The Careless Society: Community and Its Counterfeits

By John L. McKnight

Reciting a litany of lethal effects produced by service providers‹families collapsing, schools failing, violence spreading, prisons swelling‹he charges them with eroding the very soul of community. "The enemy is not poverty, sickness, and disease," McKnight writes. "The enemy is a set of interests that need dependency, masked by service."

The 17 essays in the book were written over a span of two decades. They focus on four "counterfeiting" aspects of society: professionalism, medicine, human service systems, and the criminal justice system. Each is deemed counterfeit because it attempts to produce, provide, and manage care, which is "the only thing a system cannot produce," says McKnight. He follows these analysis with his own prescription for generating "authentic citizen communities of care."