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Product Description
Product Description
This book is about a new possibility for each of us to live a satisfying life. It is a life that becomes possible when we join our neighbors in creating a community that nurtures our family and makes us useful citizens. This possibility is idealistic, and yet it is an ideal within our grasp. It is a possibility that is both idealistic and realistic. Our culture leads us to believe that a satisfying life can be purchased. It tells us that in the place where we live, we don't have the resources to create a good life. This book reminds us that a neighborhood that can raise a child, provide security, sustain our health, secure our income, and care for our vulnerable people is within the power of our community.This power is silent on most of the streets where we live. However, it is possible to give voice to a neighborhood that is able to speak the language of satisfaction - a language that the marketplace can never speak in spite of its alluring failed promises that we can buy a good life. There is a neighborhood ideal that we all believe in, but it is usually a whisper. When we speak up for our ideal, our voices tell of our gifts, our hospitality, our relationships, and living by the habits of our heart. This book gives voice to our ideal of a beloved community. It reminds us of our power to create a hope-filled life. It assures us that when we join together with our neighbors we are the architects of the future where we want to live.
About the Author
For nearly three decades, John McKnight has conducted research on social service delivery systems, health policy, community organizations, neighborhood policy, and institutional racism. He currently directs research projects focused on asset-based neighborhood development and methods of community building by incorporating marginalized people. John has been associated with many of Northwestern University's Institute for Policy Research's major research projects since he joined the organization in 1969. These have included research on the urban determinants of health, law enforcement, urban disinvestment and metropolitan government, deinstitutionalized child welfare services, police anticrime programs, and the effects of the perception of crime upon community responses. He also directed the Chicago Innovations Forum, an IPR-based dialogue among neighborhood leaders and innovators in economic, political and social development. John serves on the Board of Directors of numerous community organizations including the Gamaliel Foundation and The National Training and Information Center. Before joining Northwestern, John directed the Midwest office of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. John lives in Chicago, Ill. Peter Block is an author, consultant and citizen of Cincinnati, Ohio. His work is about empowerment, stewardship, chosen accountability, and the reconciliation of community. Peter is the recipient of the first place 2004 Members' Choice Award by the Organization Development Network, which recognized Flawless Consulting as the most influential book for OD practitioners over the past 40 years. Peter is a partner in Designed Learning, a training company that offers workshops designed by Peter to build the skills outlined in his books. He received a Masters Degree in Industrial Administration from Yale University in 1963; he performed his undergraduate work at the University of Kansas. Peter serves on the Boards of Directors of Cincinnati Classical Public Radio and Elementz, a Hip Hop urban youth center. He is on the Advisory Board for the Festival in the Workplace Institute, Bahamas. He is the first Distinguished Consultant-in-Residence at Xavier University. He has received national awards for outstanding contributions in the field of training and development, including the Organization Development Network's 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award; the American Society for Training and Development Award for Distinguished Contributions; the Association for Quality and Participation President's Award; and Training Magazine HRD Hall of Fame. Peter lives in Cincinnati, OH.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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4.7 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Revoluntionary Thinking About Community, Jun 29 2010
By Joshua P. OConner "Josh O'Conner" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power Of Families and Neighborhoods (Hardcover)
When diving into the whole arena of civic/community engagement, most people are almost instantaneously bombarded with advice and information on how to link together organizations, where to get funding, and how to build the community with resources that come from outside. We are told that there are systems and processes that hold the key to a better life. John McKnight and Peter Block steer the reader in a different direction in "The Abundant Community". Rather than looking externally McKnight and Block encourage the reader to look within the community to find an abundance of resources.McKnight and Block start the book with an examination of how we have succumbed to consumerism in a manner so pervasive that we have eroded the very foundation of community. This examination shows how we have traded the inevitable imperfections in services or fallibility in humans for highly efficient systems which revolve around flawless management, fiscal performance, and scalability. "The Abundant Community" proposes a better, more connected way of living.
Rather than learning to blame problems on a lack of governance or those around us, McKnight and Block teach us to turn to our own resources and the resources already present in our community (the people) in order to build community competence. "The Abundant Community" is revolutionary in its message. By mobilizing community members to be more connected and more welcoming the community the can become the solution to its own problems. Instead of making the community and our lives more efficient, the authors focus on how we can create a life that is more compassionate. Within their vision, the gifts that exist among residents become a pooled resource and create a community of abundance.
To quote the welcome to "The Abundant Community", "This book is an invitation into a new possibility for each of us to live a more satisfying life".
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ideas and Actions for the Real Challenges that Face Us, Aug 30 2010
By Christopher B. Bedford - Published on Amazon.com
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This review is from: The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power Of Families and Neighborhoods (Hardcover)
John McKnight and Peter Block have written a visionary manual for the world we are entering, the world we must create if we are to survive the crisises that threaten to overwhelm us. The economic changes caused by the end of the petroleum era are immense and immediate for an economy like ours. The humanitarian, ecological, and financial costs associated with climate change -- the increase in the severity of storms like in Pakistan -- the widespread change in rain and moisture patterns in the food baskets of the planet -- these too threaten to overwhelm government. Although its rhetoric is off point, the Tea Party Movement in the US is, in part, a response to this disintegration of global industrial systems.The Abundant Community offers answers to these challenges and more by redirecting our attention to the resources of our immediate community, neighborhood, family. Their message is commonsense and hopeful. This book is a transformation experience, one that can help launch a new movement -- one McKnight and Block call Asset Based Community Development or ABCD, for short.
Don't worry about the academic terminology. Buy this book. And share it with all you think are looking for a path forward. It has the answers.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
important, visionary onslaught against toxic consumerism, Aug 25 2010
By Robert Kall "Rob Kall of Opednews.com" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power Of Families and Neighborhoods (Hardcover)
This book has a laid back title, but within its covers there is a lot going on, a powerful, full frontal assault on the consumer system, consumer mind and the economic system that supports them.The book offers concrete, detailed ideas on how to return to community, how to do it competently, with heart, compassion, kindness and as unique individuals.
There's a growing conversation on relocalization, on transition towns, on moving past capitalism and the constant growth economy. This book provides a very important dimension to the solution-- a dimension truly at the heart of the answer.
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