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Good Neighbors: The Democracy of Everyday Life in America
How our everyday interactions as neighbors shape―and sometimes undermine―democracy
"Love thy neighbor" is an impossible exhortation. Good neighbors greet us on the street and do small favors, but neighbors also startle us with sounds at night and unleash their demons on us, they monitor and reproach us, and betray us to authorities. The moral principles prescribed for friendship, civil society, and democratic public life apply imperfectly to life around home, where we interact day to day without the formal institutions, rules of conduct, and means of enforcement that guide us in other settings.
In Good Neighbors , Nancy Rosenblum explores how encounters among neighbors create a democracy of everyday life, which has been with us since the beginning of American history and is expressed in settler, immigrant, and suburban narratives and in novels, poetry, and popular culture. During disasters, like Hurricane Katrina, the democracy of everyday life is a resource for neighbors who improvise rescue and care. Degraded, this framework can give way to betrayal by neighbors, as faced by the Japanese Americans interned during World War II, or to terrible violence such as the lynching of African Americans. Under extreme conditions the barest act of neighborliness is a bulwark against total ethical breakdown. The elements of the democracy of everyday life―reciprocity, speaking out, and "live and let live"―comprise a democratic ideal not reducible to public principles of justice or civic virtue, but it is no less important. The democracy of everyday life, Rosenblum argues, is the deep substrate of democracy in America and can be its saving remnant.
"Love thy neighbor" is an impossible exhortation. Good neighbors greet us on the street and do small favors, but neighbors also startle us with sounds at night and unleash their demons on us, they monitor and reproach us, and betray us to authorities. The moral principles prescribed for friendship, civil society, and democratic public life apply imperfectly to life around home, where we interact day to day without the formal institutions, rules of conduct, and means of enforcement that guide us in other settings.
In Good Neighbors , Nancy Rosenblum explores how encounters among neighbors create a democracy of everyday life, which has been with us since the beginning of American history and is expressed in settler, immigrant, and suburban narratives and in novels, poetry, and popular culture. During disasters, like Hurricane Katrina, the democracy of everyday life is a resource for neighbors who improvise rescue and care. Degraded, this framework can give way to betrayal by neighbors, as faced by the Japanese Americans interned during World War II, or to terrible violence such as the lynching of African Americans. Under extreme conditions the barest act of neighborliness is a bulwark against total ethical breakdown. The elements of the democracy of everyday life―reciprocity, speaking out, and "live and let live"―comprise a democratic ideal not reducible to public principles of justice or civic virtue, but it is no less important. The democracy of everyday life, Rosenblum argues, is the deep substrate of democracy in America and can be its saving remnant.
312 pages, Paperback
Published May 22, 2018
About the author
Nancy L. Rosenblum
16 books9 followersNancy L. Rosenblum is the Senator Joseph Clark Research Professor of Ethics in Politics and Government at Harvard University. Her books include Good Neighbors: The Democracy of Everyday Life in America and On the Side of the Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship (both Princeton). She lives in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 19, 2017
The first thing I did when I finished this book was to purchase all other Nancy Rosenblum books currently available online. It is not often that you encounter a thinker so subtle, who has spent her career pursuing a project so worthy.
Good Neighbors is the latest contribution to that project, and it took her a decade of work. And it shows. The sheer amount of sources brought to bear is staggering, but it is more than that. It is also the type of those sources. Though drawing extensively from empirical social science and political philosophy, Rosenblum draws just as extensively, if not more so, from literature, poems, history, and memoirs. The chapters on violence and disasters---in which she delves deep into the phenomena of lynching in the American south and neighbor responses during Hurricane Katrina---highlight the power of this method, but also its difficulty. Where structured scientific studies of her topic were absent, she synthesized a huge number of survivor memoirs and biographies to make what general points were available to be made. This is obviously far more intensive work, demanding more qualitative thinking, than simply combining the results of empirical studies.
The topic of Good Neighbors is the phenomenology of neighbor life in America, specifically what Rosenblum calls "the democracy of everyday life," the regulative ideal which we take as our guide or fall short of. After tracing the specifically American narratives of the good neighbor as it was and is depicted in settler, immigrant, and suburban communities, she carefully lays out just what this ideal is. Chapter 3 is "Reciprocity among 'Decent Folk'", which digs into the reciprocal nature of neighbor relations, the rough equality among "decent folk" but also when that label can be a tool of exclusion. Chapter 4 is "Taking Offense, Speaking Out," on the ways reciprocity can sour when what we're giving and taking is offences, big and small. And the ways in which we speak out, on our own behalf or on our neighbors. Chapter 5 is "What Anyone Would Do, Here" on local knowledge and its enforcement, the conflict that can bring but also how neighborhoods can embody certain ways of life. Chapter 6 is "Live and Let Live," is on privacy---how we learn more about our neighbors than we might have any desire to, and they about us. How that makes us mutually vulnerable, and how the simple choice to keep quiet can be a kindness.
These are the basic ingredients, but no summary can do them justice. Rosenblum takes a non-reductive approach to each element, as well as the democracy of everyday life as a whole. Readers cannot fail to see their own experiences in the tapestry she weaves, and so to connect more concretely with experiences they have not had. The horror of lynching becomes all the greater when viewed through the lens of neighbor relations continuous with the ones in our own lives.
Rosenblum insists that the "democracy" in the democracy of everyday life is NOT about civic, political democracy. It is an ethos, of relative equality and reciprocity among "decent folk". She spends the last chapter hammering on the point that the democracy of everyday life is NOT a training ground for democracy writ large, nor is democracy writ large simply an extension of neighbor relations. Neighborliness is a distinct sphere in the pluralistic mosaic of the American liberal democratic order. Sometimes, maybe most of the time, it works in complement with civil society and citizenship. But it exists in its own right and is often in tension.
And this is the core of Rosenblum's larger project: to defend the specifically pluralistic character of liberal society, with distinct spheres and their own localized regulative ideals. But it is also more than that---it is to put flesh and blood on the cold skeleton of traditional liberalism, to explore the phenomenology of its aspects as embodied in the personal, the every day (to use a favorite word of Rosenblum's, the "quotidian").
This is an important book in an important project by an important thinker. You could do worse than to read it.
Good Neighbors is the latest contribution to that project, and it took her a decade of work. And it shows. The sheer amount of sources brought to bear is staggering, but it is more than that. It is also the type of those sources. Though drawing extensively from empirical social science and political philosophy, Rosenblum draws just as extensively, if not more so, from literature, poems, history, and memoirs. The chapters on violence and disasters---in which she delves deep into the phenomena of lynching in the American south and neighbor responses during Hurricane Katrina---highlight the power of this method, but also its difficulty. Where structured scientific studies of her topic were absent, she synthesized a huge number of survivor memoirs and biographies to make what general points were available to be made. This is obviously far more intensive work, demanding more qualitative thinking, than simply combining the results of empirical studies.
The topic of Good Neighbors is the phenomenology of neighbor life in America, specifically what Rosenblum calls "the democracy of everyday life," the regulative ideal which we take as our guide or fall short of. After tracing the specifically American narratives of the good neighbor as it was and is depicted in settler, immigrant, and suburban communities, she carefully lays out just what this ideal is. Chapter 3 is "Reciprocity among 'Decent Folk'", which digs into the reciprocal nature of neighbor relations, the rough equality among "decent folk" but also when that label can be a tool of exclusion. Chapter 4 is "Taking Offense, Speaking Out," on the ways reciprocity can sour when what we're giving and taking is offences, big and small. And the ways in which we speak out, on our own behalf or on our neighbors. Chapter 5 is "What Anyone Would Do, Here" on local knowledge and its enforcement, the conflict that can bring but also how neighborhoods can embody certain ways of life. Chapter 6 is "Live and Let Live," is on privacy---how we learn more about our neighbors than we might have any desire to, and they about us. How that makes us mutually vulnerable, and how the simple choice to keep quiet can be a kindness.
These are the basic ingredients, but no summary can do them justice. Rosenblum takes a non-reductive approach to each element, as well as the democracy of everyday life as a whole. Readers cannot fail to see their own experiences in the tapestry she weaves, and so to connect more concretely with experiences they have not had. The horror of lynching becomes all the greater when viewed through the lens of neighbor relations continuous with the ones in our own lives.
Rosenblum insists that the "democracy" in the democracy of everyday life is NOT about civic, political democracy. It is an ethos, of relative equality and reciprocity among "decent folk". She spends the last chapter hammering on the point that the democracy of everyday life is NOT a training ground for democracy writ large, nor is democracy writ large simply an extension of neighbor relations. Neighborliness is a distinct sphere in the pluralistic mosaic of the American liberal democratic order. Sometimes, maybe most of the time, it works in complement with civil society and citizenship. But it exists in its own right and is often in tension.
And this is the core of Rosenblum's larger project: to defend the specifically pluralistic character of liberal society, with distinct spheres and their own localized regulative ideals. But it is also more than that---it is to put flesh and blood on the cold skeleton of traditional liberalism, to explore the phenomenology of its aspects as embodied in the personal, the every day (to use a favorite word of Rosenblum's, the "quotidian").
This is an important book in an important project by an important thinker. You could do worse than to read it.
Did Not Finish
September 23, 2016Liked this a lot so far, but only got to page 68 before the library demanded it back for another borrower. Very literary more than scientific. Would like to finish someday.
November 6, 2017
Eh. This just didn't do it for me; in part, I'm sure it was because I was looking for something the book never claimed to offer: an understanding of how, despite our deep political polarization, we are still living more or less civilly amongst our neighbors. Even when I realized this wasn't what the book was going to give me, it still fell short in a number of ways:
1) Most glaringly, I can't remember reading another book with so many typos!
2) Some of the tenets on which Rosenblum based her core assertions about "good neighbors" (e.g., "What anyone would do, here") are not rooted in any evidentiary way as to why those aphorisms are used. (The most famous aphorism re: neighbors, "Love thy neighbor as thyself" was notably absent from the book.)
3) As evidence, Rosenblum relies largely on characters in fiction; to me, that doesn't stand as evidence--that looks like cherry-picked examples to support your concept, even though there are plenty of real-life examples that could have been used. Heck, even Mr. Rogers could've been cited more often!
4) Finally, I did not see a single concept that seemed uniquely American; granted, I've never really been neighbors with anyone in an foreign country, but none of this seemed in any way uniquely American to me.
1) Most glaringly, I can't remember reading another book with so many typos!
2) Some of the tenets on which Rosenblum based her core assertions about "good neighbors" (e.g., "What anyone would do, here") are not rooted in any evidentiary way as to why those aphorisms are used. (The most famous aphorism re: neighbors, "Love thy neighbor as thyself" was notably absent from the book.)
3) As evidence, Rosenblum relies largely on characters in fiction; to me, that doesn't stand as evidence--that looks like cherry-picked examples to support your concept, even though there are plenty of real-life examples that could have been used. Heck, even Mr. Rogers could've been cited more often!
4) Finally, I did not see a single concept that seemed uniquely American; granted, I've never really been neighbors with anyone in an foreign country, but none of this seemed in any way uniquely American to me.
April 30, 2020
This is a very fine and thoughtful and often deeply thought-provoking consideration of what the virtues of "neighborliness" really involve. Sometimes I thought the book read as not-quite-done, in need of some polishing and editing. But perhaps that's just Rosenblum's style. I found myself entirely persuaded by her basic framework--that being a neighbor involves acting the role of "decent folk," of being willing to speak out, but also being cognizant of the need to live and let live--but really the most engaging theme I found in the book was the idea, as it occurred to me, that neighborliness, as a set of beliefs, is fundamentally modern and urban, arising from presumptions about transience and change, something which exists in a vacuum of (and thus both a longing for as well as a gratified escape from) true intimate community. How is neighborliness different in rural farming villages, or even just slow-growth cities where the process of change not nearly as present, and thus the promise of, threat of, expectation of, demand for, real permanence and community is at least theoretically stronger? Rosenblum's wonderful book makes me want to explore that much further.
May 18, 2021
Recommended by Anand Pandian
June 1, 2021
Good information and food for thought, but so wordy and repetitive there was no joy in the reading of this book.
April 23, 2017
I've always wanted to have a neighbor just like you.
I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you.
- Mr. Rogers, "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood"
"You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
- The Bible, Matthew 22:39
Societies are the culmination of millions of interactions between individuals on a daily basis. Whether it's the grocery store, cutting each other off on the highway, or elsewhere; the sum of these interactions define not only our own feelings about where we live but how others perceive it as well.
One of the most essential areas to examine are the interactions between our neighbors and ourselves. Their homes are the first thing we see when we leave for work or school in the morning. The space we share with them defines not just our property values but goes a long way of how we feel about where we live. Good neighbors enhance our space, bad neighbors make us rue it.
In the age of technology, the definition of neighbor or even how we address neighborhoods is constantly changing.
Rosenbaum examines the concept of neighbor from a literary and academic standpoint, ranging from defining the term to some of the times in American history where society failed to live up to the expectation of good neighbors. While I appreciate the topic of the book, as well as the areas addressed, I do think a better structure would have benefited this book more. Definitely some good information in Good Neighbors worth reading though.
I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you.
- Mr. Rogers, "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood"
"You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
- The Bible, Matthew 22:39
Societies are the culmination of millions of interactions between individuals on a daily basis. Whether it's the grocery store, cutting each other off on the highway, or elsewhere; the sum of these interactions define not only our own feelings about where we live but how others perceive it as well.
One of the most essential areas to examine are the interactions between our neighbors and ourselves. Their homes are the first thing we see when we leave for work or school in the morning. The space we share with them defines not just our property values but goes a long way of how we feel about where we live. Good neighbors enhance our space, bad neighbors make us rue it.
In the age of technology, the definition of neighbor or even how we address neighborhoods is constantly changing.
Rosenbaum examines the concept of neighbor from a literary and academic standpoint, ranging from defining the term to some of the times in American history where society failed to live up to the expectation of good neighbors. While I appreciate the topic of the book, as well as the areas addressed, I do think a better structure would have benefited this book more. Definitely some good information in Good Neighbors worth reading though.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews