The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

On death and dying

The term "common-property resource" is an example of a term repeatedly used to refer to property owned by a government or by no one. It is also used for property owned by a community of resource users. Such usage leads to confusion in scientific study and policy analysis. In this paper we develop a conceptual schema for arraying property-rights regimes that distinguishes among diverse bundles of rights ranging from authorized user, to claimant, to proprietor, and to owner. We apply this conceptual schema to analyze findings from a variety of empirical settings including the Maine lobster industry.

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Property rights regimes and natural resources: A conceptual analysis

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

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Social capital: a theory of social structure and action

The Political Ecology of Health: Perceptions of Environment, Economy, Health and Well-Being Among 'Namgis First Nation

While the "transition to parenthood" has now received considerable attention from social scientists, the "transition to nonparenthood" experienced by infertile couples who are involuntarily childless has received little consideration. This article provides a theoretical framework for understanding the reality reconstructions, identity transformations, and role readjustments that must be made by involuntarily childless couples who are unable to make the transition to parenthood as they had anticipated.

Infertility and Involuntary Childlessness: The Transition to Nonparenthood

This paper reverses the common emphasis in the literature on public understanding of science by examining “experts’ understanding of the public.” This research uses the case of aquaculture in Canad...

Experts’ understanding of the public: knowledge control in a risk controversy

The Creation of Regional Dependency

This paper compares paths to employment (job-finding) in prosperous cities and economically-stressed rural communities in Canada Since the pioneering work of Mark Granovetter (1973; 1974), sociolo

Social capital, labour markets, and job-finding in urban and rural regions: comparing paths to employment in prosperous cities and stressed rural communities in Canada.

Ralph Matthews

Papers

The Political Ecology of Health: Perceptions of Environment, Economy, Health and Well-Being Among 'Namgis First Nation

Infertility and Involuntary Childlessness: The Transition to Nonparenthood

Experts’ understanding of the public: knowledge control in a risk controversy

The Creation of Regional Dependency

Social capital, labour markets, and job-finding in urban and rural regions: comparing paths to employment in prosperous cities and stressed rural communities in Canada.