Robert D. Putnam

Social capital has become one of the most active areas of analysis and debate in the social sciences over time. Robert D. Putnam had released his highly influential book, Bowling Alone: The collapse and Revival of American Community. Putnam interests the readers by informing them the ways that the United States has withdrawn from civic engagement over a period of time. And this decline has crippled the civil society. Furthermore, He promotes that citizens take an interest in securing and reestablishing their stock of social capital. The research he presents indicates he is correct to certain extent in his statement that Americans have disconnected civically. Putnam has developed a common framework for understanding this phenomenon and refers…

Bowling alone by Robert Putnam is primarily summarized as our disengagement from the involvement in our communities. Putnam describes to the reader a decline in the civic engagement initially through our politics, particularly in the decline in “turnout [of] national elections over the last three decades,” “attendance [of] a public meeting on town or school affairs,” and “attending a political rally or speech, serving on a committee of some local organization, and working for a political party.”…

In this modern and industrialized environment, us humans lack the ability to connect and participate within our society. Without the involvement of us Americans in our community, there is a decline in our social capital. Social capital refers the condition of relationships among the people who live and work in a particular society enabling that society to work effectively. In Robert D. Putnam's research analysis "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Capital", Putnam argues as to why there is a…

Zhiyuan Li Philosophy 3000 In his paper Realism and Skepticism: Brains in a Vat Revisited, Graeme Forbes tries to articulate Putnam’s brains in a vat (BIV) argument. According to Forbes (1995), in order for a normally embodied thinker to think about concepts such as brain, in and vat, she “must somehow be informationally linked to” instances of those concepts (206). However, Forbes does not consider (and it seems to me that he does not think he needs to consider) what particular sorts of…

impossible to draw any sort of conclusions about the outside world when our data received from it changes every moment. However, contrary to Moore’s beliefs, I would suggest that humans are still capable of outward knowledge. Although our understanding of the outside world is driven by electrical stimuli within the brain, this electrical stimulus is not random. The brain simply reacts to the influences within the world, and sends signals accordingly. Of course, to play devil’s advocate, there…

an early example shaker culture when Mr. Tanner gives young Robert the pig for help and apron with the calving. Mr. Haven and Robert are fixing the fence when Mr. Tanner brings the pig Roberts father states about accepting the pig “we thank you brother Tanner but it’s not the shaker way to take frills for being neighborly” (P 21). I think this shows that in the shaker culture they feel that is not right to accept a gift or payment for doing the right thing in any given situation are helping out…

The perspective of a work of literature changes from the first time you set your eyes on it. My point of view of the poem Porphyria’s Lover by Robert Browning changed drastically from the beginning of this research project till now. As I looked into information over this poem and different aspects about it, I began to have more of an open mind towards it and understand the true meaning behind it. I learned that poetry has more to it that just the words that were printed on the page. It allowed…

in the leadership’s hands than members of the House making it acceptable for Senate to serve longer terms in order to cater to the large and diverse constituencies. Term limits are a necessary evil that we need to address now. They are evil not in a way that harms the democratic process, rather evil because it would require change and most often people are highly adverted to change. Ironic as it may be, in order to see a change in our government we first need to make a larger change that will…

The Matrix, on the other hand, is more than just a thought experiment. It is a narrative that is judged aesthetically, and as such its success requires that its creators produce something that will captivate and engage an audience. Carroll has asserted that, narratives, far from being complete, have gaps which need to be filled by the audience. That is, creators of narratives do not spell-out every detail of the narrative, instead, narratives rely on the elicitation of moral emotions from an…

grand jury, jury, double jeopardy, and collateral estoppel, immunity from prosecution, eminent domain, takings, and lastly territorial jurisdiction. Nevertheless, this investigation will cover the basic and many varied interpretations of double jeopardy and how they applied to the local case of Robert Nicholas Angleton. Double jeopardy is within the United States Constitutions Fifth Amendment, “The State with all its…