Full Description
Boundaries and Community is an essential guide for building bridges in a world marked by deep divisions. Across eleven concise chapters, this book offers practical tools and reflective insights for fostering meaningful connections within and across racially, ethnically, politically, and religiously divided communities. Rather than simply describing the problems that fracture our collective lives, it provides a hands-on toolkit for addressing them and empowers readers to move beyond ideological stalemates and take constructive action.
Each chapter tackles a critical challenge of collective life - shared experience, collective responsibility, individual rights and communal belonging, social trust, and more - offering a clear "rule" for action, real-life examples, and thought-provoking questions for group discussion. By modelling a forum for open, community-engaged dialogue, the book equips concerned citizens with strategies to address local issues without resorting to polarized formulas of the right or left.
Boundaries and Community serves as both diagnosis and roadmap, helping readers orient themselves in today's polarized climate and inspiring them to forge new pathways for cooperation and understanding. Whether you are a community leader, organizer, or simply someone who cares about collective well-being, this book provides the tools and inspiration to act together - even with those with whom you fundamentally disagree.
Contents
Prologue and Problem: Why We Need Boundaries and Communities
The Importance of Boundaries
Rule #1 - Boundaries Connect as Well as Divide
Community and Belonging
Rule #2 - Belonging Is Not Fungible
Belonging and Rights
Rule #3 - Having "Rights" Is Very Different from Belonging to a Community
Strangers and Neighbours
Rule #4 - Distinguish Beliefs from Experience
Trust Is Not Confidence
Rule #5 - All Understandings Are Only Partial
Being Uncomfortable
Rule #6 - Uncomfortable Is Not Unsafe
Personal Responsibility and Collective Actions
Rule #7 - Distinguish between Shame and Guilt
Knowledge and the Limits of Control
Rule #8 - Knowledge For, Not Knowledge Of
Shared Experience versus Shared Meaning
Rule # 9 - Allow Experience to Precede Judgment
Negotiable versus Non-Negotiable
Rule #10 - What We Hold to Be Sacred Is Usually Non-Negotiable
Saving the Commons
Rule #11- There is No Monopoly on Suffering
Rights and Belonging
