Download The Vanishing Neighbor: The Transformation of American Community AudioBook Free
A sweeping new go through the unheralded transformation that is eroding the foundations of North american exceptionalism. Americans today end up mired within an era of uncertainty and frustration. The nation's safety net is pulling apart under its own weight; political bargain can be regarded as a kind of defeat; and our beliefs in the enduring concept of American exceptionalism looks increasingly outdated. But the American Age may well not be ending. In The Vanishing Neighbor, Marc J. Dunkelman recognizes an epochal move in the framework of American life - a move unnoticed by many. Exercises that once put doctors and attorneys touching grocers and plumbers - relationships that encouraged question and cultivated bargain - have evolved dramatically since the postwar era. Both technology and the new exercises of every day life hook up tight-knit circles and broaden the breadth of your social panoramas, but they've sapped the commonplace, incidental relationships that for centuries have built local neighborhoods and fostered healthy question. The disappearance of these once-central romantic relationships - between people who are familiar but not close, or friendly but not intimate - lays at the root of America's economical woes and politics gridlock. The corporations that were erected to aid what Tocqueville called the "township" - that unique locus of the energy of individuals - are declining because they haven't yet been molded to the realities of the new American community. It's time we shifted beyond the question over if the changes being designed to American life are good or bad and focus instead on understanding the tradeoffs. Our places are less racially segregated than in generations past, but we've become less cognizant of what's taking place in the lives of men and women from different economical backgrounds, education levels, or age ranges.
