Bowling Together
The American Prospect
Volume 13, Issue 3.
February 11, 2002
by Robert D. Putnam
"In the aftermath of September's tragedy, a window of opportunity has opened for a sort of civic renewal that occurs only once or twice a century. And yet, though the crisis revealed and replenished the wells of solidarity in American communities, those wells so far remain untapped. At least, this is what that gap between attitudes and behavior suggests. Civic solidarity is what Albert Hirschman called a "moral resource"--distinctive in that, unlike a material resource, it increases with use and diminishes with disuse. Changes in attitude alone, no matter how promising, do not constitute civic renewal."
"Americans today, our surveys suggest, are more open than ever to the idea that people of all backgrounds should be full members of our national community. Progressives should work to translate that national mood into concrete policy initiatives that bridge the ethnic and class cleavages in our increasingly multicultural society."
<http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/3/putnam-r.html>http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/3/putnam-r.html