The Collaborative Leadership Fieldbook
Chapter One
AMERICA'S CIVIC CHALLENGES
For more than a decade, political scientists and commentators have argued
about the health of the civic culture or civil society in the United States. To
put these disputes to rest, Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam set out to
prove in his recent book, Bowling Alone (2000), that the quality and kinds of civic
engagement in the United States have declined substantially over several decades.
An extensive search of trends in church attendance, voting rates, union membership,
volunteerism, philanthropy, and other areas leads him to conclude that
Americans are more isolated and less capable of engaging constructively on public
concerns than at any other time in the past fifty years.
Although his evidence is exhaustive and, for many readers, conclusive, Putnam
has critics. Some accept his evidence as far as it goes but think he overlooks
the phenomenal growth in the number of nonprofit organizations and associations.
New and different kinds of association ... read full excerpt from The Collaborative Leadership Fieldbook ebook
