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This chapter examines the relationship between magazines and social reform movements in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In particular, it looks at the “benevolent empire,” an interorganizational field that consisted of a large number of voluntary social reform associations, the religious structures that supported them, and the magazines that both supported organized reform efforts and were supported by them. The chapter first reviews the history of reform movements, with emphasis on the links among successive movements and the formal organizations that supported them. It then considers the religious roots of social reform and the specialized magazines launched by reform leaders to broadcast their views and show. It also discusses how often the many different social reform movements were covered across all magazine genres before concluding with an analysis of the antislavery movement and its interaction with both religion and magazines.

This chapter evaluates the involvement of Schmoller and his colleagues in the rise of an organized social reform movement. It analyzes the dynamics that gave rise to Verein für Sozialpolitk, the place of historical economists in this organization, what disputes and controversies this sparked, and how Schmoller and his colleagues responded to these challenges.

This book explores the role that magazines played in the modernization of America, and particularly in the development of translocal communities, during the period 1741–1860. Drawing on original data obtained from 5,362 magazines published during this period, the book analyzes how the growing number and variety of magazines promoted and directed modern community building in America. It investigates the ways that magazines affected and were affected by key features of American society, including rapid population growth and urbanization; breakthroughs in printing and papermaking technologies; the rise of religious communities and social reform movements; the growth of educational institutions; and the emergence of scientific agriculture. This introduction reviews scholarship on modernization and community and explains how these concepts apply to America during the period. It also provides an overview of the chapters that follow.

This concluding chapter summarizes that the book has documented the evolution of American magazines from a few, fragile, questionable undertakings to more than a thousand robust, highly legitimate elements of print culture. Between 1741 and 1860, magazines underwent a profound transformation that were made possible by a series of changes in American society, including population growth and urbanization, advances in publishing technologies, the gradual development of copyright law, the modernization of social reform movements, and the rise of protoscientific agriculture. The chapter discusses the implications of the book's findings for understanding modernity and community, for other aspects of American society such as the establishment of various medical schools, and for those who study media in the contemporary era. It concludes by reiterating the important role played by magazines in fostering the pluralistic integration that distinguished American society from European ones in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Providing public services was seen as an important way of advancing human well-being by a set of agenda setting movements in India. Such movement were powerful for a sustained period of time in states that have an impressive record on services. Movements in other regions prioritized different sets of agenda such as land reforms, industrialization, etc. In these cases, even when common people achieve some level of voice in governance it would not lead to greater provision of public services.

This chapter introduces the terminology of studying alternative communities and interrogates the terms utopian, communal, and intentional as applicable to the subject of the book. Finding "intentional communities" to be the preferred term, the chapter provides five qualities that are shared by all groups who may be defined as such. An overview of the types of communities prevalent in American history follows, including religious movements such as the Shakers and Harmonists, social reform movements such as the Oneida Community and Brook Farm, and socialist experiments such as the Kaweah Co-operative Commonwealth and Llano del Rio Cooperative. The chapter explains why company towns, residential institutions, and temporary communities are not intentional communities and provides justification for the geographic limitations of the volume.