Robert Neelly Bellah

#2

This eloquent discourse challenges readers to rethink old habits as it plants the seeds for a new America and a sustainable future. The authors believe that freedom-loving, individualistic Americans have an almost reflexive distaste for institutions. It is their central thesis that massive citizen participation in the large-scale institutions of the economy and government is crucial to solving such problems as poverty, inequality of wealth, environmental destruction, family isolation and lack of community. The authors draw on John Dewey, Walter Lippmann, Herbert Croly, and other thinkers in their scrutiny of American institutions--government, politics, the legal system, schools, the workplace, religion--amenable to citizen action. They envisage a democratized economy in which everyone who works has a stake in the enterprise they work in. ISBN 0-679-40098-2: $25.00.