On his book Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves
Cover Interview of August 07, 2019
A close-up
The first few pages of the first chapter explain why Making
Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves provides an important, new way of
looking at neighborhoods that transcends the narrow perspectives of previous
books on the subject.
The last page of the conclusion provides a rousing
challenge. It argues why on normative grounds Americans should pursue the
directions advanced in this book if we are to be serious about moving toward a
more just society.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
A close-up
The first few pages of the first chapter explain why Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves provides an important, new way of looking at neighborhoods that transcends the narrow perspectives of previous books on the subject.
The last page of the conclusion provides a rousing challenge. It argues why on normative grounds Americans should pursue the directions advanced in this book if we are to be serious about moving toward a more just society.