The Good Society - Hardcover

Robert N. Bellah was Elliott Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. His books include Habits of the Heart, Religion in Human Evolution, and The Good Society. IHe received the US National Humanities Medal in 2000 by President Clinton. He died in 2013, at the age of 86.

Richard Madsen received his MA and PhD in sociology from Harvard University. He was co-director of a Ford Foundation project to advance the cause of academic sociology in China and has written twelve books on Chinese and American culture and relations. He is a distinguished professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego.

Steven M. Tipton received his BA from Stanford University and his PhD from Harvard. He is a senior fellow at Emory University’s Center for the Study of Law and Religion and was the director of Emory’s Graduate Division of Religion from 1998 to 2003.

William Sullivan holds a BA from Harvard College and a doctorate from the Centre of Amerindian, Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of St. Andrews. He lives in Massachusetts.

Ann Swidler received her BA from Harvard in 1966 and her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1975. She was a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1982 and in 2013 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is most famous for her work in cultural sociology and for her much-cited article "Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies."

Five academics (Bellah, Richard Madsen, William Sullivan, Ann Swidler, Steven Tipton) follow up an earlier work (Habits of the Heart, 1985, which examined America's conflict between individualism and social commitment) with one that focuses on institutions. After acknowledging that we all live in and through both private and public institutions (families, schools, corporations, the nation, etc.), Bellah and his colleagues argue that we as an American citizenry must take responsibility for our institutions if we are to create a more effective and morally conscious society. The days of the old ideal Lockean world, when Americans could autonomously control their own economic and social fates, are long over (if indeed they ever were); today, ``powerful forces affecting the lives of all of us are not operating under the norms of democratic consent.'' At the same time, most Americans fail to understand that ``autonomy, valuable as it is in itself, is only one virtue among others and that without such virtues as responsibility and care, which can be exercised only through institutions, [autonomy becomes] an empty form without substance.'' Bellah and his colleagues focus their arguments on four major arenas---the political economy; government, law and politics; education; and the political church---and throughout they provide much historical and philosophical background. They also offer suggestions on how to effect change. Surprisingly, the text, though occasionally dense and dogmatic, feels like the work of one mind. The writing could seldom be called inspired, but it is seamless, and ideas are presented in a logical, clear-cut fashion. An often incisive treatise that debunks some age-old truisms and sounds a cautiously optimistic note for the future. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.