Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
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Once we bowled in leagues, usually after work; but no longer. This seemingly tiny phenomenon symbolizes a significant social change that Robert Putnam has identified and describes in this brilliant volume, Bowling Alone.
Drawing on vast new data from the Roper Social and Political Trends and the DDB Needham Life Style — surveys that report in detail on Americans’ changing behavior over the past twenty-five years — Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from family tree, friends, neighbors, and social structures, whether the PTA, church, recreation clubs, political parties, or bowling leagues. Our shrinking access to the “social capital” that is the reward of communal activity and community sharing is a serious threat to our civic and personal health.
Putnam’s groundbreaking work shows how social bonds are the most powerful judge of life satisfaction. For example, he reports that getting married is the equivalent of quadrupling your income and attending a club meeting regularly is the equivalent of doubling your income. The loss of social capital is felt in critical ways: Communities with less social capital have lower educational performance and more teen pregnancy, child suicide, low birth weight, and prenatal mortality. Social capital is also a strong judge of crime excise and additional measures of neighborhood quality of life, as it is of our health: In quantitative terms, if you both smoke and belong to no groups, it’s a close call as to which is the riskier behavior.
A hundred years ago, at the turn of the last century, America’s stock of social capital was at an ebb, cut-rate by urbanization, industrialization, and vast immigration that uprooted Americans from their friends, social institutions, and families, a situation similar to today’s. Faced with this challenge, the country righted itself. Within a few decades, a range of organizations was made, from the Red Cross, Boy Scouts, and YWCA to Hadassah and the Knights of Columbus and the Urban League. With these and many more cooperative societies we rebuilt our social capital.
We can learn from the experience of persons decades, Putnam writes, as we work to rebuild our eroded social capital. It won’t take place lacking the concerted creativity and energy of Americans nationwide.
Like defining works from the past that have endured — such as The Lonely Crowd and The Affluent Society — and like C. Wright Mills, Richard Hofstadter, Betty Friedan, David Riesman, Jane Jacobs, Rachel Carson, and Theodore Roszak, Putnam has identified a central crisis at the heart of our society and suggests what we can do.Amazon.com Review
Few people outside certain scholarly circles had heard the name Robert D. Putnam before 1995. But then this self-described “obscure literary” hit a nerve with a journal article called “Bowling Alone.” Suddenly he establish himself invited to Camp David, his picture in People magazine, and his thesis at the center of a raging debate. In a nutshell, he argued that civil society was breaking down as Americans became more disconnected from their families, neighbors, communities, and the republic itself. The organizations that gave life to democracy were fraying. Bowling became his driving metaphor. Years ago, he wrote, thousands of people belonged to bowling leagues. Today, but, they’re more likely to bowl alone:
Television, two-career families, suburban sprawl, generational changes in values–these and additional changes in American society have meant that fewer and fewer of us find that the League of Women Voters, or the United Way, or the Shriners, or the monthly bridge club, or even a Sunday picnic with friends fits the way we have come to live. Our growing social-capital deficit threatens educational performance, safe neighborhoods, equitable tax collection, democratic responsiveness, everyday honesty, and even our health and happiness.
The conclusions reached in the book Bowling Alone rest on a mountain of data gathered by Putnam and a team of researchers since his original essay appeared. Its breadth of information is astounding–yes, he really has statistics showing people are less likely to take Sunday picnics nowadays. Dozens of charts and graphs track everything from trends in PTA participation to the number of times Americans say they give “the finger” to additional drivers each year. If nothing else, Bowling Alone is a fascinating collection of factoids. Yet it does seem to provide an explanation for why “we tell pollsters that we wish we lived in a more civil, more trustworthy, more collectively caring community.” What’s more, writes Putnam, “Americans are right that the bonds of our communities have withered, and we are right to dread that this transformation has very real costs.” Putnam takes a stab at suggesting how things might change, but the book’s real might is in its diagnosis rather than its proposed solutions. Bowling Alone won’t make Putnam any less controversial, but it may come to be known as a path-breaking work of erudition, one whose influence has a long reach into the 21st century. –John J. Miller
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I read this book about 2 years ago for a class. It was just horrible, and I am shocked that smart people can read this and not see it for what it is. Nothing he said was realy a new thought unless it was one of the areas where he was incorrect. He will bury you in 20 pages of Evidence in numbers to support his thought, but fail to notice a huge glaring fault with his logic. He basicly hopes you get so into what evidence he puts out you will not reflect, wait he did not even factor in X, and that destorys anything he said. My class had to question why we even read this, as it was so terrible, and evry day was basicly a hour of talking about how incorrect he is. This book should only be used to show how lots of numbers can make people fail to reflect logicly about anything. I know people will say this is a fantastic book, but is worthless. Even the Title seems incorrect, we have a very hard time find a lane that does not have Leagues going.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I am currently enrolled in American Society and this is the corresponding textbook. After reading some is its chapters, Putnam seems to contradict himself at the end. How can you make sense of his work, interviews, experiments, and outlined research if is objective to his own views?
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
This book disappoints me. It seems as though it were written with the knowledge that it would sell no matter what it said. Also, the data provided regularly left much to be desired, and I reflect failed to show the real picture. Putnams conclusion was very weak.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
The title of this book is so much more promising that the actual body. The premise that we have been apt more disconnected as a society,and thus, are more dissatisfied is provocative. This is a book for persons who delight in graphs and indexes, and pie charts. I read it as a class assignment and it felt just like that…homework.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Dr. Putman’s social capital destroying “suspects” (featuring TV) are levelheaded. Here are some additional candidates for future consideration: 1. Interest in genealogy/history (a.k.a. backward-temporal communities). 2. Rampant progenyism as acted out in hyper-child centricity/ kidolatry–may be linked with the fall of faith. 3. Layering on of additional very weak but still cumulatively vital (and time requiring) domains of community, e.g. financial markets since we are now mostly security (stocks and/or bonds) holders and just the privatization of retirement preparation in all-purpose. Maybe even some “Main-drain” from NAFTA, NATO and the all-purpose expansion of a global consciousness. 4. The increase in “homework” required to keep up to date with best pratices in a job. 5. The democratization of reading via another “screen”: the affordable, pocket paperback book.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5