At the beginning of this semester, I ordered a few paperback books from the online bookseller Thriftbooks. One of those books was Robert Putnam’s highly informative book Bowling Alone (2000). I had heard about it before from some YouTube video a while back. Nevertheless, I gave the Putnam’s book a try because it looked to explain the recent decline of American communities.
A few weeks ago, I finally finished reading Putnam’s book. Having read this book, I highly recommend it because it pinpoints the both the symptoms, causes, and the potential solutions to the collapse of American community.
We can see the decline of American community all around us. American citizens are more disconnected from their friends and neighbors than they used to be. People participate in less formal political activities. Church attendance has been on the steady decline for the past several decades. I could go on and on, but I’ll wrap it up. The bottom lines is that Americans are more isolated than they used to be; hence the book’s title: Bowling Alone.
The author noted early on that weeknight Bowling leagues were a common sight in Post WWII America. However, that common activity gave away to something else at the end of the 20th century: bowling alone. Bowling was once a communal activity in America. Unfortunately, it has started to become a solitary activity. Bowling is just one example of the broader issue at hand.
Before I get into discussing the heart of the book, I wanted to provide some background information on the book. So, let’s begin.
Context
Robert Putnam wrote this book over twenty years ago—in the year 2000. As a researcher at Harvard University, Putnam decided to research a problem that many people have noticed but have a hard time articulating: the decline of “social capital” or American community engagement.
Now, Putnam defines “social capital” as the “connections among individuals—social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them” (pg. 19). Think of “social capital” as the web of social ties that someone possesses. Generally, sociologists find that individuals are more productive when they have a large network of relationships. The same thin happens for a community. As Putnam points out in Section 4 of his book, a community with high “social capital” has better physical health, lower crime, better schools, and more economic prosperity.
With all this information in mind, I will briefly discuss the symptoms, causes, and potential solutions to the significant decline in America’s civic community. As a reminder, Putnam noted that the decline in America’s civic engagement started in the mid-to-late 1960s through 2000. The
The Symptoms
We already discussed some of the symptoms for the erosion in American civic engagement. So, I will briefly list some of the major symptoms that Putnam mentioned in Bowling Alone.
-Decline informal social activities: card games, entertaining friends/family at home, league bowling, socializing with neighbors,
-Decline in Political Participation: less voting, attending political meetings, running for public office, signing a petition, writing to one’s congressman/senator
-Decline in Religious Participation: Decreased Church membership, Church attendance
-Decline in Civic Participation: Lower PTA membership, club meeting attendance, community service projects
The Causes
As with many things in life, it’s a lot easier to recognize the symptoms of a problem than to point out the causes. The crisis in American civic engagement is not different. In Section 2 of Bowling Alone, Putnam outlines the four main (and likely) reasons for the decline in civic engagement (starting in the 1960s): generational change/replacement, television/electronic entertainment, suburbanization, and the emergence of two-career families.
Putnam believed that the last two factors likely made only modest contributions to the erosion of social capital. However, television and generational replacement seemed to play a large role in the decline of American community life.
For clarity, the term “generational replacement” refers to the gradual replacement of our nation’s most civically engaged generation—the WW2/GI generation—with less civically-inclined generations: the Baby Boomers and Gen X.
Man, it just seems like the Baby Boomers ruin everything they touch. I’m just kidding. I love the Boomers. They’ve definitely screwed up a lot of things in America, but I personally think that they get way too much flack.
Solutions
Personally, I thought that the weakest part of the book were Putnam’s solutions (i.e. Section 5 of the book). Although some of these solutions seem impractical. Putnam does have some interesting ideas for solving the decline of American “social capital”/civic engagement.
Here are some of the solutions that Putnam discussed in the last chapter of the book:
-Encouraging Americans to move from sitting in front of electronic screens toward connecting with other people in-person (pp. 410)
-Using the arts to bring people together in group activities such as “songfests and community theater” (pp. 411)
– “.. challenge the notion that civic life has no place in the workplace” (pp.407); example—companies offering more part-time work because part-time workers are more civically engaged
-Creating smaller schools because students in smaller schools participate in more extracurricular activities (pp. 405)
-Improving civics education in American schools (pp. 405)
-Implementing more community service programs throughout the nation (pp. 405)
-Reconfiguring American communities to allow people to “… spend less time travelling and more time connecting with [their] neighbors” (pp.408)
-Revitalizing churches/faith-based organizations has been a crucial element during times of civic revival in American history (pp.409)