movement that has already attracted the attention of policymakers as varied as Al Gore, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jack Kemp, and Henry Cisneros, Communitarianism provides a call to action and a perceptive analysis of American politics and society today. And The Spirit of Community is vital reading for any American who is engaged with the future of the country in the next decade.

Genres: Sociology, Politics, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Society, Economics

323 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Miriam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This would have been better to remain an article. Having said that, this is a book written to support the Burkean idea of community where civil society is what holds us together and that an overly strong dependence on government for unity is ultimately detrimental. Equally pernicious, is allowing work to overwhelm other human relationships.

[Jack]

i agree with 90% of this book, its so well articulated and reasonable. etzioni outlines a rock solid and timely argument for strengthening our community and curbing rampant individualism.

[Andrew Figueiredo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, a refreshing read about politics. We would do well to heed many of Etzioni's suggestions, but some of them seem a little outmoded.

[Alana Bleness · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dated, but a good introduction to "why should I care about my community?

[Erik Empson · Rating 3 out of 5]

My father gifted me the book. It was far too soft an approach for me at the time, in my early twenties, but maybe there is some wisdom in here. Can't remember much about it, sadly.

[Maya · Rating 2 out of 5]

A naive proposal that fails to account for the American political system as it actually exists.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

read it freshman year @ college. haven't re-read it since so i can't vouch for the accuracy of my recall :-)