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Illuminates broadly the relationship between active democratic citizenship and institutions conditions. It draws in particular on Tocqueville's comparison between the conditions in USA and France. Other contributors to the institutionalist‐cum‐republican tradition, such as Rousseau, Mill, Kornhauser, and Putnam are presented.

This chapter studies the central argument of Robert Putnam that applies to civic engagement in Japan. The discussion also includes two important factors that have previously been neglected, namely the Internet and gender. It presents a clearer argument on how the various kinds of Internet use have different kinds of effects. It also furthers the analysis of gender differences.

This concluding chapter returns to the discussion of Tocqueville in order to emphasize the importance of both encouraging religion in public life and protecting against the tyranny of a majority. Robert Putnam’s analysis of social capital, including the distinction between its bridging and bonding forms, helps clarify the different roles that faith can play in civic and political life amid American religious diversity. The chapter suggests ten initiatives for American religion and politics that can help leaders carry out a vision for society that reflects convivencia and build social crossroads and connectors for a diverse and devout nation.

This chapter critically examines the belief that commonality generates affective ties between citizens in democracy. That is, democratic theorists often argue that people care more for those who share some thing in common with them, and less for those who do not. Through a reading of Robert Putnam, this chapter reveals a tension that pervades thinking about diversity in democracy between this causal belief that commonality produces attachment, and the social constructionist faith that theorists can delineate new forms of commonality that could then produce the desired solidarity. Theorists are reluctant to fully embrace the constructionist view, however, because the causal logic of commonality offers a neat, conceptual solution to two vexing problems: the affective deficit of the modern state, and the challenge of predicting how plural subjects will behave in the future. Yet these are problems that cannot be resolved in a world characterized by plurality. So theorists should more fully embrace the idea that affect is the product of human world-building activity. Insofar as people generate solidarities, rather than are caused by the presence of commonality to feel attachment, solidarity is a matter for which humans can and should take political responsibility.

This chapter explores ideological, normative, and empirical claims about social cohesion that have a bearing on Irish responses to immigration. It draws on Emile Durkheim's classic sociological account of social cohesion to examine some of the underlying presumptions that have come to be influential in the Irish case. An influential governance security perspective worked to circumscribe state commitments to integration. The subtext here was the implicit definition of social cohesion in terms of the existing bounded community; its underlying normative presumptions are examined using Durkheim's concept of the ‘social fact’. The second proposition considered here is Robert Putnam's assertion that immigration undermines social cohesion. This chapter also discusses the findings of a study which compared ‘socially included’ immigrants with relatively low levels of social capital but high levels of human capital with ‘socially excluded’ Irish neighbours who nevertheless had high levels of social capital. Interpretations of the challenge to social cohesion depend on whether this is defined in terms of social capital (trust and reciprocity) or social inclusion (socio-economic and human capital terms).

Chapters 3 and 4 four set out the findings of four case studies in two different governorates, Kafr al-Sheikh and Fayoum, covering two periods: the 1950s and 1960s, and the 1970s onward. They described and analyzed similar village fields and contrasting irrigation water management fields. This chapter draws on this material to examine the role played by social capital in influencing the functioning of water users' organizations (WUOs). First, it sets out the findings from using the developed framework in the four case study areas. This is followed by a discussion, based on these findings, of the limitations of Putnam's theory and approach in explaining the impact of social capital on the functioning of WUOs. Next, it discusses the enhancements of the conceptual framework based on the empirical findings and their theoretical implications. Finally, the chapter looks at how the framework can be generalized.

Sense of community is a feeling of belonging, of being able to influence others, of shared history and emotional connections, and that one’s needs are being met within a particular community. Where there is a strong sense of community, people are more likely to cooperate with neighbors to improve their surroundings. Social capital refers to the presence of social networks and trust, along with volunteering or civic participation. When communities have social capital, people are more likely to join together to take action to benefit their community. Collective efficacy is the willingness of people to intervene for the common good. A neighborhood demonstrates collective efficacy when people are willing to pick up litter, call out kids who are skipping school or harassing others, or plant a community garden on a vacant lot. Studies have shown that neighborhoods that demonstrate collective efficacy have lower crime rates. Civic ecology practices demonstrate collective efficacy, or willingness to intervene for the common good. In a feedback process, civic ecology practices also depend on the presence of a sense of community and social capital and may build greater sense of community and social capital.

This chapter examines the role of voluntary organisations in generating social capital in city politics in Great Britain. It discusses the concept of social capital as developed by Robert Putnam, and stresses the need for social-capital research to consider the relations between associations and organisations and the role of corporate actors. The findings reveal that social capital can be most easily created in conditions where there is shared identity among those constructing the relationship, and that there is a distributional quality to social capital.

This chapter traces the history of academic study of the relationship between politics and popular culture. This history has a variety of sources. These include Plato’s warnings about the ill effects of music to their more modern equivalent in the work of the Frankfurt School. It also traces the counter tradition that derives from the work of FR Leavis, Raymond Williams and Richard Hoggart, and which – under the influence of Stuart Hall – issues in the subcultural approach. It brings this history up-to-date by way of the different approaches associated with Lawrence Grossberg, Robert Putnam and Liesbet van Zoonen and with social movement theory more generally.

This chapter provides evidence from San Francisco disputing the premise of Robert Putnam's critically acclaimed book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, that social capital, especially the bridging variety, has declined all over the United States. It presents evidence that describes how the Filipino migrants' adaptive spirit, mediated through San Francisco churches, allows them to balance the competing social and civic responsibilities of new migrants, which include religious obligations and civic duties in both the United States and the Philippines. It uses two bayanihan case studies to illuminate more clearly how the adaptive spirits (or esprit de corps) of migrant faithful at Saint Patrick's Catholic Church in San Francisco and the Iglesia ni Cristo in Daly City are cultivated and channeled for the betterment of American society.

Chapter 1 answers the how much question of American generosity and describes participation rates in nine different forms of generous behaviors. Drawing on a wealth of social science literature ranging from Alexis de Tocqueville to Robert Putnam, this chapter finds somewhat low levels of voluntary participation in the United States today. Snapshots of American generosity are taken across different forms of giving behaviors and reveal a fairly dim picture when examining any one form at a time. The first set of explanations for giving trends is introduced by examining how access to resources colors the generosity picture. While the chapter confirms that resources do matter, it also shows that they do not fully explain giving behaviors.