Log in to track your reading progress.
Overview
This book is a profound and creative treatise on modernity and its challenge to social science. Alan Wolfe argues that modern liberal democracies, such as the U.S. and Scandinavia, have broken with traditional sources of morality and instead have relied upon economic and political frameworks to define their obligations to one another. Wolfe calls for reinvigorating a sense of community and thus an sense of obligation to the larger society.Editorials
Library Journal
This is a copiously referenced, reasoned, articulate exploration into the sources of societies' guidelines for citizens in modern liberal democracies when responding to perceived obligations, both intimate and distant. Wolfe highlights the paradox of lessening agreement on authority for setting moral rules at a time when awareness of humanity's reciprocal responsibilities is growing. He argues that, in modern civil societies, individuals possess freedom (responsiblity?) to create together a civil morality which will function alongside the self-interest-oriented authority of market (e.g., the U.S.) and public welfare-state rationale (Scandinavia), infusing a human factor with the potential to balance meeting obligations for both intimate and distant others. Sociology's role can be to instruct and support this endeavor. Recommended for university level and above.-- Suzanne W. Wood, SUNY Coll. of Technology, AlfredBook Details
Published
July 1, 1992
Publisher
Berkeley : University of California Press, c1989.
Pages
371
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780520065512