The Abundant Community
Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods
By: John McKnight, Peter Block
Published: June 14, 2010
Format: Hardcover, 200 pages
ISBN-10: 1605095842
ISBN-13: 978-1605095844
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
"There is a growing movement of people with a different vision for their local communities", write community organizers John McKnight and Peter Block, in their visionary and thought provoking book The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods. The authors describe how mainstream concepts about consumerism have done real harm to the fabric of communities, resulting in a deep dissatisfaction with life, and offer an alternative based on viewing the community as a place of abundance and of renewed connections and relationships.
John McKnight and Peter Block present a sensitive and personal approach to community organization and redevelopment. The authors demonstrate how individuals, families, and neighborhoods have become isolated and alienated through the atomization of consumerist behavior. Instead of providing happiness and a satisfying and fulfilling life, the transition from citizen to consumer has caused a deep disconnection from other people and the entire community. For the authors, the essential tools and means of changing the misguided principle of people as consumers to one citizens, neighbors, and community. Everyone within the community, regardless of their status or marginal position, has something to offer to the overall benefit of all. The authors teach how to nurture and draw out this innate capacity for giving and sharing that transforms the entire community from one of scarcity to one that realizes its fullest abundance.
Peter Block (on left in photo left) and John McKnight (on right in photo left) believe in the power of human ability to self-organize, and work together as citizens, for the benefit of the entire community. The authors point out that consumerism, and a dependence on outsourcing much of individual, family, and community responsibilities has created an outer directed worldview. The authors consider this loss of community cohesiveness to have unraveled the very fabric that unites people as families and neighbors. At the root of this destruction of the fiber of the community, according to the authors, is a loss of the sense of citizenship and its replacement by one of consumerism. With its promise of the good life and happiness through ever more purchases, the consumer ethos has torn apart the social fabric of communities, while also removing the personal responsibility of good citizenship. The authors propose a return to the roots of good citizenship through creating the giving and sharing community. Consumerism assumes scarcity, according to the authors, while the concept of citizenship supports the concept of the very abundance of all types, already found in the community.
For me, the power of the book is how Peter Block and John McKnight challenge the consumer ethos as one that is not only empty in its promises, but destructive of the very fabric of entire communities. The authors present a persuasive case for reweaving the tattered social fabric of our communities. They offer a powerful and human based alternative to the emptiness of the declining consumer culture. Instead of the divisions created by the search for external solutions, John McKnight and Peter Block show people how to turn that paradigm upside down. They guide communities toward a position of giving, sharing, and recognizing the value of every member of the community.
This elevation of self worth, and the dignity of everyone in the neighborhood, reignites the importance of citizenship. The authors not only present a compelling case for rebuilding community, with the emphasis on abundance and citizenship, but they share very practical techniques for achieving an abundant community. The theory is supported by useful tools for the successful reestablishing families, neighborhoods, and communities in a positive, collaborative, and sustainable manner.
I highly recommend the brilliant and insightful book The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods by Peter Block and John McKnight, to anyone seeking a blueprint for revitalizing communities, rebuilding communities, and reasserting the right of citizenship to all people. The authors present the essential road map for remaking the social fabric that rampant consumerism, and the seeking of external answers and solutions, has left in tatters. The authors point out that despite its wear and tear, the tapestry of our communities can be rewoven to reflect the internal abundance and the opportunity for people to rebuild lives, neighborhoods, and their own personal self worth.
Read the empowering and hope filled book The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods by John McKnight and Peter Block, and discover how the tools for rebuilding your community already exist with you, your neighbors, and the community itself. There is abundance of value, of goodwill, of giving and sharing within all communities. Scarcity is an illusion that must be overcome, and abundance embraced as not only possible but as the solution. Combined with citizens, empowered beyond consumerism, the greater community can reweave its social fabric, and become a truly abundant community.
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