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Speaker Biography, Presentation Summary

The Smithsonian Lectures, sponsored in conjunction with The Smithsonian Associates, is a public information program that offers lectures on topics relevant to Decade of Behavior themes.

The first lecture in this program, highlighting the "democracy" theme, featured political scientist Robert Putnam (author of Bowling Alone) speaking on civic engagement.
 

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

Dr. Robert Putnam, Political Scientist
Washington, DC
October 10, 2001

 
Speaker Biography:

Dr. Robert D. Putnam is Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University and President-Elect of the American Political Science Association for 2001- 2002. Putnam has authored or co-authored ten books and more than thirty scholarly works --published in twelve languages-- on issues of American politics, international relations, comparative politics, and public policy. He is founder of the Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America, a program to develop broad-scale, actionable ideas to fortify our nation's civic connectedness. Putnam has also held numerous high academic leadership positions at Harvard University in addition to positions or affiliations with the National Security Council, the World Bank, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
 

Presentation Summary:

Drawing from his recent book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Putnam discussed how we have become increasingly disconnected from our families, friends, neighbors, and democratic structures-- and how we may reconnect. Using evidence from nearly 500,000 interviews over the last quarter century, Putnam warned that our stock of social capital --the very fabric of our connections with each other-- has plummeted. We interact on a face-to-face basis less and less, sign fewer petitions, belong to fewer organizations, socialize with our friends and families less often, and don't know our neighbors as well as we used to-hence, we are "bowling alone." Putnam showed how changes in work, family structure, women's roles, age, suburban life, and technology have contributed to this decline which impoverishes our lives and civic communities. But Putnam was optimistic-- he described how America reinvented itself as a civic community at the turn of the last century, and how it can happen again.