Word: stengel
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...Richard Stengel...
...were delighted to read Richard Stengel's reply [NATION, July 22] to Robert Putnam's 1995 essay "Bowling Alone," in which Putnam asserted that Americans' traditional engagement in civic activities has been in a 25-year decline. We couldn't agree more with Stengel! There is, indeed, a hidden revolution of citizen involvement that's not reflected in the declining membership rolls of traditional civic groups. But the media typically fail to report on the new forms of civic participation that contradict Putnam's notion of waning social capital. A vast universe of American public life, including citizen-based initiatives...
...Stengel wrote, "many associations--gated suburbs and business-improvement districts, known as BIDS (which have their own police forces)--are driven in some respects by self-concerned fear." Then he goes on to include the Viper militia in the same paragraph! As former chairman of New York City's Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, I spent 10 years retrieving that seven-acre park from drug dealers. Today it gives pleasure to thousands who previously avoided it. Without a bid this would not have been possible. The major BIDS in the New York area have vastly improved the quality of life here...
...Stengel reveals the shallow roots of his argument that civil engagement is alive and well in this country when he cites Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow's suggestion that we are eschewing large, bureaucratic organizations for smaller, flexible ones that "fit our life-style." This sounds more like convenience-store values for those who can't be bothered with deep commitment. Stengel's apologist thinking is especially disturbing in the context of a society in which the middle and lower classes are rapidly losing ground while a small group of the economically elite amasses more and more of the nation...
...RICHARD STENGEL, after working at TIME as a staff writer and associate editor, became an occasional contributor in 1989. It was a happy accommodation that gave us the benefit of his talents while freeing him for larger projects--like the two-year collaboration with Nelson Mandela that produced Mandela's 1994 autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. Now Stengel is back as a senior writer, traveling with the presidential candidates and taking the nation's pulse. This week's contribution: a retort to Robert Putnam's 1995 essay "Bowling Alone" called "Bowling Together." But Stengel hasn't lost his appetite...