John McKnight is the coauthor of a guide for community development entitled Community Building from the Inside
Out. He is the director of the Community Studies Program at the Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research at
Northwestern University, where he also teaches. He lives in Evanston, Illinois.
Review
"A wise, compelling work."
--Jean Bethke Elshtain author of Democracy on Trial
"John McKnight's The Careless Society is a breakthrough in its critique of professional practice and its profound
understanding of the role of community as a helping agent. McKnight does a brilliant analysis of the criminal justice
system and provides a valuable, constructive worldview."
--Frank Reissman Director, National Self-Help Clearinghouse, Editor-In-Chief, Social Policy magazine
"At last, a voice of reason sounds above the ideological din that has characterized the national debate on
health care, welfare, and crime. John McKnight's analysis will confuse the Left and confound the Right. [The Careless
Society] ought to be required reading for every lawyer, medical doctor, social worker, probation officer, child-care
worker, and police chief in the country."
--Jerome G. Miller President, National Center on Institutions and Alternatives
"Goes far deeper than the traditional conventional discussions of welfare reform and identifies the heart
of failure of the current system.... A watershed analysis."
--Robert Woodson Sr. National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise
Perseus Press Web Site, November, 2000
Summary
Amid all the hand-wringing about the loss of community in America these days, here is a book that celebrates
the ability of neighborhoods to heal from within. John McKnight tells how the experts' best efforts to rebuild
and revitalize communities are in fact destroying them. McKnight focuses on four "counterfeiting" aspects
of society: professionalism, medicine, human service systems, and the criminal justice system. Because in many
areas the ideological roots of service grow from a religious ideal, the book concludes with a reflection on the
idea of Christian service and its transformation into carelessness. Reforming our human service institutions won't
work, McKnight writes. These systems do too much, intervene where they are ineffective, and try to substitute service
for irreplaceable care. Instead of more or better services, the book demonstrates that the community capacity of
the local citizens is the basis for resolving many of America's social problems.
An illuminating look at how the experts' best efforts to rebuild and revitalize communities are in fact destroying
them.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Professionalism
John Deere and the Bereavement Counselor
The Professional Problem
The Need for Oldness
Professionalized Service and Disabling Help
Medicine
The Medicalization of Politics
Well-Being: The New Threshold to the Old Medicine
Diagnosis and the Health of Community
Politicizing Health Care
Human Service Systems
A Nation of Clients?
Do No Harm
Redefining Community
A Reconsideration of the Crisis of the Welfare State
The Criminal Justice System
Thinking About Crime, Sacrifice, and Community
Rethinking Our National Incarceration Policy
On Community
Community Organizing in the Eighties: Toward a Post-Alinsky Agenda with John Kretzmann
Regenerating a Community
Christian Service
On theBackwardness of Prophets
