A promise is a gift and a gift is a symbol of a social relationship. The donor is aware that it creates a link and the recipient identifies it as a mutual bond. A gift, however, is tangible and a prom...
Infrastructure is not a term conventionally used to describe the underpinnings of social life. But this is a consequential oversight, because the built environment -- and not just cultural preferences...
Alexis de Tocqueville admired the laws that formally established America's democratic order, but he argued that voluntary organizations were the real source of the nation's robust civic life. John Dew...
For most of us, Facebook friends and Instagram followers are supplements to -- not surrogates for -- our social lives. As meaningful as the friendships we establish online can be, most of us are unsat...
What counts as social infrastructure? I define it capaciously. Public institutions such as libraries, schools, playgrounds, parks, athletic fields, and swimming pools are vital parts of the social inf...