Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone

Mentioned in "Future Perfect" by Brian Keller.

Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam

Harvard Kennedy School - Robert Putnam
Better Together
SAGUARO SEMINAR - Civic Engagement in America

From The Atlantic: Interview - 2000.09.21

Once admired by de Tocqueville for a lively associative tendency and lampooned by Sinclair Lewis for excessive "joinerism," Americans today have retreated into isolation. So argues the political scientist Robert D. Putnam, who has spent much of his career measuring levels of civic involvement in America and abroad. Evidence shows, Putnam says, that fewer and fewer contemporary Americans are unionizing, voting, rallying around shared causes, participating in religious services, inviting each other over, or doing much of anything collectively. In fact, when we do occasionally gather -- for twelve-step support encounters and the like -- it's most often only as an excuse to focus on ourselves in the presence of an audience. Supper eaten with friends or family has given way to supper gobbled in solitude, with only the glow of the television screen for companionship.

In this land where self-reliance and rugged individualism have long been prized, some wonder how much a purported loosening of our social and civic bonds really matters. But in Putnam's view -- and according to his research -- our growing atomization in fact poses a grave threat to the nation's welfare. Just as we rely on financial capital, labor, and natural resources for the smooth functioning of our democracy, he contends, so too do we rely on "social capital" to foster cooperation, trust, and a sense of shared stewardship of the common good. Deficiencies in social capital, he warns, can lead to political disorganization, poverty, crime, neglect of children's education and welfare, and widespread loneliness and depression.

Too bad he's a fan of multiculturalism. He may have a way with numbers and collecting data, but he's a social scientist and a committed liberal, not a moralist working with an understanding of tradition.

Bowling With Our Own by John Leo
PJB, Robert Putnam: Diversity Is Our Destruction
E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the 21st Century

Related links:
Robert Putnam - Bowling Alone - Journal of Democracy 6:1
Robet Putnam, social capital and civic community
Bowling with Robert Putnam - - The American Interest Magazine
Interview with Robert Putnam
Robert Putnam, author of "Bowling Alone"
Capital ideas | Society | The Guardian
The rebirth of American civic life - The Boston Globe
Mediating Democracy: What Robert Putnam Wouldn’t Tell Us in Bowling Alone
Place, Locality, Social Capital