Bowling Alone Author to Speak at Keene State

KEENE, N.H. 3/10/02 In his most recent book, Bowling Alone, sociologist and author Robert Putnam warns that Americans stock of social capital has plummeted, impoverishing lives and communities. Putnam, the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University, will speak at the 13th annual Mason Library Lecture at Keene State College on Thursday, April 4, at 8 p.m., in the Mabel Brown Room of the Student Center.

Putnam will present Community in America Before and After 9/11. In his address, Putnam will reexamine his assertions about American community in Bowling Alone in light of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Putnam is widely known for his research and writing about how Americans have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and their democratic structures. In Bowling Alone, published in 2000, Putnam described how Americans have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and democratic structures and how Americans may reconnect with each other. Putnam draws on evidence, which includes nearly 500,000 interviews from the last quarter century, to show that Americans sign fewer petitions, belong to fewer organizations, know their neighbors less, meet with friends less frequently, and even socialize with their own families less often.

Putnam is the author of several other books, including Disaffected Democracies: Whats Troubling the Trilateral Countries?, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, and Double-Edged Diplomacy: International Bargaining and Domestic Politics. Dr. Putnam has taught at the University of Michigan and served on the staff of the National Security Council. He lives in Lexington, Mass., and Jaffrey, N.H.