The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods
The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods by John McKnight and Peter Block. Berrett-Koehler. 2010. 173 pages. $26.95.
Consumerism became a societal dogma in the early twentieth century, and since then it has impacted life in many harmful ways, according to social-policy professor John McKnight and workplace consultant Peter Block in The Abundant Community. The two authors argue that the marketplace has essentially replaced the community in most people’s minds, and thus people’s neighborhoods no longer satisfy their emotional needs.
The incessant drive to buy and own requires huge corporations, health care infrastructures, and thousands of different cadres of professional specialists to feed it. People work nonstop and rely on specialists to look after their health, maintain their homes, keep their neighborhoods in order, and care for their children. Families spend less time together, neighbors scarcely know each other, and relationships become shallow and utilitarian.
Should consumerism persist, the health of communities everywhere will suffer greatly, the authors warn. No neighborhood can effectively prevent crime, educate its youth, create jobs, keep parks clean, and ensure that the elderly, the poor, and other people in need are cared for unless its residents work together to make all these things happen.
McKnight and Block hold out hope that communities everywhere will rediscover their own non-material abundance and relearn how to create vibrant community life. They conclude by laying out the values a community must adopt to achieve this.
The Abundant Community is an in-depth evaluation of twenty-first century society and the values that define it. Community activists, organizers, and leaders of all kinds will find it deeply meaningful.
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