Community
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A01=Suzanne Keller
Advisory board
Altruism
Americans
Apathy
Author_Suzanne Keller
Betterment
Category=JBSD
Communitarianism
Community spirit
Contemporary society
Convenience
Disaster
Distrust
Dwelling
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eq_society-politics
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft
Governance
Homeowner association
Household
Ideal type
Ideology
Income
Individualism
Institution
Interdependence
Jews
Keeping up with the Joneses
Levittown
LGBT community
Local community
Modernity
Neglect
Newspaper
Outreach
Ownership
Parking lot
Parking space
Participant observation
Politics
Proportion (architecture)
Public participation
Public space
Puritans
Quality of life
Recreation
Resentment
Residence
Retirement community
Rights
Self-governance
Self-interest
Sense of community
Separatism
Sharing
Shopping
Shopping mall
Snow removal
Social conflict
Social order
Society
Society of the United States
State of nature
Suburb
Swimming pool
Tax
To This Day
Townhouse
Utopia
Vandalism
Virtual community
Voting
Wealth
Well-being
Product details
- ISBN 9780691123257
- Weight: 482g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 06 Mar 2005
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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This book tells the story of how a human community comes to be and how aspirations for the good life confront the dilemmas and detours of real life. Suzanne Keller combines penetrating analysis of classic ideas about community with a remarkable and unprecedented thirty-year case study of one of the first "planned unit developments" in America and the first in New Jersey. Twin Rivers, this pioneering venture, featured townhouses and shared spaces for children's play and adult work and play in a society that stresses individual over collective goals and private over public concerns. Hence the timeless questions asked over millennia: How does an aggregate of strangers create an identity of place, shared goals, viable institutions, and a spirit of mutuality and reciprocity? What obstacles stand in the way and how are these overcome? And how does design generate (or deter) community spirit? Inspired by the legacy of Plato, Rousseau, de Tocqueville, and Tonnies, Keller traces the difficult birth and the rich unfolding of Twin Rivers from a former potato field into a vibrant contemporary community. Most community studies remain at a highly descriptive level.
This book has both broader and deeper aims, endeavoring to develop principles of the common life as we enter the age of cyberspace. Keller reveals the community of Twin Rivers through a multidimensional social microscope, having monitored the community from the day it opened by participant observation, attitude surveys, the study of collective records, and nearly 1,000 in-depth interviews with homeowners. She offers fascinating insight into how residents maintain privacy, relate to neighbors, cope with social conflict, and develop ideas about the common good. She shows that Twin Rivers residents remain hopeful about the possibility of community despite variable success in achieving their desires. Indeed, she argues that the hard-won experience, more than the utopian ideal, is the true measure of community. Keller concludes that, despite the homogenizing effects of mass communication and globalization, local communities will continue to proliferate in the foreseeable future--due to changing lifestyles and the continuing quest for roots.
This important and engaging book will be appreciated by social scientists, architects, physical planners, developers and lenders, and community leaders as well as by the general reader interested in creating a bridge between individualism and community.
Suzanne Keller is Professor of Sociology Emeritus at Princeton University. She was the first woman in the history of Princeton to receive tenure. Her many writings include "The Urban Neighborhood" and "Beyond the Ruling Class" (both Random House), the pioneering textbook "Sociology" (McGraw-Hill), and hundreds of articles on a wide range of subjects.
