Creating Community Anywhere

by Carolyn Shaffer

Book Overview

This text provides groups with guidelines for creating effective communication, conducting productive meetings, making joint decisions, and working through conflicts, as well as the practical skills... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0874777461
• ISBN13: 9780874777468
• Release Date: September 1993
• Publisher: Tarcher
• Length: 283 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.5" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Use This Book To Build the World You Want.

There may be better handbooks for explaining to people how they can build a community, but this is at least the best one I've personally come across. Yes, it has a liberal orientation, but that does not take away its value for more conservative types like myself. Consider the subtitle for a moment: "Finding Support And Connection In A Fragmented World." Today's more technological society is seriously fragmented, so I decided to look into what Shaffer and Anundsen were saying, in chapters such as Electronic Communities, Visionary Residential Communities, and Turning Neighborhoods And Cities Into Communities. I found them constantly touching issues which only previously floated around in my mind. The best part, however, is that they offer the core solution to what I have always wanted. Too many Americans of European descent, for example, are uninformed about why their culture is eroding toward disaster, but it is due to a variety of ethnic and cultural problems, with the main crisis being the lack of community in a faster world. I decided to style my own ideal community as a "Little Europe," and although this is only an opening vision, remember that "In the beginning was the word." Every great task requires a conducive environment to work in without interference, and this is what we would have if we established a network of organizations; cultural, fraternal, and legal volunteer organizations inspired by our own basic values. And it's in these places, in Little Europes all across the nation, that a new faith and ethical resistance could take root. Great social changes continue to come, and everyone has some opinion about what we are in for, but whether these challenges become advantages or liabilities to people depends on they do now on a local level. Those who see the value of this can inspire others to become positive, aggressive, and active participants as well. Mainstream Americans won't assert their natural rights until they are at least conscious of being a distinct people. We need environments which naturally transform disinterested members of the public into countless trained political leaders, those who are motivated to advance the interests of our communities. Eventually we could develop nonwhite allies and self determination arrangements for them, but for now the task begins exclusively with our own more desperate condition. Those of you with the proper skills might build a Little Europe in your own town. This could begin with a web page explaining a need for a cultural center (which will become more elaborate as the resources are available) and call upon others in your community to assist in building it up in one particular area. The hippies built political communities in the sixties, homosexuals built them in the 70s, and even ethnic minority groups have had them since the 80s; so there is no reason we can't have a place to assert our own interests. When choosing your local geographical footing, t