Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life | 
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Product Description
First published in 1985, Habits of the Heart continues to be one of the most discussed interpretations of modern American society, a quest for a democratic community that draws on our diverse civic and religious traditions. In a new preface the authors relate the arguments of the book both to the current realities of American society and to the growing debate about the country's future. With this new edition one of the most influential books of recent times takes on a new immediacy.
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Habits of the Heart is required reading for anyone who wants to understand how religion contributes to and detracts from America's common good. An instant classic upon publication in 1985, it was reissued in 1996 with a new introduction describing the book's continuing relevance for a time when the country's racial and class divisions are being continually healed and ripped open again by religious people. Habits of the Heart describes the social significance of faiths ranging from "Sheilaism" (practiced by a California nurse named Sheila) to conservative Christianity. It's thoroughly readable, theologically respectful, and academically irreproachable. --Michael Joseph Gross
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Customer Reviews:
• A Wise And Profound Reflection On American Culture 09 June, 2006
This is a brilliant, deeply thoughtful, open-hearted book, one of the ten or twelve most important studies we have so far of the culture of the United States. Those who take the time and make the effort to read it carefully will learn a lot not only about American history and society, but also about their own private thoughts and fantasies and the background assumptions of their everyday lives. The dismal state of American education is the main thing you can learn about in most of these reviews. This book has limitations. The most obvious: it's about white/Anglo middleclass Americans. But the only sensible response to the book is still gratitude. If you haven't read it, read it.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1F2AUN2JRSQ9K
• Unwise Book 06 September, 2008
The book overlooks the obvious. One the one hand clearly communities down through the ages have been part and parcel of the world's problems. Iraq today is all about community, for example. The point that communities must be other than therapeutic is parodoxically quite on target but because communites are very frequently coercive, repressive entities. On the other hand people aren't alienated ala Durkheim. Alienation came about because of an information dearth. People would move to the big city and lose all contact with sources of information vis-a-vis the 'village square' but fail to connect up to the larger world but with the mass media now omnipresent there is no lack of information and people are if anything overconnected. This book is part of a sociology debate that was doubly irrelevant when written and is triply irrelevant now. The US chose to stress free association rather than community thanks to the wisdom of the Founding Fathers. This is an unwise book.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3LPK5EDQ1ZJCK
• More Of An Analysis Than A Vision? 31 October, 2007
"Habits of the Heart" is not an easy read. There are five authors, none of whom seem to identify themselves. For example, in the edition I've read, there are three Prefaces, none of which ends with the name of an author.
Because of this, there may be less coherence in the flow of the book than there could be. But there is so much "meat" in the book that it is still a good read. But because there are so many quotable areas, and so many opinions expressed, I'm sure a variety of reviews could flow from the book. Here's mine:
The thesis of the book appears to be the argument that in a simpler America, we were tied by obvious economic and social interactions. We could be fiercely individualistic, e.g., as the Blacksmith of a small community, but we were linked because our livelihood was probably dependent on neighbors, and our social base, probably our church, was common to the community.
But, today, with our "utilitarian individualism" remaining, we have spread out and now are confused by our links to our neighbors and communities. We move more often. We are not as likely to be economically dependent on our immediate neighbors. We can easily be convinced that the "success" we have achieved has been via our own hard work and ambition and that we may not have much responsibility to contribute back to our immediate neighbors or communities.
The book mentions, but does not dwell on, the Biblical tradition/obligation to respect and acknowledge the dignity of all. It also talks about the "underclass," saying at one point that solving its plight is one of the greatest challenges of all and that this will take an enormous amount of money. But it also points out that in today's world, it is also easy for successful individuals to convince themselves that those in the underclass have only themselves to blame and/or to think that welfare reform efforts do more harm than good.
The authors seem to come from a personal therapy background and viewpoint that may have been gathered first-hand: "Many people feel empty and don't know \why they feel that way. They have been sold a bill of goods by our system: cash, convenience and consumerism....The reason you don't feel part of it is because nobody is a part of it."
But, at the same time, they appear to be more than willing to look at various sides of an issue, and not take a "hard," simplistic stand:
Values: There are skeptical references about how people form "values" and if they can be trusted to be anything more than based on self-interest.
Marriage and family: There is support for marriage and family responsibilities, but it is pointed out that "to imagine that society's problems can be traced to individuals with inadequate family values seems to us sadly mistaken." Next to religious commitment, kinship and family provides another basis of "social solidarity."
Being single: It is no longer disgraceful to remain unmarried. Further, no one HAS to have children. And one can leave a marriage one doesn't like even when young children are involved.
Government programs: "Neocapitalist ideology aims to convince us that all government social programs have been disastrous failures."
Religion: "Major religious can move people away from the preoccupation with self toward some larger identity." Religion is one of he most important ways that American's "get involved."
Television: "...it would be difficult to argue that there is any coherent ideology or overall message that it communicates."
Business Leadership: "Leaders are frequently power-hungry bullies without any moral restraints."
Childrearing: Children are trained to be independent self-sufficient individuals. Leaving home involves separation and renewed identity. "Leaving home" may include also leaving the parents' church.
Trend to liberalization: "Younger folks tend to be more liberal, less accepting of hypocrisy, e.g., rejecting the belief that only Christians get to heaven."
Public Service: "Most people involve themselves in social institutions to achieve self-interests or because they feel an affinity with certain others."
Today's metropolitan world: "...a wold of diverse, often hostile groups, interdependent in ways too complex for an individual to comprehend." "...we spend most of our time navigating through immense bureaucratic structures - multiversities, corporations, government agencies." And, don't forget those megachurches!
Get the drift? A ton of subject areas are covered and tons of ideas and opinions expressed.
Plus, throughout the book there are references to Tocqueville's studies of America. He found Americans to be "restless in the midst of prosperity." He also found the "new individualism" strangely compatible with conformism. Reference to Tocqueville weaves in and out in the book.
There is also a sense of limits to what can be done: "The individual's need to be successful in work becomes the enemy of the need to find meaning of one's work in service to others." And "Americans know that society is rigged, as is the marketplace."
And an occasional dose of reality: "Midlife, especially for middle-class American men often marks the end of the dream of being able to move forward without compromise, to achieve `perfection.' Unemployment can be particularly painful." (Or, how about a kid or two with "problems?")
But let's end by getting back to what appears to be the book's thesis, by stringing some quotes from the book together:
"What has failed at every level...is integration...we have failed to remember our community as members of the same body."
In an ideal world "it would become part of the ethos of work to be aware of our intricate connectness and interdependence."
"...traditions help us to know that it does make a difference who we are and how we treat one another."
And, "...in our desperate effort to free ourselves from the constrictions of the past, we have jettisoned too much, forgetting a history that we cannot abandon."
"In a healthy society, the private and public life are not mutually exclusive...they are two halves of a whole, two poles of a paradox." "Taking cared of one's own is an admirable motive. But when it combines with suspicion of and withdrawal from the public world, it is one of the conditions of despotism Tocqueville feared."
Another suggestion is that "only effective institutions - economic, political and social - make complex, modern societies livable." Another: "We are facing trends that threaten our basic sense of solidarity with others." And: "The erosion of meaning and coherence in our lives is not something Americans desire."
But a coherent, confident plan to get us "back" to some state of integration is not really convincing in the book. Instead, we get: "it is not clear that many Americans are prepared to consider a significant change in the way we have been living. The allure of the packaged good life is still strong"...even though..."our material belongs have not brought us happiness." And, there is "no question that many Americans find their contribution of work and private lifestyle satisfying."
Today's politicians of all stripes can score points by saying that "America is not headed in the right direction." The statement is broad and open to interpretation. The statement assumes that government leaders are not to be trusted to make the "right" decisions. But the statement is also shallow and meaningless without specific suggestions/recommendations.
For the most part, this is the problem with "Habits of the Heart." I don't think it is ever very convincing in telling us how to turn the ship of state back in the "right direction." Or even if it truly IS in the wrong direction.
But, as I said earlier, there is so much information and so many interesting ideas included, it is a good read. And, maybe, it becomes the basis for individuals to begin to make decisions within their own lives as to where they fit in their "commitments in American life" and the world.
End of Book Review by George Fulmore.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1AYUZS87F0IYQ
• Sorting It All Out 11 February, 2003
HABITS OF THE HEART is a tour de force whose insights into America are as relevant today as they were nearly twenty years ago when the book was published. It was hailed at that time as an instant classic of sociology, and compared to such influential works as MIDDLETOWN and THE LONELY CROWD. If anything, its insights are even more pertinent now. The subtitle "Individualism and Commitment in American Life" is the main trope guiding the book, a bipolar perspective that neatly describes the American inability to reconcile the "utilitarian individualism" of Hobbes' "war of all against all" as exemplified in the liberal economic philosophy that grew up with America, with the "expressive individualism" of Whitman and Emerson which developed as a reaction to (in Henry James'' words), the "grope of wealth." The final chapter which elucidates "Six American Visions of the Public Good" describing them as three pairs of conflicting visions: "The Establishment versus Populism," "Neocapitalism versus Welfare Liberalism" and "The Administered Society versus Economic Democracy" is the best example of this dualist view of America, but as Bellah and his fellow authors describe it, these competing visions often hold as many similarities as differences. Specifically, from the latter 19th century until the depression both The Establishment and Populists recognized there was and needed to be a moral component in American public life. The Establishment side was represented Andrew Carnegie's "Gospel of Wealth," while on the Populist side were economic socialists such as Eugene Debs. The mores of the that time, de Toqueville's "habits of the heart," were still moralistic, still partaking of the ideal of the legacy of Jefferson's freeholding citizen even capitalism shook America off its foundations. Of the next pair, Neocapitalism (which rose to its greatest heights in the form of Ronald Reagan) and Welfare Liberalism (exemplified by FDR), while they have different means look to the same ends according the authors. The first seeks to empower citizens through the "war of all against all" and keep the country competitive by unraveling the safety net. Slackers and failures must not be encouraged to take advantage of the winners because it is morally debilitating for society as a whole. Welfare Liberalism on the other hand believes that the net should be stronger because it has less confidence in the Market God believes in better chances and social justice, but still views Americans as individuals who must be encouraged in the Hobbesian war. Of the last two visions, Felix Rohatyn, is the poster boy for the Administered Society -- a continuation of the Progressive ideal of scientific "mastery" a la Lippman, while Michael Harrington represents Economic Democracy. As compared to Rohaytn, who endorses a "partnership" of elites who work to adjust and balance the multiplicitous machine of political, economic and social interests, Harrington would spread out the decision making to at least nominally include the people. Harrington admits this would require a massive reorientation of consciousness -- an unlikely event in the view of the authors. But ultimately the authors say both sides endorse a similar kind of governance by expert, without moral content. The authors saw this last pair dimly stirring when they wrote this book in the mid-80s. Their prediction is perhaps half true as we have also witnessed the covert reassertion of NeoCapitalism in the last three administrations, if especially the current administration. This dualistic strategy is supplemented by the touchstone use of Alexis de Toqueville's political and sociological insights to show how the seeds of much of American life today were sown early on. A fairly effective narrative trope, it serves their often stated goal of showing that it is through our shared history, our communities of memory, that we may see how others confronted the shifting landscapes of political economy, that we may today find a way to stop or at least hold at bay, in the words of Habermas, the "invasion of the lifeworld by systems logic." They maintain that such a course cannot be found through nostalgia for older institutions that once stood athwart the Mega-State. Many of those institutions, such as traditional churches, were paternalistic and discriminatory. Still social movements such as abolitionism grew out of them and were sustained by them. To recognize how the message of freedom forged by the founding generation has been reforged into a double-edged sword to enforce radical individualism, and destroy religious and republican morality and virtue. Government by a managerial elite, a kind of "democratic despotism" which de Toqueville saw as a potential of individualistic American mores has arrived. As an example of the earlier language of America, they cite as an example Martin Luther King deployment of the language of the Bible and republican virtue in his "I Have A Dream" speech. His ringing biblical cadences, his use of "My Country 'Tis of Thee," and the words of the old Negro spiritual: "free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty I'm free at last," evoked our foundational civic and religious language. Bellah, like King, helps us remember and recapture the earlier language of America. Along the way they also trace the politically neutralizing penetration of the individualistic "therapeutic mode" into religious life, the loss of "communities of memory" based on shared values, along with the "second language" of religious and republican virtue. All have which have acted to depoliticize American culture. Where once there was a language of sin and redemption, there is now only the therapeutic language of the self, a radical self which is encouraged by the therapeutic mode to consider one's self and one's happiness as paramount and thus mirrors and supports the ideology of the free market. We richly deserve the oxymoronic label of "private citizen."
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1TOSV5XXG5J7S
• Read Along With Stout's Response To The Book 30 June, 2004
I think Steve Seim's review is excellent. The book is a famous statement of an editorial point of view, namely the communitarian claim that individualism has led to the incoherence of Americans' religious and moral claims. But like so many books, the authors dissemble to pretend they're scientifically reporting objective news rather than a kind of editorial. In this sense, the book is not substantially different from the kind of pseudo-science we've come to expect from sociologists, who, after conducting some interviews and handing out some loaded surveys, tell us "what's really going on" with the "modern American woman" or "Generation X" or, in this case, the "modern [misguided] liberal American." I, for one, view such work as social criticism vital to our society, and it makes thoughtful reading, but it is not scientific, and I wish we could get beyond this need to justify such claims with "scientific" surveys.
Considering this book represents more a kind of punditry than research, despite its claims, please consider reading the most famous response to the book, the chapters from Jeffrey Stout's "Ethics After Babel" devoted to the book. Stout, in one instance, close-reads one of the interviews, in which a guy is asked what's important to him, and whenever he talks about "being good" and "being honest," the interviewers grill him "but why? but why?" until after many replies relating to maturing and learning from his experience, he finally says something like "it benefits me to live a life of honesty" so the authors end the interview and conclude he's a rabid individualist whose only basis for his ethics is egocentric utilitarianism. They did not, for example, explore whether he has a rather rich concept of personal honor, or even a sense of Stoic maturity, either of which seems a more accurate way of describing his answers up to the point they choose to end on. Either alternative reflects a vocabulary of long standing moral traditions, which would contradict the authors' claims - ala Alisdair MacIntyre-- that modern liberal Americans have no such vocabulary. In fact, I find it rather hilarious that they use this subject as the quintessential amoral individualist, since communitarian founding father Aristotle says repeatedly throughout the Ethics that living a life of virtue must benefit the individual, for to say the opposite would be akin to saying that giving a plant sunshine doesn't benefit the plant. Of course this connection of virtue and human benefit is problematized in other ethical systems, but, still, it's funny to me that Arisotle could be characterized as lacking a moral framework because he connects living virtuously with personal benefit.
In any case, reading both this book and Stout, you're in a good position to come to your own conclusions.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3SF2N0BJF0YJS
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