Robert Nisbet Critical Essay | Critical Review by Arthur K. Davis

Critical Review by Arthur K. Davis

SOURCE: A review of The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Freedom and Order, in American Sociological Review, Vol. 18, No. 4, August, 1953, pp. 443-44.

In the following review of Quest for Community, Davis argues that Nisbet should build on his understanding of the conflict between local associations and large, centralized organizations like the state by examining the need for political action to protect communities from economic dislocation.

The argument of [The Quest for Community] is stated in Part I.

Modern society is characterized by social disorganization and personal insecurity, if we may judge by selected scientific studies (Durkheim, Mayo, Horney) and by the literature of alienation (Toynbee, Eliot, Berdyaev, et al). The essential cause of our insecurity is the dislocation of kinship, church, and other local groups by the centralizing State. In the face of this anomie the key 19th-century ideas of individualism, secularism and...
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