Civic Engagement

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how the rules of American social engagement come into play, not simply on a personal level, but are codified and defined on multiple levels. Through a review of the books, "Bowling Alone" by Robert B, Putnam, William K. Tabb's "Unequal Partners", and Alan Dawley's "Changing the World", it looks at how the changing and evolving rules of social engagement in America invariably relate to how, as a society, a complex nation such as America is constructed on a socially stratified level. It also explores how America functions on a globally stratified level among other nation states in a social and civic fashion and discusses how, although social engagement with one?s peers, with one?s fellow nationals, and with one?s fellow human beings may have grown increasingly atomized and absent in recent years, it does not mean such laws have been erased.

From the Paper:

"All authors see a fundamental lacking in the way that Americans relate to other Americans, how America relates to the world community, and how America perceives its political responsibility to those in need within its borders and abroad. However, all three authors, because of the different paradigms they use to view this lacking of civic engagement, offer quite different solutions. Putman takes a sociological paradigm to examine American post-war Baby Boon social trends, Tabb uses the environmentalist and international relations paradigm of America's location in a global society, and Dawley takes the historian's point of view, contrasting the Progressive movement of the turn of the century with American social movements today, stressing the contemporary lack of political movements to cohere and achieve similarly internationalist and civic political ends."

More papers on Civic Engagement:

• Research Paper # 100436 : "Civic Engagement"
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• Analytical Essay # 67384 : "America's Civic Disengagement"

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