Diversity and the Common Good: Civil Society, Religion, and Catholic Sisters in a Small City [Hardcover]

Diversity and the Common Good: Civil Society, Religion, and Catholic Sisters in a Small City examines how Catholic Sisters and their congregations have been critical nodes in religious and civil networks, investing their social capital to address one of the most pressing issues facing American communities today: diversity. Bluffton, situated in America's heartland, is revealed as a community that has confronted racism of the ugliest kind and chosen to work toward a good society for its citizens, driven by the concerted efforts of its Catholic Sisters and highly committed civic and religious actors. Blending quantitative and qualitative data collected over three years and scholarship on civil society, Meg Wilkes Karraker's narrative style engages scholars from sociology, political science, public administration, and religious, but also speaks tocommunity leaders and citizens seeking to understand how they can act on behalf of the common good in their own communities. Notably, Diversity and the Common Good tells the story of a community that works! Given recent criticisms of American Sisters by the Vatican, this story of the great good done by Sisters must be told now.Meg Wilkes Karraker is professor of sociology and family business center fellow at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is author of Families with Futures: Family Studies into the Twenty-first Century (2012, coauthored with Janet Grochowski) and Global Families (2013) and editor of The Other People: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Migration (2014).

In this book Karraker presents the results of a three years research that focused on a small Midwestern U. S. city. ... Her arguments are laid out very nicely and are very convincing. ... Diversity and the Common Good gives theoretical tools to understand how partnership between civil society and religion can indeed be a potent force in the pursuit of the common good. . . This book [is a welcome edition], and hope it will inspire ml#$