Better Together
Restoring the American Community
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3.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From the acclaimed author of Bowling Alone comes the story of people who are reweaving the social fabric across America by building local communities and revitalizing our civic spirit.
In his acclaimed book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam describes the United States as a nation in which we have become increasingly disconnected from one another, where our social structures have disintegrated. He asks an important question: what can we do to end the atrophy of America’s civic vitality, and what can bring us together again?
Now, in Better Together, Putnam and Lewis Feldstein examine how people across the country are inventing new forms of social activism and community renewal. An arts program in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, brings together shipyard workers and their gentrified neighbors; a deteriorating, crime-ridden neighborhood in Boston is transformed by a determined group of civic organizers; an online community in San Francisco allows its members to connect with each other; in Wisconsin schoolchildren learn how to participate in the political process to benefit their town.
As our society grows increasingly diverse, it’s more important than ever to grow social capital, whether by traditional or more innovative means. The people profiled in Better Together are doing just that, and their stories illustrate the extraordinary power of social networks for enabling people to improve their lives and the lives of those around them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Putnam's much praised Bowling Aloneput the concept of social capital (social networking) into broad currency by remarking on its growing absence. Now the Harvard prof and fellow public policy expert Feldstein approach the issue from the opposite direction: without suggesting communitarianism is sweeping the nation, they offer a dozen case studies of what groups of varying size have accomplished by cultivating networks of mutual assistance. Examples range from a neighborhood subdivision in Boston to an entire Mississippi county as well as the "virtual community" of Craigslist, an online bulletin board that has become the prime "go-to" source for job and apartment listings in San Francisco and elsewhere. The authors stress the importance of participatory involvement, championing networks that create opportunities for people to find their own public voice rather than relying on organizers to speak for them. Thus, one chapter recounts a New Hampshire public arts project in which townspeople's stories created the structure of an interpretive dance about a local shipyard's history; another chapter has schoolchildren in Wisconsin writing to local and state leaders to propose public improvements. Though each group is, as one person puts it, "recreating our neighborhood into the kind of village we want it to be," the book emphasizes no particular approach, juxtaposing the work of local governments with neighborhood associations and churchgoers with union organizers. The overarching argument, supported anecdotally rather than statistically, is tentative something's going on but it's too early to tell how big it might become but Putnam's reputation will guarantee the book a hearing.
