Robert Putnam
| Robert D. Putnam | |
|---|---|
Putnam in 2006
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|
| Born |
Robert David Putnam January 9, 1941 Rochester, New York |
| Alma mater |
Yale University Swarthmore College |
| Spouse(s) | Rosemary |
| Institutions |
Harvard University University of Michigan |
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Main interests
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Political science |
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Notable ideas
|
Bowling Alone |
Robert David Putnam (born January 9, 1941) is a political scientist and Malkin Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is also currently serving as Distinguished Visiting Professor at Aarhus University in Denmark, and was formerly a visiting professor and director of the Manchester Graduate Summer Programme in Social Change, University of Manchester (UK). Putnam developed the influential two-level game theory that assumes international agreements will only be successfully brokered if they also result in domestic benefits. His most famous (and controversial) work, Bowling Alone, argues that the United States has undergone an unprecedented collapse in civic, social, associational, and political life (social capital) since the 1960s, with serious negative consequences. In 2010, he co-published an article in which he noted that the trend had moved the other way; he continued to advocate a push towards more social capital but he felt his famous thesis ("Americans are now bowling alone") was no longer true. In March 2015, he published a book called Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis that looked at issues of inequality of opportunity in the US.
Putnam was born in 1941 in Rochester, New York, and grew up in Port Clinton, Ohio, where he participated in a competitive bowling league as a teenager. Putnam graduated from Swarthmore College in 1963 where he won a Fulbright Fellowship to study at Balliol College, Oxford, and went on to earn master's and doctorate degrees from Yale University, the latter in 1970. He taught at the University of Michigan until going to Harvard in 1979, where he has held a variety of positions, including Dean of the Kennedy School, and is currently the Malkin Professor of Public Policy. Putnam was raised as a religiously observant Methodist. In 1963, Putnam married his wife Rosemary, a special education teacher and French horn player. Around the time of his marriage, he converted to Judaism, his wife's religion.
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