When was the America’s Gilded Age?

What changed economically, technologically and socially during that time period?

What kind of politics characterized the Gilded Age?
 
 

When was the Progressive Era?
 

What changed during the Progressive Era?
 
 
 
 
 

What similarities are there between the Gilded Age and today?
 
 
 
 

What would a contemporary parallel to the Progressive Era look like?
 

What kinds of issues should it confront?
 

Through what means??
 
 

*Putnams stresses we need both individual and institutional change

i.e., micro and macro change; bottom-up and top-down strategies
 
 
 

Note Putnam writes that a “palpable national crisis, like war or depression or natural disaster” or other galvanizing crisis could (re)create social capital for “better and for worse”
 

Consider 9/11 as such a galvanizing crisis
What impact did it have on American social capital?

On our view of our economy and our politics?
 
 

Putnam’s list:
1.  youth and education
esp. civic education, service learning!!

What is the 21st Century equivalent of Scouting going to be?
 

2.  making work more family-friendly and community-congenial

3.  stop the sprawl
the New Urbanism** - how about here??

4. faith-based communities
becoming more deeply engaged in our own and at the same time more tolerant of others

5.  reversing the privatization of leisure time
think creatively about how to use electronic entertainment and communication to reinforce or resurrect community rather than undermine it

6.  using the arts, sports to create more bridging social capital, more interaction among different people

here??