An update and revision of the original 1976 edition. This study presents a two-fold discussion: a basic survey of the structure and functions of the American Jewish community, and a suggestion as to how that community should be understood as a body politic, a collective unit that is not a state but is no less real from a political perspective.

The impersonality of social relationships in the society of strangers is making majorities increasingly nostalgic for a time of closer personal ties and strong community moorings. The constitutive pluralism and hybridity of modern living in the West is being rejected in an age of heightened anxiety over the future and drummed up aversion towards the stranger. Minorities, migrants and dissidents are expected to stay away, or to conform and integrate, as they come to be framed in an optic of the social as interpersonal or communitarian. Judging these developments as dangerous, this book offers a counter-argument by looking to relations that are not reducible to local or social ties in order to offer new suggestions for living in diversity and for forging a different politics of the stranger. The book explains the balance between positive and negative public feelings as the synthesis of habits of interaction in varied spaces of collective being, from the workplace and urban space, to intimate publics and tropes of imagined community. The book proposes a series of interventions that make for public being as both unconscious habit and cultivated craft of negotiating difference, radiating civilities of situated attachment and indifference towards the strangeness of others. It is in the labour of cultivating the commons in a variety of ways that Amin finds the elements for a new politics of diversity appropriate for our times, one that takes the stranger as there, unavoidable, an equal claimant on ground that is not pre-allocated.

Peter F. Drucker may be best known as a writer on business and management, but these subjects were not his foremost intellectual concern. Drucker’s primary concerns were community, in which the individual has status, and society, in which the individual has function. Here he has assembled selections from his vast writings on these subjects. This collection presents the full range of Drucker’s thought on community, society, and political structure and constitutes an ideal introduction to his ideas. The volume is divided into seven parts. The selections in parts 1 and 2 were mostly written during World War Two and in the wake of the Great Depression. Part 3 deals with the limits of governmental competence in the social and economic realm. It contains some of Drucker’s most influential writings concerned with the difference between big government and effective government. The chapters in part 4 explore autonomous centers of power outside government and within society. Part 5 contains chapters from Drucker’s path-breaking work on the corporation as a social organization rather than merely an economic one. The rise of the so-called "knowledge industries" forms the background for part 6. The concluding part 7 is devoted entirely to Drucker’s long essay "The Next Society." Drucker examines the emergence of new institutions and new theories arising from the information revolution and the social changes they are helping to bring about. In organizing these representative writings, Drucker chose to be topical rather than chronological, with each excerpt presenting a basic theme of his life’s work. As is characteristic of his efforts, A Functioning Society appeals both the general reader as well as a cross-disciplinary scholarly readership.

Social capital is a principal concept across the social sciences and has readily entered into mainstream discourse. In short, it is popular. However, this popularity has taken its toll. Social capital suffers from a lack of consensus because of the varied ways it is measured, defined, and deployed by different researchers. It has been put to work in ways that stretch and confuse its conceptual value, blurring the lines between networks, trust, civic engagement, and any type of collaborative action. This clear and concise volume presents the diverse theoretical approaches of scholars from Marx, Coleman, and Bourdieu to Putnam, Fukuyama, and Lin, carefully analyzing their commonalities and differences. Joonmo Son categorizes this wealth of work according to whether its focus is on the necessary preconditions for social capital, its structural basis, or its production. He distinguishes between individual and collective social capital (from shared resources of a personal network to pooled assets of a whole society), and interrogates the practical impact social capital has had in various policy areas (from health to economic development). Social Capital will be of immense value to readers across the social sciences and practitioners in relevant fields seeking to understand this mercurial concept.

Thomas Jefferson envisioned a nation of citizens deeply involved in public life. Today Americans are lamenting the erosion of his ideal. What happened in the intervening centuries? Daniel Kemmis argues that our loss of capacity for public life (which impedes our ability to resolve crucial issues) parallels our loss of a sense of place. A renewed sense of inhabitation, he maintains —of community rooted in place and of people dwelling in that place in a practiced way—can shape politics into a more cooperative and more humanly satisfying enterprise, producing better people, better communities, and better places. The author emphasizes the importance of place by analyzing problems and possibilities of public life in a particular place— those northern states whose settlement marked the end of the old frontier. National efforts to “keep citizens apart” by encouraging them to develop open country and rely upon impersonal, procedural methods for public problems have bred stalemate, frustration, and alienation. As alternatives he suggests how western patterns of inhabitation might engender a more cooperative, face-to-face practice of public life. Community and the Politics of Place also examines our ambivalence about the relationship between cities and rural areas and about the role of corporations in public life. The book offers new insight into the relationship between politics and economics and addresses the question of whether the nation-state is an appropriate entity for the practice of either discipline. The author draws upon the growing literature of civic republicanism for both a language and a vantage point from which to address problems in American public life, but he criticizes that literature for its failure to consider place. Though its focus on a single region lends concreteness to its discussions, Community and the Politics of Place promotes a better understanding of the quality of public life today in all regions of the United States.

Egypt is one of the few great empires of antiquity that exists today as a nation state. Despite its extraordinary record of national endurance, the pressures to which Egypt currently is subjected and which are bound to intensify are already straining the ties that hold its political community together, while rendering ever more difficult the task of governing it. In this timely book, leading expert on Egyptian affairs Robert Springborg explains how a country with such a long and impressive history has now arrived at this parlous condition. As Egyptians become steadily more divided by class, religion, region, ethnicity, gender and contrasting views of how, by whom and for what purposes they should be governed, so their rulers become ever more fearful, repressive and unrepresentative. Caught in a downward spiral in which poor governance is both cause and consequence, Egypt is facing a future so uncertain that it could end up resembling neighboring countries that have collapsed under similar loads. The Egyptian "hot spot", Springborg argues, is destined to become steadily hotter, with ominous implications for its peoples, the Middle East and North Africa, and the wider world.

The idea of finding a 'third way' in politics has been widely discussed over recent months - not only in the UK, but in the US, Continental Europe and Latin America. But what is the third way? Supporters of the notion haven't been able to agree, and critics deny the possibility altogether. Anthony Giddens shows that developing a third way is not only a possibility but a necessity in modern politics.

'Why are you making this about race?' This question is repeated daily in public and in the media. Calling someone racist in these times of mounting white supremacy seems to be a worse insult than racism itself. In our supposedly post-racial society, surely it’s time to stop talking about race? This powerful refutation is a call to notice not just when and how race still matters but when, how and why it is said not to matter. Race critical scholar Alana Lentin argues that society is in urgent need of developing the skills of racial literacy, by jettisoning the idea that race is something and unveiling what race does as a key technology of modern rule, hidden in plain sight. Weaving together international examples, she eviscerates misconceptions such as reverse racism and the newfound acceptability of 'race realism', bursts the 'I’m not racist, but' justification, complicates the common criticisms of identity politics and warns against using concerns about antisemitism as a proxy for antiracism. Dominant voices in society suggest we are talking too much about race. Lentin shows why we actually need to talk about it more and how in doing so we can act to make it matter less.

Rural people and communities continue to play important social, economic and environmental roles at a time in which societies are rapidly urbanizing, and the identities of local places are increasingly subsumed by flows of people, information and economic activity across global spaces. However, while the organization of rural life has been fundamentally transformed by institutional and social changes that have occurred since the mid-twentieth century, rural people and communities have proved resilient in the face of these transformations. This book examines the causes and consequences of major social and economic changes affecting rural communities and populations during the first decades of the twenty-first century, and explores policies developed to ameliorate problems or enhance opportunities. Primarily focused on the U.S. context, while also providing international comparative discussion, the book is organized into five sections each of which explores both socio-demographic and political economic aspects of rural transformation. It features an accessible and up-to-date blend of theory and empirical analysis, with each chapter's discussion grounded in real-life situations through the use of empirical case-study materials. Rural People and Communities in the 21st Century is intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in rural sociology, community sociology, rural and/or population geography, community development, and population studies.