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Community: Pursuing the Dream, Living the Reality
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This book tells the story of how a human community comes to be and how aspirations for the good life confront the dilemmas and detours of real life. Suzanne Keller combines penetrating analysis of classic ideas about community with a remarkable and unprecedented thirty-year case study of one of the first "planned unit developments" in America and the first in New Jersey. Twin Rivers, this pioneering venture, featured townhouses and shared spaces for children's play and adult work and play in a society that stresses individual over collective goals and private over public concerns. Hence the timeless questions asked over millennia: How does an aggregate of strangers create an identity of place, shared goals, viable institutions, and a spirit of mutuality and reciprocity? What obstacles stand in the way and how are these overcome? And how does design generate (or deter) community spirit?
Inspired by the legacy of Plato, Rousseau, de Tocqueville, and Tönnies, Keller traces the difficult birth and the rich unfolding of Twin Rivers from a former potato field into a vibrant contemporary community. Most community studies remain at a highly descriptive level. This book has both broader and deeper aims, endeavoring to develop principles of the common life as we enter the age of cyberspace.
Keller reveals the community of Twin Rivers through a multidimensional social microscope, having monitored the community from the day it opened by participant observation, attitude surveys, the study of collective records, and nearly 1,000 in-depth interviews with homeowners. She offers fascinating insight into how residents maintain privacy, relate to neighbors, cope with social conflict, and develop ideas about the common good. She shows that Twin Rivers residents remain hopeful about the possibility of community despite variable success in achieving their desires. Indeed, she argues that the hard-won experience, more than the utopian ideal, is the true measure of community.
Keller concludes that, despite the homogenizing effects of mass communication and globalization, local communities will continue to proliferate in the foreseeable future--due to changing lifestyles and the continuing quest for roots. This important and engaging book will be appreciated by social scientists, architects, physical planners, developers and lenders, and community leaders as well as by the general reader interested in creating a bridge between individualism and community.
Read more from Suzanne Keller
Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology
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Titles in the series (41)
Disrupting Science: Social Movements, American Scientists, and the Politics of the Military, 1945-1975 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOffside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Gifted Tongues: High School Debate and Adolescent Culture Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reds, Whites, and Blues: Social Movements, Folk Music, and Race in the United States Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsElusive Togetherness: Church Groups Trying to Bridge America's Divisions Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBecoming Right: How Campuses Shape Young Conservatives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Minds of Marginalized Black Men: Making Sense of Mobility, Opportunity, and Future Life Chances Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHollywood Highbrow: From Entertainment to Art Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInteraction Ritual Chains Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Community: Pursuing the Dream, Living the Reality Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Moral Background: An Inquiry into the History of Business Ethics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBearing Witness: Readers, Writers, and the Novel in Nigeria Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaking Volunteers: Civic Life after Welfare's End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5There Goes the Gayborhood? Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Under the Cover: The Creation, Production, and Reception of a Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How Civic Action Works: Fighting for Housing in Los Angeles Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Battle for Yellowstone: Morality and the Sacred Roots of Environmental Conflict Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReligion and Family in a Changing Society Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsContested Tastes: Foie Gras and the Politics of Food Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSeeing the World: How US Universities Make Knowledge in a Global Era Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Fraught Embrace: The Romance and Reality of AIDS Altruism in Africa Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPartisan Publics: Communication and Contention across Brazilian Youth Activist Networks Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Contentious Curricula: Afrocentrism and Creationism in American Public Schools Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blessed Events: Religion and Home Birth in America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Taylorized Beauty of the Mechanical: Scientific Management and the Rise of Modernist Architecture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Extreme Gone Mainstream: Commercialization and Far Right Youth Culture in Germany Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn Justification: Economies of Worth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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