Whose Keeper? is a profound and creative treatise on modernity and its challenge to social science. Alan Wolfe argues that modern liberal democracies, such as the United States and Scandinavia, have broken with traditional sources of mortality and instead have relied upon economic and political frameworks to define their obligations to one another. Wolfe calls for reinvigorating a sense of community and thus a sense of obligation to the larger society. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1989.

Addressing volatile social issues such as gender, pornography, race, welfare, immigration, and schooling, Alan Wolfe examines the ills of American society in the 1990s. He shows that it is possible to be critical and fair at the same time, and concludes that social criticism does not lie within the boundaries of either left-wing or right-wing ideas, but rather is connected to a broad understanding of liberalism. This immensely readable book illustrates the power of social criticism to enlarge discussion of issues at the heart of democracy today. "In applying a realist approach to controversies over immigration, pornography, race relations, and the apparent communications gap between the genders, Wolfe seeks to demonstrate the advantages of combining the insights of criticism and the tools of social science."— Library Journal "A plea for a return to liberal thinking, an insistence on the value of 'social criticism beyond politics.' "— Washington Post Book World "[Wolfe] surveys contemporary public discourse on racial and sexual relations, welfare policy, immigration, pornography, education and cultural politics . . . he manages to bring some fresh thinking to most of these stale debates."—T. J. Jackson Lears, New York Times Book Review