Product Description

First published in 1985, Habits of the Heart continues to be one of the most discussed interpretations of modern American society, a quest for a democratic community that draws on our diverse civic and religious traditions. In a new preface the authors relate the arguments of the book both to the current realities of American society and to the growing debate about the country's future. With this new edition one of the most influential books of recent times takes on a new immediacy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #201809 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 410 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780520254190
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
Habits of the Heart is required reading for anyone who wants to understand how religion contributes to and detracts from America's common good. An instant classic upon publication in 1985, it was reissued in 1996 with a new introduction describing the book's continuing relevance for a time when the country's racial and class divisions are being continually healed and ripped open again by religious people. Habits of the Heart describes the social significance of faiths ranging from "Sheilaism" (practiced by a California nurse named Sheila) to conservative Christianity. It's thoroughly readable, theologically respectful, and academically irreproachable. --Michael Joseph Gross

Review
"A telling portrait of the isolated American." -- Publishers Weekly

"At once far-reaching and intimate, rigorously reasoned and strongly felt. . . . The service this book provides, and will probably continue to do for years to come, is to present Americans with a perspective on themselves that is rarely found in our fragmented modern era." -- Sal Alfano, Psychology Today

"Brilliant analysis. . . . Easily the richest and most readable study of American society since David Riesman's '50s classic The Lonely Crowd. "The result is a kind of moral State of the Union Message worthy of Tocqueville. . . . Offers a grammar of moral clarity, substance and promise." -- Newsweek

"Habits of the Heart holds up a mirror to American values, makes us examine ourselves, and dares us to question where our society is going. [It] will make you question your own habits and look into your own heart. Not many books possess that ability." -- George Keller, Baltimore Sun

"Remarkable. . . well written and absolutely free of jargon, and it conveys a powerful sense of moral urgency" -- New York Times Book Review

From the Inside Flap
"The contemporary benchmark from which to look back and look forward in the continuing inquiry about American character."--Daniel Bell

Customer Reviews

Interviews with Americans tell the truth about Individualism
This book is about the inevitable conflict between American Individualism and the fact that humans are by nature social. We hunger for relationship yet we want it only on our terms. Bellah and his team of reseachers take on the enormous task of interviewing people from all over the country and the results of these interviews are presented factually and then analyzed. Whether one agrees with the book's conclusions or not, the interviewees speak for themselves, and they speak for a majority of Americans today who are often torn by conflicting authoritative messages and motives from without and within. This book is a marvelous and sometimes unsettling mirror into contemporary American society.

Sorting It All Out
HABITS OF THE HEART is a tour de force whose insights into America are as relevant today as they were nearly twenty years ago when the book was published. It was hailed at that time as an instant classic of sociology, and compared to such influential works as MIDDLETOWN and THE LONELY CROWD. If anything, its insights are even more pertinent now.

The subtitle "Individualism and Commitment in American Life" is the main trope guiding the book, a bipolar perspective that neatly describes the American inability to reconcile the "utilitarian individualism" of Hobbes' "war of all against all" as exemplified in the liberal economic philosophy that grew up with America, with the "expressive individualism" of Whitman and Emerson which developed as a reaction to (in Henry James'' words), the "grope of wealth." The final chapter which elucidates "Six American Visions of the Public Good" describing them as three pairs of conflicting visions: "The Establishment versus Populism," "Neocapitalism versus Welfare Liberalism" and "The Administered Society versus Economic Democracy" is the best example of this dualist view of America, but as Bellah and his fellow authors describe it, these competing visions often hold as many similarities as differences.

Specifically, from the latter 19th century until the depression both The Establishment and Populists recognized there was and needed to be a moral component in American public life. The Establishment side was represented Andrew Carnegie's "Gospel of Wealth," while on the Populist side were economic socialists such as Eugene Debs. The mores of the that time, de Toqueville's "habits of the heart," were still moralistic, still partaking of the ideal of the legacy of Jefferson's freeholding citizen even capitalism shook America off its foundations.

Of the next pair, Neocapitalism (which rose to its greatest heights in the form of Ronald Reagan) and Welfare Liberalism (exemplified by FDR), while they have different means look to the same ends according the authors. The first seeks to empower citizens through the "war of all against all" and keep the country competitive by unraveling the safety net. Slackers and failures must not be encouraged to take advantage of the winners because it is morally debilitating for society as a whole. Welfare Liberalism on the other hand believes that the net should be stronger because it has less confidence in the Market God believes in better chances and social justice, but still views Americans as individuals who must be encouraged in the Hobbesian war.

Of the last two visions, Felix Rohatyn, is the poster boy for the Administered Society -- a continuation of the Progressive ideal of scientific "mastery" a la Lippman, while Michael Harrington represents Economic Democracy. As compared to Rohaytn, who endorses a "partnership" of elites who work to adjust and balance the multiplicitous machine of political, economic and social interests, Harrington would spread out the decision making to at least nominally include the people. Harrington admits this would require a massive reorientation of consciousness -- an unlikely event in the view of the authors. But ultimately the authors say both sides endorse a similar kind of governance by expert, without moral content. The authors saw this last pair dimly stirring when they wrote this book in the mid-80s. Their prediction is perhaps half true as we have also witnessed the covert reassertion of NeoCapitalism in the last three administrations, if especially the current administration.

This dualistic strategy is supplemented by the touchstone use of Alexis de Toqueville's political and sociological insights to show how the seeds of much of American life today were sown early on. A fairly effective narrative trope, it serves their often stated goal of showing that it is through our shared history, our communities of memory, that we may see how others confronted the shifting landscapes of political economy, that we may today find a way to stop or at least hold at bay, in the words of Habermas, the "invasion of the lifeworld by systems logic." They maintain that such a course cannot be found through nostalgia for older institutions that once stood athwart the Mega-State. Many of those institutions, such as traditional churches, were paternalistic and discriminatory. Still social movements such as abolitionism grew out of them and were sustained by them. To recognize how the message of freedom forged by the founding generation has been reforged into a double-edged sword to enforce radical individualism, and destroy religious and republican morality and virtue. Government by a managerial elite, a kind of "democratic despotism" which de Toqueville saw as a potential of individualistic American mores has arrived.

As an example of the earlier language of America, they cite as an example Martin Luther King deployment of the language of the Bible and republican virtue in his "I Have A Dream" speech. His ringing biblical cadences, his use of "My Country 'Tis of Thee," and the words of the old Negro spiritual: "free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty I'm free at last," evoked our foundational civic and religious language. Bellah, like King, helps us remember and recapture the earlier language of America.

Along the way they also trace the politically neutralizing penetration of the individualistic "therapeutic mode" into religious life, the loss of "communities of memory" based on shared values, along with the "second language" of religious and republican virtue. All have which have acted to depoliticize American culture. Where once there was a language of sin and redemption, there is now only the therapeutic language of the self, a radical self which is encouraged by the therapeutic mode to consider one's self and one's happiness as paramount and thus mirrors and supports the ideology of the free market. We richly deserve the oxymoronic label of "private citizen."

Current American Character - Individualism
Habits of the Heart describes and analyzes the current American Character both in great breadth and with great depth. It gave me a lot to think about. And it gave me a framework to use for my thinking. Bits and pieces of information, some of which I'd noticed before but discounted, are fit into both a historical and a current context.

The book is not a call to arms, nor does it present a list of suggestions for how to behave. The authors' direct opinions are circumscribed to the few pages of the Conclusion and the Appendix. And many of those comments have to do with either how academic sociology should do research or how the book was written. How five authors jointly wrote a single book sounds like an interesting story, but isn't commented on any further than to say it happened and it was a good thing.

As analysis it really does rank right up there with Alexis de Toqueville's Democracy in America and David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd. As political tract it isn't in the race.