Bowling Alone

Bowling Alone PDF Author: Robert D. Putnam
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743203046
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
Packed with provocative information about the social and political habits of twentieth-century Americans.

Bowling Alone

Bowling Alone PDF Author: Robert D. Putnam
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743203046
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
Packed with provocative information about the social and political habits of twentieth-century Americans.

Bowling Alone : the Collapse and Revival of American Community

Bowling Alone : the Collapse and Revival of American Community PDF Author: Robert D. Putnam
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 541

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Book Description


The Upswing

The Upswing PDF Author: Robert D. Putnam
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 198212914X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
From the author of Bowling Alone and Our Kids, a “sweeping yet remarkably accessible” (The Wall Street Journal) analysis that “offers superb, often counterintuitive insights” (The New York Times) to demonstrate how we have gone from an individualistic “I” society to a more communitarian “We” society and then back again, and how we can learn from that experience to become a stronger, more unified nation. Deep and accelerating inequality; unprecedented political polarization; vitriolic public discourse; a fraying social fabric; public and private narcissism—Americans today seem to agree on only one thing: This is the worst of times. But we’ve been here before. During the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, America was highly individualistic, starkly unequal, fiercely polarized, and deeply fragmented, just as it is today. However as the twentieth century opened, America became—slowly, unevenly, but steadily—more egalitarian, more cooperative, more generous; a society on the upswing, more focused on our responsibilities to one another and less focused on our narrower self-interest. Sometime during the 1960s, however, these trends reversed, leaving us in today’s disarray. In a sweeping overview of more than a century of history, drawing on his inimitable combination of statistical analysis and storytelling, Robert Putnam analyzes a remarkable confluence of trends that brought us from an “I” society to a “We” society and then back again. He draws inspiring lessons for our time from an earlier era, when a dedicated group of reformers righted the ship, putting us on a path to becoming a society once again based on community. Engaging, revelatory, and timely, this is Putnam’s most ambitious work yet, a fitting capstone to a brilliant career.

Better Together

Better Together PDF Author: Robert D. Putnam
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439106886
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
In his acclaimed bestselling book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert Putnam described a thirty-year decline in America's social institutions. The book ended with the hope that new forms of social connection might be invented in order to revive our communities. In Better Together, Putnam and longtime civic activist Lewis Feldstein describe some of the diverse locations and most compelling ways in which civic renewal is taking place today. In response to civic crises and local problems, they say, hardworking, committed people are reweaving the social fabric all across America, often in innovative ways that may turn out to be appropriate for the twenty-first century. Better Together is a book of stories about people who are building communities to solve specific problems. The examples Putnam and Feldstein describe span the country from big cities such as Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Chicago to the Los Angeles suburbs, small Mississippi and Wisconsin towns, and quiet rural areas. The projects range from the strictly local to that of the men and women of UPS, who cover the nation. Bowling Alone looked at America from a broad and general perspective. Better Together takes us into Catherine Flannery's Roxbury, Massachusetts, living room, a UPS loading dock in Greensboro, North Carolina, a Philadelphia classroom, the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, naval shipyard, and a Bay Area Web site. We meet activists driven by their visions, each of whom has chosen to succeed by building community: Mexican Americans in the Rio Grande Valley who want paved roads, running water, and decent schools; Harvard University clerical workers searching for respect and improved working conditions; Waupun, Wisconsin, schoolchildren organizing to improve safety at a local railroad crossing; and merchants in Tupelo, Mississippi, joining with farmers to improve their economic status. As the stories in Better Together demonstrate, bringing people together by building on personal relationships remains one of the most effective strategies to enhance America's social health.

Our Kids

Our Kids PDF Author: Robert D. Putnam
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476769907
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
"The bestselling author of Bowling Alone offers [an] ... examination of the American Dream in crisis--how and why opportunities for upward mobility are diminishing, jeopardizing the prospects of an ever larger segment of Americans"--

The Values of Volunteering

The Values of Volunteering PDF Author: Paul Dekker
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780306477379
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
This book examines volunteering in detail from a civil society perspective, using empirical data garnered from various sources for countries all over the globe. The contributions deal with a broad spectrum of questions, ranging from the diversity, social and cultural determinants and organizational settings of volunteering, to its possible individual, social, and political effects.

Generating Social Capital

Generating Social Capital PDF Author: M. Hooghe
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403979545
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Social capital - networks of civic engagements, norms of reciprocity, and attitudes of trust - is widely seen as playing a key role for the health of democracy. While many authors have examined the consequences of social capital, there is a pressing need to explore its sources. This collection brings together leading American and European scholars in the first comparative analysis of how social trust and other civic attitudes are generated. The contributors to this volume examine the generation of social capital from two directions: society-based approaches that emphasize voluntary associations, and institutional approaches that emphasize policy.

Hanging Together

Hanging Together PDF Author: Eric W. Cheng
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009185756
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
Difference and disagreement can be valuable, yet they can also spiral out of control and damage liberal democracy. Advancing a metaphor of citizenship that the author terms 'role-based constitutional fellowship,' this book offers a solution to this challenge. Cheng argues that a series of 'divisions of labor' among citizens, differently situated, can help cultivate the foundational trust required to harness the benefits of disagreement and difference while preventing them from 'overheating' and, in turn, from leaving liberal democracy vulnerable to the growing influence of autocratic political forces. The book recognizes, however, that it is not always appropriate to attempt to cultivate trust, and acknowledges the important role that some forms of confrontation might play in identifying and rectifying undue social hierarchies, such as racial-ethnic hierarchies. Hanging Together thereby works to pave a middle way between deliberative and realist conceptions of democracy.

An Analysis of Robert D. Putnam's Bowling Alone

An Analysis of Robert D. Putnam's Bowling Alone PDF Author: Elizabeth Morrow
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1351350226
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 94

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Book Description
American political scientist Robert Putnam wasn’t the first person to recognize that social capital – the relationships between people that allow communities to function well – is the grease that oils the wheels of society. But by publishing Bowling Alone, he moved the debate from one primarily concerned with family and individual relationships one that studied the social capital generated by people’s engagement with the civic life. Putnam drew heavily on the critical thinking skill of interpretation in shaping his work. He took fresh looks at the meaning of evidence that other scholars had made too many assumptions about, and was scrupulous in clarifying what his evidence was really saying. He found that strong social capital has the power to boost health, lower unemployment, and improve life in major ways. As such, any decrease in civic engagement could create serious consequences for society. Putnam’s interpretation of these issues led him to the understanding that if America is to thrive, its citizens must connect.

John Dewey and American Democracy

John Dewey and American Democracy PDF Author: Robert B. Westbrook
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501702033
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 596

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Book Description
Over a career spanning American history from the 1880s to the 1950s, John Dewey sought not only to forge a persuasive argument for his conviction that "democracy is freedom" but also to realize his democratic ideals through political activism. Widely considered modern America's most important philosopher, Dewey made his views known both through his writings and through such controversial episodes as his leadership of educational reform at the turn of the century; his support of American intervention in World War I and his leading role in the Outlawry of War movement after the war; and his participation in both radical and anti-communist politics in the 1930s and 40s. Robert B. Westbrook reconstructs the evolution of Dewey's thought and practice in this masterful intellectual biography, combining readings of his major works with an engaging account of key chapters in his activism. Westbrook pays particular attention to the impact upon Dewey of conversations and debates with contemporaries from William James and Reinhold Niebuhr to Jane Addams and Leon Trotsky. Countering prevailing interpretations of Dewey's contribution to the ideology of American liberalism, he discovers a more unorthodox Dewey—a deviant within the liberal community who was steadily radicalized by his profound faith in participatory democracy. Anyone concerned with the nature of democracy and the future of liberalism in America—including educators, moral and social philosophers, social scientists, political theorists, and intellectual and cultural historians—will find John Dewey and American Democracy indispensable reading.