Apparently very different, the lines of questioning pursued by Professors Wolfe and Schudson in fact parallel one another. The Good Citizen assesses whether civic life has experienced a decline over three centuries of American history. Implicit in this question is whether American society itself has declined, as a dynamic public sphere is taken to define a healthy society --in good Tocquevillian fashion. Michael Schudson concludes that we have witnessed both an improvement and a worsening of the situation. Instead of adopting the familiar linear framework, his book contrasts the shifting frames and spheres of activities around which civic life has been organized at various times.

Professor Wolfe also takes on the issue of decline. However, he is interested in moral decline. Unlike Schudson, he does not provide us with an historical overview, but discusses a few authors who have diagnosed and/or offered remedies for our alleged moral decline. The red thread common to these authors' arguments is that moral freedom should make room for more self-restrain in contemporary American society. They believe, grosso modo, that the traditional norms of moral behavior have been replaced by an individualistic free-for-all that destroys the quality of our collective life: We pursue auto-gratification and neglect mutual obligations. We are ready to do anything to get ahead, as we transpose the rules of individualistic competition that prevail in the market to our private lives. As a result, we are all going to hell in a hand-basket. The remedy implicitly advocated by moralists such as Bork and Bennett, is to insure a hermetic separation between the cultural schematas found in the economic sphere and those found in other spheres of life. What they cherish in one sphere, they view as defiling in another.

As for Wolfe, his assessment of the diagnosis is careful and nuanced. One has to read his text closely to detect on which side of the divide - decline or no decline-- he falls. He cites approvingly the

Council on Civic Society, which advocates a revival of associations, not in an end in themselves, as does Robert Putnam, but in order to foster a moral society, a civic society where people explore together "what is our purpose, what is the right way to act, what is common good." Wolfe supports the Council's view that we are not autonomous units, but intrinsically social beings who need one another for selfrealization. He also asserts that moralists are right to wonder about the consequences of moral individualism at a time of unsettling moral social change. However, in a paradoxical conclusion, he states that if in these individualist times, we are suffering from a decline in "moral seriousness and theological depth," we are benefiting much more from learning to "take care of our moral destiny" and to "manage the moral conditions of our lives."

This conclusion, which praises the virtues of responsible individual growth, can be viewed as a manifestation or an exemplification of the individual rights mentality that Schudson describes at the end of his book. One, like the other, celebrates the empowerment of the individual. Wolfe's argument also parallels the moral conclusions of Schudson, which can be summarized thus: The dulling of the public sphere is not so terrible if it has happened concomitantly with a broadening of equality, freedom, and citizenship through the politics of rights. Not only do more people have the full privilege of citizenship: more people also exercise this citizenship in a wider range of occasions. We claim our equality as citizens not only at the poll booth, but also at home, at work, in schools, in hospitals, and in the courtroom.

This is perhaps where the convergence between these two sociologists ends. Indeed, Wolfe shares with the moralists a view of the sixties as "disruptive" (p. 24). Perhaps he even agrees that the sixties were a period of havoc when moral freedom gained exaggerated prominence. At the very least, he avoids demarcating himself clearly from the decline thesis. In contrast, Schudson advances that the sixties did much to improve our collective life: these were times when the excessive trust put in racists and sexist institutions came into question, when perpetrators of sexual harassment and child abuse became publicly accountable, and when human differences, as opposed to assimilation, came to be celebrated. These changes contributed to generating a more dynamic public sphere. In Schudson's words, if our purpose is to broaden membership to a wider moral community of equals, "then for women, wage laborers, racial, ethnic, and sexual preference, or religious minorities, the poor and the elderly, progress toward genuine inclusion in the past half century has been extraordinary, and a significant part of the progress came in the 1960 and 1970s." Hence, Schudson celebrates the aftermath of the sixties and the power of right-claiming individualistic citizenship. However, like the members of the Council on Civic Society whom Wolfe cites approvingly, Schudson believes that new forms of citizenship should not be reduced to a "what's in it for me" relationship to public life. For him, right-regarding citizenship improves our civic life only if 1) it can guide people to commit themselves to dialogue with fellow citizens recognized as moral and political equals (2) while keeping minority rights in mind and (3) holding in view not only themselves but also their posterity.

The National Commission on Civil Renewal is less taken than Schudson by the moral accomplishment of the sixties, defined in terms of promoting the equal treatment of all human beings. Indeed, they are concerned with the impact of the sixties on other moral issues such as the primacy of the family or abortion, which they appear to regard as morality in relation to competing and particular definitions of moralities, a topic to which I now turn.

In his text, Wolfe defines morality in term of our duties to self and others (p. 9). He also defines moral freedom in term of individuals making autonomous decisions concerning such issues. He provides us with two paragraphs of examples of key moral questions. These include: what is right and wrong, what is a good life, what is justice, and what are our obligations to country, humanity, and the needy. They also include newer questions such as ethical dilemmas concerning cloning, euthanasia, and the control of the Internet. He suggests that those concerned with the moral decline of American society point to people's ability, or inability, to address these questions in a universalistic way, by looking beyond their self-interest. He makes moral freedom the keystone of moral debates.

I cannot help but wonder whether this is really what morality is all about for most ordinary people. I also wonder whether the prophets of doom Wolfe discusses offer us a gloomy verdict precisely because they center their attention on specific dimensions of morality that are not central to people's lives. These concerns are fed from roughly three hundred in-depth interviews I have conducted with randomly-sampled professionals, managers, blue-collar workers, and low-status white-collar workers in France and the United States for my book The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration, which will be published next August by Harvard University Press and the Russell Sage Foundation. I open a parenthesis to summarize key aspects of my research, which have implications for the questions of moral decline, the issue of moral freedom, and the topic of universal and particular moralities.

These interviews, like those that Alan Wolfe conducted for One Nation After All, suggest that morality is very much at the center of people's life. Indeed, the working men I talked to find their self-worth in their ability to discipline themselves and conduct responsible yet caring lives to insure order for themselves and others. These moral standards function as alternative to economic definitions of success and offer them a pathway to maintain dignity and make sense of the world in an ever more out of reach American dreamland. Workers also use these standards to define who they are, but as importantly, who they are not. Hence, they draw the line that delimits an imagined community of "people like me" who share the same sacred moral values. This is illustrated by John David, a white printer who lives in Rahway, New Jersey. He says:I don't like people that live for the moment. I am not a big person about saving money, but I'm always looking for the future. I try to base my decisions today that are going to affect me tomorrow, not just on what I want to do today. If I want I can go out tonight and get totally drunk, but I'm going to say, well, I have to work tomorrow ... Sometimes, I wish I could be more carefree. And then I say no, I like the way I am ... I like people who are responsible. So many people, you walk up and say something and they say 'I don't care'. I like people who are close to family, close to friends. I guess you look at yourself and say I wish people could be like me, like that. People who have the same values as me. (White printer, Rahway, New Jersey).

Like John David, when questioned on the traits they like and dislike most in others, the majority of American workers I talked to, blacks and whites alike, spontaneously mentions moral traits: they like "people who care," "who are clean," "not disruptive," and "stand-up kind of people;" they dislike "irresponsible people who live for the moment," "people who get into fights," "people who forget where they come from," and "wormy kinds of people."' I find that in these working class worlds, tantamount are: 1) being hard working and responsible as a means to increase predictability for oneself and others;

2) providing for and protecting the family; 3) being straightforward and having personal integrity; and 4) respecting religion or other traditional forms of morality. I also find that workers put more emphasis on moral criteria of worth and less emphasis on economic success than professionals and managers.

Whereas they place more value on straightforwardness and personal integrity than do the upper middle class, they put less emphasis on other dimensions of morality, such conflict avoidance or the duty of self-actualization.

Viewed from the perspective of my respondents, the ongoing debates on moral freedom that Wolfe introduced may seem somewhat academic and detached from everyday life. Again, the men I talked to are very concerned with morality as it is inscribed in the management of their lives, particularly with respect to their obligations to others. Moreover, deciding who is trustworthy is more salient to their lives than abstract notions of good and evil or ethical debates about cloning or the control of the Internet. This is true for French and American interviewees alike. To use Wolfe's own words, these men do indeed "manage moral conditions in their lives" and "modify their conception of moral truth to account for the reality of how they live".

This is very far from abstract discussions about the nature of vice and virtue. Hence, it is not surprising that Mary Patillo Mc-Coy, in her recent book Black Picket Fences, finds that in a tightly-knit black middle class neighborhood in Chicago, vice is not define in clear opposition to virtue when "decent" and "street" people live side-topside and have to learn to accommodate one another. Her ethnography shows for instance that middle class drug-dealers are not easily vilified by neighbors who have always known them intimately. These offenders are construed as "us" and "them" simultaneously. Academic debates on moral freedom do not capture the essence of how people define good and evil, or experience deviance, either as victim or perpetrator, anymore than legal debates inform us of how people experience the law and legal institutions, as suggested by Patricia Ewick and Susan Silbey's book, The Common Place of Law.

My interviews also hint not a universal morality, but at a multiplicity of moralities. I suggested that Schudson's positive verdict for the sixties is predicated on his privileging a specific dimension of morality: that of treating all human beings equally. Scholars such as Bennett and Bork who take on the moral decline story stress other moral dimensions, particularly self-restrain and sacrifice. This suggests the existence of competing universal moral principles, or perhaps of two particular conceptions of moralities, one that emphasize solidarity with other human beings and one that privileges self-discipline. Similarly, the interviews I have conducted suggests the usefulness of considering competing conceptions of morality, as opposed to a universal morality. Indeed, when comparing white and black workers in the United States, I found that the two groups put different weight on collectivist and individualist conceptions of morality. While black workers value responsibility and hard work, they put more stress on solidarity and generosity - - what I call "the caring self" In contrast, whites put more of a premium on "the disciplined self, " which emphasizes responsibility, hard work, self-reliance, and protecting the family. This is clearly reflected in the terms they use to describe how they separate "people like us" and the undesirables. If blacks put a premium on collective solidarity, it is in part because of their experience of fighting together against racial segregation and discrimination. The Black Church also sustains a rhetoric of solidarity that is absent among white workers. The decline of unions and of progressive religious institutions leave whites without important sources of discourse promoting collective solidarity, and they lead them toward a more individualistic conception of altruism.

These competing conceptions of morality are consequential to the extent that blacks and whites use them to draw boundaries toward one another. While many whites see blacks as lazy, blacks see whites as domineering and contrast them with their own solidarity and warmth. Each group perceives the other as lacking with respect to the specific universal moral rules they embody and privilege most. For instance, John Lamb, a Long Island plumber, compares blacks and whites, by saying:

We didn't create the bomb, we didn't play with gunpowder, we didn't do this . . . The interest of white America was always to build and be better and be competitive, and in doing that, that's more reading and sitting and studying and being more manipulative, and more deceiving, and more, you know, whereas we weren't.

Calls for moral rejuvenation a la Bennett or Bork can be interpreted as attempts to universalize a particular definition of morality focused on the "disciplined self." Again they advocate more self-restrain in the exercise of moral freedom. This moral criterion is central to the drawing of group boundaries --not only racial boundaries but also those drawn toward the poor. It is also central to the definition of cultural membership - to how people decide who fits in, who belongs, who is "us" and who is "them". Cultural membership is an important complement of social membership examined by Schudson, and should be analyzed as such, and perhaps as a dimension of the rules of civic life: cultural membership shapes civic inclusion by being so closely related to group boundaries.

Finally, I want to throw in one last comment on the parallels between the economic market model and the model of a universal morality. Just as economic sociologists have critiqued the view of market as an even-playing field where abstract economic actors meet one another, cultural sociologists need to question the approach to morality that takes as a point of departure abstract individuals who make free moral choices in a cultural vacuum. Morality, like markets, is culturally-laden. There is not one abstract universal moral being, but many kinds of moral selves. From having read Alan Wolfe's widely influential book One Nation after All, I am pretty sure that he would agree with me on this point. Hence, moral freedom has to be considered in the context of the formation of differentiated selves. To borrow Ehrenhalt's concept, we all have limited lives, but these lives are differently limited and we are all unaware of our taken-for granted limits. To conclude, I would submit that discourses on "the Good Society" and the "Good Moral Freedom" need to draw on the work of social scientists who study the socially permissible of various epochs, just like Schudson analyzes how the cultural horizons of actors made various aspects of civic life possible or unthinkable during the last three century of American history.

Notes: