Description
Book SynopsisThe twenty-first-century mind deeply distrusts the authority of institutions. It has taken several centuries for advocates of critical thinking to convince western culture that to be rational, liberated, authentic, and modern means to be anti-institutional. In this mold-breaking book, Hugh Heclo moves beyond the abstract academic realm of thinking about institutions to the more personal significance and larger social meaning of what it is to think institutionally. His account ranges from Michael Jordan''s respect for the game of basketball to Greek philosophy, from twenty-first-century corporate and political scandals to Christian theology and the concept of office and professionalism. Think what you will about one institution or another, but after Heclo, no reader will be left in doubt about why it matters to think institutionally.
Trade ReviewOn Thinking Institutionally is in the best tradition of Tocqueville-an updated critique of the individualism that has been America's strength and its weakness. * Gertrude Himmelfarb Distinguished Professor Emeritus, CUNY *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ; Chapter 1: Introduction: Respect for the Game ; Chapter 2: Our Modern Impasse ; Chapter 3: From Thinking about Institutions to Thinking Institutionally ; Chapter 4: Being Institutionally Minded ; Chapter 5: Applications, Dangers, and the Uphill Journey ; Chapter 6: Ways of Thinking, Ways of Being ; Notes ; Appendix: Selected Works of Hugh Heclo ; Index ; About the Author
