The Active Society Revisited

The Active Society, published in 1968, is the most ambitious book in Amitai Etzioni's remarkable career. It is sociology in the grand tradition, with at least one foot outside its own time. In it, Etzioni confronts the great modern irony-that, in setting out to become the masters of nature, humans become mastered by their own instruments-championing the sense of agency and aiming to demonstrate that humanity can direct its own creations, or at least that societies can aspire to a greater measure of authentic self-government.