''Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community'' is a 2000 nonfiction book by
Robert D. Putnam
Robert David Putnam (born 1941) is an American political scientist specializing in comparative politics. He is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government. Putnam devel ...
. It was developed from his 1995 essay entitled "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital". Putnam surveys the decline of
social capital
Social capital is "the networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively". It involves the effective functioning of social groups through interpersonal relationships ...
in the United States since 1950. He has described the reduction in all the forms of in-person social intercourse upon which Americans used to found, educate, and enrich the fabric of their social lives. He argues that this undermines the active
civic engagement
Civic engagement or civic participation is any individual or group activity addressing issues of public concern. Civic engagement includes communities working together or individuals working alone in both political and non-political actions to ...
which a strong
democracy
Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation (" direct democracy"), or to choose gov ...
requires from its citizens.
Contents
Putnam discussed ways in which Americans disengaged from political involvement, including decreased voter turnout, attendance at public meetings, service on committees, and work with political parties. Putnam also cited Americans' growing distrust in their government. Putnam accepted the possibility that this lack of trust could be attributed to "the long litany of political tragedies and scandals since the 1960s",
but believed that this explanation was limited when viewing it alongside other "trends in civic engagement of a wider sort".
[
Putnam noted the aggregate loss in membership and number of volunteers in many existing ]civic organization
Civic engagement or civic participation is any individual or group activity addressing issues of public concern. Civic engagement includes communities working together or individuals working alone in both political and non-political actions to ...
s such as religious groups (Knights of Columbus
The Knights of Columbus (K of C) is a global Catholic fraternal service order founded by Michael J. McGivney on March 29, 1882. Membership is limited to practicing Catholic men. It is led by Patrick E. Kelly, the order's 14th Supreme Knight. ...
, B'nai Brith
B'nai B'rith International (, from he, בְּנֵי בְּרִית, translit=b'né brit, lit=Children of the Covenant) is a Jewish service organization. B'nai B'rith states that it is committed to the security and continuity of the Jewish peopl ...
, etc.), labor unions, parent–teacher association
A parent–teacher association/organization (PTA/PTO), parent-teacher-friend association (PTFA), or parent–teacher–student association (PTSA) is a formal organization composed of parents, teachers and staff that is intended to facilitate parent ...
s, Federation of Women's Clubs, League of Women Voters
The League of Women Voters (LWV or the League) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan political organization in the United States. Founded in 1920, its ongoing major activities include registering voters, providing voter information, and advocating for vot ...
, military veterans' organizations, volunteers with Boy Scouts
Boy Scouts may refer to:
* Boy Scout, a participant in the Boy Scout Movement.
* Scouting, also known as the Boy Scout Movement.
* An organisation in the Scouting Movement, although many of these organizations also have female members. There are ...
and the Red Cross
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million Volunteering, volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure re ...
, and fraternal organizations (Lions Clubs
The International Association of Lions Clubs, more commonly known as Lions Clubs International, is an international non-political service organization established originally in 1916 in Chicago, Illinois, by Melvin Jones. It is now headquarte ...
, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks
The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (BPOE; also often known as the Elks Lodge or simply The Elks) is an American fraternal order founded in 1868, originally as a social club in New York City.
History
The Elks began in 1868 as a soci ...
, United States Junior Chamber
The United States Junior Chamber, also known as the Jaycees, JCs or JCI USA, is a leadership training, service organization and civic organization for people between the ages of 18 and 40. It is a branch of Junior Chamber International (JCI ...
, Freemasonry
Freemasonry or Masonry refers to fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local guilds of stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities ...
, Rotary, Kiwanis
Kiwanis International ( ) is an international service club founded in 1915 in Detroit, Michigan. It is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States, and is found in more than 80 nations and geographic areas. Since 1987, the organizatio ...
, etc.).[ Putnam used bowling as an example to illustrate this; although the number of people who bowled had increased in the last 20 years, the number of people who bowled in leagues had decreased. If people bowled alone, they did not participate in the social interaction and civic discussions that might occur in a league environment.][
]
Putnam cites data from the General Social Survey
The General Social Survey (GSS) is a sociological survey created and regularly collected since 1972 by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. It is funded by the National Science Foundation. The GSS collects informati ...
that showed an aggregate decline in membership of traditional civic organizations, supporting his thesis that U.S. social capital had declined. He noted that some organizations had grown, such as the American Association of Retired Persons
AARP (formerly called the American Association of Retired Persons) is an interest group in the United States focusing on issues affecting those over the age of fifty. The organization said it had more than 38 million members in 2018. The magazi ...
, the Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is an environmental organization with chapters in all 50 United States, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by Scottish-American preservationist John Muir, who be ...
, and a plethora of mass-member activist groups. But he said that these groups did not tend to foster face-to-face interaction, and were the type where "the only act of membership consists in writing a check for dues or perhaps occasionally reading a newsletter."[ He also drew a distinction between two different types of social capital: a "bonding" type (which occurs within a demographic group) and a "bridging" type (which unites people from different groups).
He then asked: "Why is US social capital eroding?" and discussed several possible causes.][ He believed that the "movement of women into the workforce"][ and other demographic changes had an impact on the number of individuals engaging in civic associations. He also discussed the "re-potting hypothesis", that people become less engaged when they frequently move towns, but found that Americans actually moved towns less frequently than in previous decades.][ He did suggest that ]suburbanization
Suburbanization is a population shift from central urban areas into suburbs, resulting in the formation of (sub)urban sprawl. As a consequence of the movement of households and businesses out of the city centers, low-density, peripheral urba ...
, economics and time pressures had some effect, though he noted that average working hours had shortened. He concluded the main cause was technology "individualizing" people's leisure time via television and the Internet, suspecting that "virtual reality
Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), educ ...
helmets" would carry this further in the future.[
He estimated that the fall-off in civic engagement after 1965 was 10% due to pressure of work and double-career families, 10% to suburbanisation and commuting, 25% to the individualisation of media (television), and 50% to ‘generational change’. 5% remained unexplained.
Putnam suggested closer studies of which forms of associations could create the greatest social capital, and how various aspects of technology, changes in social equality, and public policy affect social capital.][ He closed by emphasizing the importance of discovering how the United States could reverse the trend of social capital decay.][
]
Reception
A review in ''Kirkus Reviews
''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fic ...
'' praised the book for being understandable for non-academic readers, and said that overall it was an "exhaustive and carefully argued study." ''The Economist
''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Econo ...
'' called it "a prodigious achievement." C. S. Fischer, a sociology professor from the University of California
The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...
, gave a positive review. Although he criticized a few of Putnam's interpretations of the data and felt that "social capital
Capital may refer to:
Common uses
* Capital city, a municipality of primary status
** List of national capital cities
* Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences
* Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used f ...
" was an awkward metaphor, he nevertheless called it "a 10-pin strike, a major contribution to study of social networks and social cohesion" with particular praise for its wide use of data.
Everett Carll Ladd
Everett Carll Ladd Jr. (September 24, 1937 December 8, 1999) was an American political scientist based at the University of Connecticut. He was best known for his analysis and collection of public opinion polls. He directed the Roper Center for ...
claimed that Putnam completely ignored existing field studies, most notably the landmark sociological Middletown studies
The Middletown studies were sociological case studies of the white residents of the city of Muncie in Indiana initially conducted by Robert Staughton Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, husband-and-wife sociologists. The Lynds' findings were detailed in ...
, which during the 1920s raised the same concerns he does today, except the technology being attacked as promoting isolation was radio instead of television and video games.
Other critics questioned Putnam's major finding—that civic participation has been declining. Journalist Nicholas Lemann
Nicholas Berthelot Lemann is an American writer and academic, the Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor of Journalism and Dean Emeritus of the Faculty of Journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He has be ...
proposed that rather than declining, civic activity in the US had assumed different forms. While bowling leagues and many other organizations had declined, others like youth soccer leagues had grown. He also points out that the thesis of ''Bowling Alone'' contradicts an implicit assumption of Putnam's previous book ''Making Democracy Work
''Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy'' () is a 1993 book written by Robert D. Putnam (with Robert Leonardi and Raffaella Y. Nanetti). Published by Princeton University Press, the book's central thesis is that social capital ...
'' – that a tradition of civic engagement is incredibly durable over time.
In their 2017 book ''One Nation After Trump'', Thomas E. Mann
Thomas E. Mann (born September 10, 1944) is the W. Averell Harriman Chair and a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, , Norm Ornstein and E. J. Dionne wrote that the decline of social and civic groups that Putnam documented was a factor in the election of Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...
as "many rallied to him out of a yearning for forms of community and solidarity that they sense have been lost."
Publication data
*
See also
* Community building
Community building is a field of practices directed toward the creation or enhancement of community among individuals within a regional area (such as a neighborhood) or with a common need or interest. It is often encompassed under the fields of c ...
* Saguaro Seminar
''Better Together: Restoring the American Community'' is both a book and website published as an initiative of the Saguaro Seminar conducted at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. The initiative is aimed at facilitating ra ...
* Society of the United States
The society of the United States is based on Western culture, and has been developing since long before the United States became a country with its own unique social and cultural characteristics such as dialect, music, arts, social habits, ...
References
External links
*
* {{Cite journal , doi= 10.1002/pam.1035 , title= Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community , journal= Journal of Policy Analysis and Management , volume= 20 , issue= 4 , pages= 788–790 , date= 2001 , last1= Galston , first1= W. A. , series= Book reviews , editor-first1= Jennifer , editor-last1= Hochschild
Presentation by Putnam on ''Bowling Alone'', June 7, 2000
C-SPAN
Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN ) is an American cable and satellite television network that was created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises many proceedings of the United States ...
''Booknotes'' interview with Putnam on ''Bowling Alone'', December 24, 2000
C-SPAN
Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN ) is an American cable and satellite television network that was created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises many proceedings of the United States ...
2000 non-fiction books
Sociology books
Community building
Metaphors referring to sport