Amitai Etzioni

A sociologist who turned communitarianism into a working political philosophy, arguing that a society organized only around individual rights collapses without a matching sense of obligation. He founded the Communitarian Network to carry the idea beyond academic journals into public policy, and directed George Washington University's Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies. A 2001 citation study by federal judge Richard Posner ranked him among the hundred most-cited American intellectuals.