The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods

Well written and practical! As Black man growing up on the South side of Chicago, I saw a variety of community development organizations and individuals coming into the neighborhood missing the privilege of partnership and collaboration with the residents of the neighborhoods. Great resource to do course correction to the past.

This book presents some compelling ideas, but the authors obvious and unproven biases and generalizations combined with little proof for their arguments dilute their message and make it hard to take the book seriously. I started reading The Abundant Community very much in agreement with the authors' message, but found myself getting frustrated and annoyed by their writing style and poorly argued ideas. The main idea of this book is that by investing our time, energy, and money back into our communities will have a positive impact on our lives and society. I completely agree with this idea and have seen evidence for it in many places and through other studies and reports I've read. McKnight and Block take this idea to an extreme though, leaving little room for gradual adoption of these principles and offering little understanding for those struggling to simply make ends meet in the difficult economic times we live in.My biggest issue is what I feel is a blind idealization of the past. They address this attitude later in the book, but it something that comes up over and over again. Similarly there is an odd, and I believe harmful, ideas about paid services- specifically in the field of mental health. They frown upon the "professionalization" of services that might have previously been handled through support from friends and family members and continually bring up paid therapists or psychiatrists as examples of our communities' failures to meet their own needs. I think this reveals a major lack of understanding and empathy for those who deal with serious mental health issues that go far beyond the need to chat with a neighbor about their problems. I understand that all authors write with some kind of bias, I just felt like they kept hammering away at certain ideas without giving any factual information to back them up, besides their own observations and beliefs.Another problem I had with this book is that is feels like the authors are repeating the same ideas over and over. It is a pretty short book to begin with, but the authors could have easily (and probably better) gotten their ideas across in half as many pages. I chose to read and review this book for a class (it was on a list of approved books) but if I had simply wanted to read about this subject for my own enlightenment, there is no way I would have finished it.

The book was in excellent condition

McKnight and Block put forth a particular view of what an abundant community looks like. First our desire for an abundant community arises out of a personal awakening, "[1] to create a culture made by [our] own vision; [2] we see the abundance we have; and [3] we know that the power of what we have grows from creating new connections and relationships" (p. 1). An abundant community is then characterized as one where each person recognizes (pp. 4, 5):* The giving of gifts* The presence of association* The compassion of hospitalityPart 1 described a shift in our identifying ourselves as citizens to instead seeing ourselves in light of consumerism, in essence we became consumers. What we lost in this shift is discussed.Part 2 describes what an abundant community looks like in terms of structure, capacities, and action.Part 3 calls for awakening families and neighborhoods and recognizes the power of connections.References to case studies are provided along with a bibliography.See also Block, P. (2008). Community: The structure of belonging. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

John McKnight and Peter Block have written a visionary manual for the world we are entering, the world we must create if we are to survive the crisises that threaten to overwhelm us. The economic changes caused by the end of the petroleum era are immense and immediate for an economy like ours. The humanitarian, ecological, and financial costs associated with climate change -- the increase in the severity of storms like in Pakistan -- the widespread change in rain and moisture patterns in the food baskets of the planet -- these too threaten to overwhelm government. Although its rhetoric is off point, the Tea Party Movement in the US is, in part, a response to this disintegration of global industrial systems.The Abundant Community offers answers to these challenges and more by redirecting our attention to the resources of our immediate community, neighborhood, family. Their message is commonsense and hopeful. This book is a transformation experience, one that can help launch a new movement -- one McKnight and Block call Asset Based Community Development or ABCD, for short.Don't worry about the academic terminology. Buy this book. And share it with all you think are looking for a path forward. It has the answers.

This book came to my attention when a family and community keynote speaker had it laid out on a table along with many of my other favorites. I started reading it immediately and was moved and validated by its contents. Some of the things I felt my community needed were now articulated for me in a clear and inarguable fashion. Other ideas about the empty promises of systems vs. the fulfillment of needs in abundant communities, had not occurred to me, but rang so true as I read them. I am implementing the suggestions to great effect in my neighborhood.

This book is one of the best I've read this year. It is both deconstructive and constructive. It reveals the degree to which consumerism has damaged our families and communities and even our souls. It painted a depressing picture of the state we find ourselves in and it explains why and how we got here. It did not leave me in despair, however. Just the opposite, it created both hope and a way forward. There is a way of living counter-culturally that can lead to abundance for all. This is a book that has cause me to see the community differently. I've gone from black and white to color.

I would recommend this to anyone who wants to make a difference in their community. It is full of lots of suggestions as to how we can make the break from the consumer treadmill

Excellent, very stimulating

'Fraternité has always lost out to Egalité (the Dem's focus) and Liberté (GOP shibboleth), and yet fellowship/community has been the biggest missing element in American/Western society, as attested by insightful commentators ("Bowling Alone", etc.), and one of the main reasons why a buffoon like Trump won over the infinitely more qualified (but unsympathetic) Clinton. McKnight and Block tap into the soul of community, why its so important, and how to engender it in today's society. In the age of (alienating) Internet, we need community more than ever before - not just hundreds of 'Facebook friends'.

Excellent book on harnessing the power of local communities

P. Block manages to get to the essence of what differentiates the two systems. He makes a compelling case of what the shortcomings of the "systems world" are. It is nut just analytical but practical to those building communities in a system space.