Community Works: The Revival of Civil Society in America

COMMUNITY WORKS is a collection of 18 brief, pithy essays about civil society in America -- past, present and future, although the emphasis is on the present (mid-1990s). The essayists are academicians, activists, religious leaders, former government officials, politicians and philosophers. With such a long time perspective and so many diverse perceptions, it is hardly surprising that "civil society" is defined in nearly 18 different ways. Civil society, thus, is viewed as either hurting or healthy, declining or reviving. Regardless, several things are certain: civil society exists in America, is not dead, nor is static, and more people than ever are writing about it. COMMUNITY WORKS is a rich and complex book. It is a terrific smorgasbord of provocative thought (and some facts) both for beginners in Civil Society 101 as well as for those much more steeped in the concept and its realities. The REVIVAL in the title is a takeoff from Robert Putnam's now famous "Bowling Alone" article (1995), in which he documented (with inadequate data and observations, in this author's view) that America's civil society was losing its networks of civic engagement, and this boded ill for the nation. E. J. Dionne, Jr., REVIVAL's editor, clearly believes that Putnam overstated the case of civil society's decline. Nevertheless, Dionne includes a fair number of essays that share Putnam's pessimism, as well as a good number that reflect Dionne's optimism. Alan Wolfe opens the book by telling us not to worry that we are currently defining "civil society" in ways quite different from Locke, Rousseau, de Tocqueville, and other past observers, but to understand that we are reinventing civil society today, as indeed, civil society has been reinvented in every past era and different country/culture. The most common ground among the essayists is that civil society is not an isolation ward for the birth and nurturing of networks of trust, reciprocity, tolerance and more good things, but that civil society must coexist with government and business, both as critic and collaborator. While respecting the coexistence as fact, some, however, insist that civil society is the bedrock of government (and maybe business). Jean Bethke Elshtain leads this group, arguing that civil society provides the democratic culture for democratic government. (Francis Fukuyama in Trust made similar observations about civil society underpinning profitable global business.) Michael Waltzer and others argue, however, that government must first provide the legal and political space for civil society. Still others write that business must first provide the meat and potatoes (or peas and potatoes) before the citizens can focus on soccer, food banks, piano recitals, meals on wheels-- whatever networks create civil society values. To William A. Schambra and others, the bedrock in the coexisting spheres is neither business, government nor civil society, but the local activities that create