The Abundant Community :Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods

Publication subTitle :Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods

Author: McKnight John; Block Peter  

Publisher: Berrett Koehler‎

Publication year: 2010

E-ISBN: 9781605096261

Subject: C91 Sociology

Keyword: 社会学

Language: ENG

Access to resources Favorite

Disclaimer: Any content in publications that violate the sovereignty, the constitution or regulations of the PRC is not accepted or approved by CNPIEC.

Description

This book is about a new possibility for us together to discover the real basis for a satisfying life. It is a life that becomes possible when we join our neighbors in creating a community that nurtures our family and makes us useful citizens.

We are besieged by messages from consumer society telling us that we are insufficient, that we must purchase what we need from specialists and systems outside the community. We outsource our health care, child care, relationships, recreation, our safety, and our satisfaction. We are trained to become consumers and clients, not citizens and neighbors. McKnight and Block take a thoughtful look at how this situation came about, what maintains it, and the crippling effect it has had on our families, our communities, and our environment.

Right in our neighborhood we have the capacity to address our human needs in ways that systems, which see us only as interchangeable units, as problems to be solved, never can. We all have gifts to offer, even the most seemingly marginal among us. It does not matter how rich or poor the neighborhood is. McKnight and Block suggest how to nurture voluntary, self-organizing structures that will reveal these gifts and allow them to be shared to the greatest mutual benefit. They recommend roles we can assume and actions we can take to reweave the social fabric that has been unraveled by consumerism and its belief that however much we have, it is not enough.

Each neighborho

Chapter

PART I: The Shift from Citizen to Consumer

1 The Limits of Consumption

The Consumer Way: Lives of Scarcity and Consumption

The Citizen Way: Lives of Abundance and Cooperation

A Choice of Culture

Neighborhood Necessities

Community Possibilities

2 What Did We Lose and Where Did It Go?

The Origin of Dissatisfaction

The Growth of Systems and Their Managers

Outsourcing Care to Professionals

Seduction by the Promise of Satisfaction

3 The Effects of Living in a Consumer World

Living by the Rules

The Cost to Society

The Cost to Neighborhoods

The Wired Life

The Heart of the Matter

PART II: Choosing a Satisfied Life

4 The Abundant Community

The Structure of Abundance

Gift-Mindedness

Associational Life

Hospitality

The Invisible Structures of Community

5 Community Abundance in Action

The Capacities of an Abundant Community

The Culture of Abundance

The Citizen Economy

Policies That Support Abundant Community

Democracy and the Abundant Community

PART III: Creating Abundance

6 Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods

Competence within Reach

Community Abundance Is Its Gifts

Connected Gifts Create Associations

7 The Power of Connectors

The Vital Role of Connectors

A Table for Connectors

Welcoming Strangers

Finding Our Own Way

The Story of an Abundant Community

Notes

Resources

Pioneers: People Who Are Creating Abundant Communities

Website

References

Acknowledgments

Index

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

Y

About the Authors

The users who browse this book also browse