Who Killed Civil Society?
Title | Who Killed Civil Society? PDF eBook |
Author | Howard A. Husock |
Publisher | Encounter Books |
Pages | 180 |
Release | 2019-09-10 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 1641770597 |
Billions of American tax dollars go into a vast array of programs targeting various social issues: the opioid epidemic, criminal violence, chronic unemployment, and so on. Yet the problems persist and even grow. Howard Husock argues that we have lost sight of a more powerful strategy—a preventive strategy, based on positive social norms. In the past, individuals and institutions of civil society actively promoted what may be called “bourgeois norms,” to nurture healthy habits so that social problems wouldn’t emerge in the first place. It was a formative effort. Today, a massive social service state instead takes a reformative approach to problems that have already become vexing. It offers counseling along with material support, but struggling communities have been more harmed than helped by government’s embrace. And social service agencies have a vested interest in the continuance of problems. Government can provide a financial safety net for citizens, but it cannot effectively create or promote healthy norms. Nor should it try. That formative work is best done by civil society. This book focuses on six key figures in the history of social welfare to illuminate how a norm-promoting culture was built, then lost, and how it can be revived. We read about Charles Loring Brace, founder of the Children’s Aid Society; Jane Addams, founder of Hull House; Mary Richmond, a social work pioneer; Grace Abbott of the federal Children’s Bureau; Wilbur Cohen of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare; and Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone—a model for bringing real benefit to a poor community through positive social norms. We need more like it.
Philanthropy Under Fire
Title | Philanthropy Under Fire PDF eBook |
Author | Howard Husock |
Publisher | Encounter Books |
Pages | 56 |
Release | 2013-09-03 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 1594037396 |
In Philanthropy Under Fire, author Howard Husock defends the American tradition of independent philanthropy from significant political and intellectual challenges which threaten it today. Although the U.S. continues to be the most charitable nation in the world, serious efforts seek to discourage traditional, personal charitable giving by changing the tax code, and directing philanthropy toward causes chosen by government. Some voices seek to narrow the very definition of philanthropy to include only direct redistribution of income from rich to poor. In contrast, Mr. Husock broadly defends philanthropy’s causes—from the food pantry to the art museum to the university science lab—as both a source of effective new ideas and as a core aspect of democracy and liberty. In a new and original argument, he asserts that having broad impact does not require a marriage of philanthropy and government. Instead, he says, private programs growing out of the values held by their leaders—and imbued with those values—can have a wide impact through their influence on society’s norms. In this sense, the good that private philanthropy does for American society can far transcend the good that it does for its immediate recipients.
An Essay on the History of Civil Society
Title | An Essay on the History of Civil Society PDF eBook |
Author | Adam Ferguson |
Publisher | |
Pages | 430 |
Release | 1767 |
Genre | Civil society |
ISBN |
Civil Society in China
Title | Civil Society in China PDF eBook |
Author | Timothy Brook |
Publisher | Routledge |
Pages | 257 |
Release | 2015-03-04 |
Genre | Law |
ISBN | 1317474384 |
The concept of civil society was borrowed from 18th-century Europe to provide a framework for understanding the transition to post-authoritarian regimes in Latin America and post-communist regimes elsewhere. This book asks whether this concept is useful for analyzing China.
This Republic of Suffering
Title | This Republic of Suffering PDF eBook |
Author | Drew Gilpin Faust |
Publisher | Vintage |
Pages | 385 |
Release | 2009-01-06 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0375703837 |
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • An "extraordinary ... profoundly moving" history (The New York Times Book Review) of the American Civil War that reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation. An estiated 750,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be seven and a half million. In This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust describes how the survivors managed on a practical level and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the unprecedented carnage with its belief in a benevolent God. Throughout, the voices of soldiers and their families, of statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons, nurses, northerners and southerners come together to give us a vivid understanding of the Civil War's most fundamental and widely shared reality. With a new introduction by the author, and a new foreword by Mike Mullen, 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
America's Trillion-dollar Housing Mistake
Title | America's Trillion-dollar Housing Mistake PDF eBook |
Author | Howard Husock |
Publisher | Ivan R. Dee Publisher |
Pages | 152 |
Release | 2003 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN |
This book explains how public housing projects are not the only housing policy mistakes. Lesser known efforts are just as pernicious, working in concert to undermine sound neighborhoods and perpetuate a dependent underclass.
A World for All?
Title | A World for All? PDF eBook |
Author | William F. Storrar |
Publisher | Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing |
Pages | 373 |
Release | 2011 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 080282742X |
This distinctive volume on global civil society brings together voices from politics, philosophy, Christian ethics, and theology seeking to foster an inclusive worldwide social vision.