Methodology and communitarianism

Abstract

Amitai Etzioni's newest reader provides a much-needed opportunity to evaluate communitarian thinking from the perspective of third sector research. Although the authors contributing to the volume take disparate stances on such issues as human nature, institutional requirements of democracy and citizenship, the book emphasises that communitarian thinking nowadays constitutes a robust theory in its own right. Although the political content of this theory as well as the methodological prescriptions on which it is based are highly relevant for all social science fields, they are of particular interest for third sector research as a newly emerging discipline. The political programme of communitarianism is based on a concern for human community. It constitutes a 'third way' between excessive liberalism (which sees in society no real unity) and state-run socialism (which distorts the concept of unity of society). However, as a 'third way', communitarianism could also be dismissed as, at best, little more than a corrective of individualism and, at worst, as a form of old-fashioned collectivism. The question whether or not communitarianism halfills the promise of a third way is dealt with by the other contributors to this common review. In this opening commentary, I would like to address some of the methodological issues raised by several of the contributors to Etzioni's volume.