I think of Robert Putnam as the poet of America’s great genius — our civil society.
It’s not common to speak of social scientists, particularly Harvard academics, as poets. Putnam, however, qualifies not only because his writing is a joy to read (something one does not often say about academics) but also because he does what great poets do: He makes the unseen seen, invests it with significance, and calls upon us to cherish and strengthen it.
How many of us read his Bowling Alone when it was published at the start of the century and thought: I had no idea how much my book club or Cub Scout troop mattered to America.
Or American Grace, his analysis with David Campbell of how religion unites and divides us, and recognized that we each had a “Pal Al” in our life: someone from a different faith that we got to know through a common activity like beekeeping (an example from that book) and through that process changed our previously negative view of that person’s religion into a positive view.
Or the long essay “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the 21st Century” and recognized: It’s true, I say that I like diversity, but as my neighborhood has gotten more diverse, I actually go out less, and I’m involved in fewer civic activities. If that diversity-brings-out-the-turtle-in-us pattern holds across the nation, it has serious implications for our civil society.
This is the great genius of Robert Putnam: to illuminate the hidden facts of our everyday lives and demonstrate how they are part of national patterns with dramatic stakes. The importance of both bonded social capital (the benefit that specific identity communities generate) and bridged social capital (the benefit that relationships across identity generate). The outsize contributions that faith communities make to our civil society. The college degree as the separating fact in American life. The devastating impact that the erosion of free afterschool activities has on the lives of poor and working-class kids.
In so many ways, the organization I lead, Interfaith America, is based on Putnam’s work and insights.
I often begin my speeches by saying, “Imagine if all the institutions in your city that were founded by faith communities disappeared overnight. Let’s take a walk in the morning and see what’s gone. Note: It’s not just the churches, synagogues, and mosques. It’s also the hospitals, universities, and social service agencies.”
Straight Putnam.
I’ve been in the nonprofit world since the late 1990s, and for most of my career, Robert Putnam was easily one of the most referenced names in social change circles.
One of the great conundrums of our era is that the particular set of social problems we face — loneliness, toxic polarization, identity-based bias, the fraying of social bonds, the erosion of civic institutions, the separation of social classes, the absence of national solidarity — these are precisely the issues that Putnam has been writing about for decades, and yet it seems like no one in social change circles is talking about Putnam these days.
Time to get our act together, people.
I’m hoping that the spotlight that the Chronicle is rightfully shining on Robert Putnam returns his work to the center of our conversations — and that we don’t just reference his insights but act on them.
The treasure of our civil society hangs in the balance.
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