"Eminent sociologist Amitai Etzioni, says if our modern consumer society is the problem, then the answer is a ‘communitarian’ approach. But can this really work?

Getting beyond the individual is also what Nigerian novelist Teju Cole explores. In his case it’s not people around him, it’s communing with the past inhabitants of cities.

And from individual to common ownership in music: should songs belong to everyone? German musicologist Dr Daniel Müllensiefen dissects musical plagiarism."

"This is perhaps the most telling point about cities. Even in this age of technology – where people can collaborate with people they barely know on the other side of the globe thanks to the internet – success depends, as Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser points out in his book “The Triumph of the City”, on communities of individuals being in close physical proximity. Hence all the attention paid to encouraging clusters, whether they are in high-tech, as is the intention in the area around Hackney in east London, or anything else. Glaeser and others have plenty of evidence suggesting that future economic growth is dependent upon the ideas and initiatives originating in cities."

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2010%2F03%2F19%2Fopinion%2F19brooks.html

On Crawford's _Shop Class as Soulcraft_.

"I proposed that a network of carts and tiny kiosks be set up to give away Streetfood to anyone who asks."

Yet both books are, at heart, responses to and revisions of Rawls, and their titles deliberately allude to Rawls’s magnum opus. Just as the nineteenth-century critics of Hegel were still known as Young Hegelians, so these critics of Rawls are essentially post-Rawlsians.

"Think it can't be done? Surprise: What is past is prologue.
Great Britain faced an existential threat back in the 1940s in the form of the overwhelming Nazi military juggernaut that conquered all of continental Europe. Hitler then blockaded and prepared to invade isolated England.
Without enough metal to re-build new airplanes with, England turned to home wood workers and small furniture builders to build a wood-bodied, twin engine light fighter bomber that became known as the de Havilland Mosquito. The resulting plane became the fastest (>400 mph) bomber of the war and contributed in large part to eventual Allied victory. 7,800 wooden planes were made."

"Trade associations and professional associations are business leagues. Chambers of commerce and boards of trades are of the same class as business leagues, but rather than promoting one or more lines of business, their efforts are directed to promoting the common economic interests of all commercial enterprises in a given trade community. The requirements for exemption of these organizations are the same as for business leagues."

"“What becomes clear to participants is we are facing some major economic and ecological changes,” said Andree Zaleska from the Boston office of Institute for Policy Studies, who is coordinating clubs in the Northeast. “We are not going back to some golden age of economic growth based on empire, unfettered capitalism, and cheap energy—nor do we want to! We have to prepare ourselves and our communities for transformation.”"

"Other communities across the country are beginning to create alternative ways of living. In Milwaukee, a renaissance has begun, sparked by the two-acre farm of former basketball player Will Allen, who recently received a MacArthur Genius award. “We have to go back to when people shared things and started taking care of each other,” Allen said recently. “That’s the only way we will survive. What better way to do it than with food?”"

Amitai Etzioni

Choose to Reuse: Give or get unwanted usable items in your community. Realising communitarian ideals.

Tony Blair's unlikely political philosophy.