If you were connected to the enterprise of public media circa 2001 (I believe we unabashedly called it "public broadcasting" back then), you may recall a great deal of fuss, however fleeting, made about the notion of Social Capital, as explained and espoused by Robert D. Putnam in his book Bowling Alone.
I was reminded of this a few months ago by a post Neal Hecker made to his blog on the PMD. Neal wrote about WPBT's work with The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation. This is part of the CPB funded Community Engagement Initiative that involves another half dozen or so stations that, according to CPB's business plan for this fiscal year, are being helped to "identify novel approaches for increasing their impact on community life."
The endeavor seems to have a social capital flavor to it, so it may be of interest to people involved in the initiative or who know of it (or who, like me, remember those adrenalin-paced forays into this territory in those heady days of 2001) to know that last year Putnam published a new and somewhat controversial article, which can be read as HTML or download in PDF format by selecting the links to the right on this page.
It's a relatively long but worthwhile read. If you bite, feel free to take cues on where to skip a bit from SSIR opinion blogger Albert Ruesga who wisely warns that "a dicey section on the multivariate analysis of data to control for the effect of certain variables" may not be "accessible to non-experts."
The controversial part of Putnam's conclusions in the article is that increasing ethnic diversity in most advanced countries, at least in the short term, "reduces social solidarity and social capital." Some misinterpretations of Putnam's points have angered academia's PC liberals and excited isolationist conservatives, but both camps are drawing their conclusions from the mere surface of the article (a risk which Putnam outlines toward the end).
A friend and former CPB colleague of mine told me that he had not read Putnam's article but had read several articles about the article. Ruesga predicts in his blog that the majority of people who know of the article have fallen into this same trap. So consider printing the PDF and putting it on your "to read" stack for this Sunday.
The increased ethnic diversity in this country can only continue to have impact on public media institutions and public media can perhaps play yet to be discovered roles in Putnam's ultimately optimistic view of our ability to "redraw more inclusive lines of social identity."
Happy reading!
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