A thought-provoking, evenhanded yet inconclusive analysis on the nature and the future of community.
A meditation on the evaporation of American exceptionalism.
The nation’s perception of community is undergoing major reconstruction, writes journalist and Clinton Foundation senior fellow Dunkelman in this shrewd examination, which declares that America is “simply in the midst of a painful transition, and it’s not clear how things will turn out.” Through statistical data, academic articles and published references scrutinizing the evolution of America’s societal framework, the author sheds light on the interpersonal erosion occurring in American neighborhoods and the gradual fade-out of what French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville christened our collaboratively minded “townships.” Dunkelman casts wide comparisons between past and present levels of civic interactivity and patiently explores its evolving effect on how we communicate, with whom and how often. Utilizing a metaphor of Saturn’s rings, the author equates one’s “inner ring” as those they hold closest, with the “middle” and “outer” rings representative of less familiar and casual acquaintances. The author documents a dramatic cultural shift whereby more attention is paid to the “outer” and “inner ring” populations, with little to no advancements made in cultivating “middle ring” relationships. He blames the quick-hit interactions afforded by the digital revolution along with social networking and reprioritized social opportunities and motivations. Good or bad, Dunkelman resists taking sides and instead examines how affirmation has evolved into our target desire as individuals are reorganizing themselves into more homogenized and like-minded groups (e.g., Facebook friends), thus creating a dividing line that is increasingly polarizing. Particularly effective in enhancing his theories are numerous references to Robert Putnam’s brilliantly researched 1995 essay and subsequent book Bowling Alone (2000), which dissects American culture’s steady decline of social capital and makes an ideal companion volume.
A thought-provoking, evenhanded yet inconclusive analysis on the nature and the future of community.Pub Date: July 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-393-06396-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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