Blair's community : communitarian thought and New Labour / Sarah Hale.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hale, Sarah.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Labour Party (Great Britain).

Communitarianism--Great Britain.

Communitarianism.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

vi, 213 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Manchester, UK ; New York : Manchester University Press ; New York : Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave, 2006.

Summary:

Blair's community is an exciting and timely book which challenges the accepted wisdom about the role of communitarian thought in the development of New Labour under Tony Blair. From the mid-1990s there has been a widespread view that Labour policies have reflected, or even been influenced by, the work of communitarian writers like Amitai Etzioni and John Macmurray, and philosophers such as Alasdair MacIntyre and Michael Sandel. The book begins by establishing that such a view was widely, and frequently unquestioningly, held, in both popular and academic forums. It then identifies reasons for the persistence of this impression, the evidence on which it was based, and the understandings of communitarianism used by commentators. The book argues that existing accounts of 'New Labour's communitarianism' fail to present an accurate picture because they are - in some cases explicitly - working with a generic or composite conception of communitarianism which bears little relation to the work of the communitarian writers whose names have been associated with the party. Blair's community is unusual in approaching New Labour's 'communitarian' policy and rhetoric via the explicitly articulated communitarianisms of these and other communitarian thinkers and using these as a tool to assess, and, frequently, criticise the party's approach to community. The book's cross-disciplinary approach and accessible style makes it relevant at all levels across the fields of political science, political sociology and Labour Party history, and it institutes a rare dialogue between political theory and policy studies.

Contents:

Part I New Labour

1 New Labour and communitarianism: first impressions last 10

2 New Labour and communitarianism: where's the evidence? 30

Part II Communitarianism

3 Communitarian philosophy and New Labour 51

4 'The wickedest idea of all is the idea of duty': John Macmurray on community, society and service 74

5 Rights, responsibilities and morality: Amitai Etzioni versus New Labour 92

6 The mysterious absence of British communitarians from the discussion of British communitarianism 121

Part III The myth of New Labour's communitarianism

7 Community by contract and the myth of New Labour's communitarianism 155.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [167]-206) and index.

ISBN:

0719074126

9780719074127

OCLC:

70401963