This was very good, but it was also very dense and very long and a bit boring. It’s absolutely worth skimming so if you get a bleary from the sheer amount of information here don’t worry. It inspired me to start bringing a pack of playing cards wherever I go now, and I’m hosting a group of strangers next week to play old card games, so thanks Mr. Putnam—I am indeed becoming more happy.

(FASCINATING stuff in the internet chapter—This book needs an update desperately, I’m just begging for an interpretation of the digital age in this framework.) ( )

recommended by AP site

Social capital is the grease that keeps society moving, but over the past 30 years it has decreased. Bowling Alone is the influential book that gathered the data behind this trend and put social capital on the radar of the nation.

Social networks give rise to generalized reciprocity and trust. This is social capital. Reciprocity and trust are most useful when applied generally and not just those who have helped you in the past. Social capital allows society operate smoothly. People rely on social connections for friendships, romantic relationships, job referrals, and community and political organization. Social capital is correlated with individual happiness and with community goods such as lower crime rates.

For all the good that it causes, social capital is, like most tools, not unambiguously good. Gangs and the KKK are held together by social capital just as the PTA and Habitat volunteers are. Being gay in a close knit conservative Christian community can ruin lives. The rarely realized ideal is a society with large amounts of social capital and a large tolerance for difference, but the tensions between these tendencies are hard to reconcile.

Bowling Alone analyzes empirical data to show that social capital had been declining for 30 years (the book is copyright 2000, data from earlier). Putnam considers political participation, civic participation, religious participation, workplace connections, altruism, volunteering, and philanthropy, and perceptions of reciprocity, honesty, and trust. All measures have shown declines, from mild to dramatic. Some new trends seem to defy the decline (e.g., internet communities), but Putnam makes a compelling case that social capital is generally declining.

Consider volunteering as an example. In the US, we volunteer about twice as much as in other developed nations. Volunteering may be formal (through an organization such as United Way) or informal (house sitting for a neighbor). Over half of Americans volunteer when informal volunteering is counted. Volunteering is correlated with higher levels of philanthropic giving.

Education predicts volunteer activity; college graduates are twice as likely to volunteer. Parents volunteer the most because of their involvement with activities related to their children (e.g., school, sports teams). Community size, wealth, and family status are other predictors of volunteer activity. Americans who entertain at home are also more likely to volunteer than those who do not.

Community involvement is the most important predictor of volunteer activity. Data from 1996 shows that 73% of members of secular organizations and 55% of members of religious organizations volunteer. Only 19% of individuals not involved in organizations volunteer. Members of religious organizations tend to volunteer mostly for their church. Organizations provide volunteer opportunities for their members and act as recruitment pools.

Over the past 30 years, volunteer activity has not dropped across the board. Formal volunteering has decreased, but informal volunteering is more common. More people outside of organizations are volunteering, but they do not form long term relationships. There is a troubling generational decline with respect to volunteer activity. The "long civic generation", the generation before the Boomers, has volunteered more at every stage of life than the Boomers and Generation X is worse (although there have been indications that the Millenials may be reversing this slightly).

What is behind the declines in volunteering and other types of participation? Given the difficulty of analyzing social trends, Putnam's explanations are guesses. Up to 10% of the decline in these measures can be attributed to time and money pressures on families, up to another 10% can be explained by suburban sprawl and long commutes, and another 25% can be explained by electronic media, especially television. By far, the largest contributor generational succession. The Boomers and Generation X replace the long civic generation in numbers, but their percentage participation is comparatively abysmal. This may explain up to half of the decline in participation. Why this is occurring is an open question.

Overall, Bowling Alone was a fascinating and informative book. The quantitative information makes it a valid and credible resource. The publication of Bowling Alone prompted debate over the conclusions Putnam drew, but makes it clear that there are trends to consider, and whether they are considered good, bad, or neutral, they are worth examining. ( )

I only read the intro and summary bits because it's not a well enough written book to justify wasting my time. Interesting information, too bad it's so crowded out by unnecessary and irrelevant repetition. ( )

From his vantage-point in the late Nineties, Sociologist Robert Putnam persuasively argues that social and civic life in America has declined from its peak period of the twenty-five years following World War 2. The Fifties and Sixties were a time of public trust. In 1964, polls show 77% of Americans saying that “most people can be trusted”, 10% higher than during and immediately after WW2. There was a sense of shared identity and thus reciprocity tied up with engagement in community affairs. But starting in the Seventies, Americans became less and less social. This change can be seen in relation to work, informal socialization, religious participation, and many other aspects of life.

Putnam uses the concept “social capital,” which implies social networks carry value, both public and private. For example, a service club can create private friendships and also raise money for scholarships. While friendships lead people to support each other when ill or victim to other tragedies.

Putnam argues that social connection tends to bring a sense of mutual obligation. “I’ll do this for you now, in the expectation that you (or perhaps someone else) will return the favor.” When there is a widespread sense of mutual obligation and reciprocity, life goes much more smoothly. We can do things without the need for accounting who owes what. Dense ties also facilitate gossip and reputation-cultivation, which leads to trust.

So, what happened? World War 2 led to a mass of patriotism and collective solidarity that was redirected into community life. Between the war and 1960, participation in public organizations doubled. It plateaued throughout the Sixties. But participation began declining in the Seventies. American history is littered with stories of decline and fall, “declensionist narratives” that compare to a past golden age. But Putnam thinks community belonging and trust actually have truly decreased, and for the worse.

Political participation is down. Figures for voting, attending political meetings, attending rallies, working for political parties, running for office, signing petitions, and writing to the paper have all fallen. As have statistics for attending local public meetings, serving as officer of a club, and serving on a committee for a local organization.

While there are technically more NGO’s now, there are often lobbying groups with no actual members. Ones that do have members, like the AAA, often lack local chapters where members could meet. The average membership rate of national chapter-based associations has declined since the Seventies, as has PTA and club membership. Religious attendance has gone slightly up and down but mostly declined.

Union membership follows a similar path as the book’s general pattern: growth throughout the 20th century, plateau in the Fifties and Sixties, and then decline. Now, unions don’t facilitate face-to-face engagement via union hall meetings and social gatherings. Participation in national professional associations like the AMA and ADA have also fallen.

Work has increasingly become where social connections happen. It’s also where people avoid domestic stressors. But that hasn’t necessarily led to an increase in workplace communication. Friendships from work are more likely to be casual than supportive. They are as precarious as work itself: many do not retain friendships when they leave the job. Additionally, we are not able to be totally honest at work due to worker surveillance.

Informal social interactions, which Putnam dubs schmoozing, has followed the trend. Schmoozing includes dinner parties, hanging with friends, playing cards, visiting relatives, going to the bar, etc. Schmoozing was highly prevalent in the US even pre-Industrial Revolution. As Americans urbanized, friendship became more important. Rather than a single community, cities hosted a loose series of communities. But those communities are shrinking.

From the late Seventies to late Nineties, entertaining friends at home dropped 45%. Going out to see friends and having them over declined in the same period, as has going out to bars and nightclubs. Where Americans used to play team sports, they now increasingly are spectators. Family life is less social now as well, as statistics for vacationing, family dinners, attending church together, sitting and talking, and watching TV together have all fallen. Between the mid-Eighties and late Nineties, readiness to make new friends declined by a third.

Playing cards with neighbors was a popular pastime in the Fifties, but Americans are less likely to do that or spend time with neighbors. Neighborhood associations are less social now and are more political. Putnam claims that, evaluating time diary studies, days where Americans spent any time informally socializing dropped from 65% in 1965 to 39% in 1995.

Putnam argues that this fall in public life is correlated with dwindling trust. In 1965, polls show roughly 55% of Americans saying, “most people can be trusted.” That number fell to 35% in the years leading up to 2000.

What countertrends were there when he was writing this book? One trend is various small groups that lack formal membership and are more fluid. These include Sunday school classes, reading groups, prayer fellowships, self-help, hobby groups, etc. In the late Nineties, 40% of Americans were currently part of one of these. 2 out of 5 said they got help when sick from someone in one of these groups. 4 out of 5 say they help them not feel alone. Reading groups exist, and sometimes for a long time. Their prevalence slightly declined between the Seventies and Nineties.

Self-help groups have become tremendously popular. They tend to be highly specific: AA, down syndrome support, etc. The problem with these is that, while they help their members, they are bound together by weak ties. They tend to invite focus on the self and encourage coming only if you have time. They are characterized by permissiveness, so they don’t encourage community.

Social movements bring people together. They rely on and encourage social capital and networks. Solidarity anchors us in participatory cultures. But the trend with these organizations is that eventually professionalize, eschewing the grassroots for DC lobbyists.

So, it seems that social life for Americans is shrinking. Why is that? Putnam argues that the main culprits are generational shift and entertainment media. Geographical sprawl and pressures of work and money are also responsible, if less so.

By generational shift, he means that the generation who lived through World War 2 came out of it highly bonded. The victory and subsequent wealth brought Americans together in what Putnam dubs the “civic generation.” They experienced and sacrificed in this massive event together and had thus grown a sense of national solidarity.

The Baby Boomers, however, became less civic as they entered adulthood in the Seventies, which eventually became known as “The Me Decade.” Much of their culture involved rejecting the institutions of their parents. They often felt they had less in common with their neighbors, as their culture encouraged individual expression and cultivating the self. Additionally, the Vietnam War and dashing of the liberal dream in the late Sixties killed much public camaraderie and social life that was built on a patriotism.

The Boomers also grew up with television, the second main culprit of American public life’s decline according to Putnam. In the first half of the twentieth century, most entertainment was public: amusement parks, dance halls, moviegoing, etc. But as telecommunications and the entertainment industries grew, people stayed home more. Because news and entertainment became individualized, it became easier to cultivate taste. It also allowed consumers to experience entertainment privately at home.

By 1995, figures for household viewing per TV were 50% higher than in the 1950’s. As of this book’s first edition’s writing, each person averaged 3-4 hours a day. More TV sets meant watching in bedrooms rather than together as a family. According to surveys taken between 1975 and 1999, the number of people who prefer “spending a quiet evening at home” rose continually, and those same people were also highly dependent on TV entertainment. More time spent watching TV means less time doing anything else. This is why Putnam homes in on entertainment media.

Putnam shows through a series of graphs that TV watching is antagonistic to leading a social life. Those who strongly agreed that “TV is my primary form of entertainment” were:
• Least likely to write letters to friends and relatives
• Least likely to attend club meetings
• Least likely to attend church
• Most likely to give the finger to another driver
• Least likely to work on a community project
• Least likely to volunteer

Of course, TV is probably attractive to unhappy people, and isn’t necessarily the cause of that unhappiness. But it doesn’t seem to help. It is habit-forming and encourages a relaxed, drowsy, and passive state of being. The ease of watching television compared to other activities may also contribute to this phenomenon.

Putnam posits less confidently that television-watching may imitate personal connection through one’s following the fictional lives of characters and seeing familiar morning anchors.

Less significantly, decreased social life may be due to pressures at work. Though studies haven’t shown a decrease in leisure time, they have shown an increase in economic anxiety and feeling busier. Many workers now are salaried and expected to do work after getting home, meaning there are less continuous hours of leisure time than before.

Mobility and sprawl may also have contributed a minor amount to the decline in social life. As more of the population moved to suburbs, they lost leisure time to travel. They also became more individualized as less people took public transit and more relied on cars. Additionally, commercial spaces like shopping centers became social hubs, and those spaces discourage social life.

Putnam mentions that a significant jump in women joining the work force is a small contributing factor, but neither here nor there. In some ways, women working led them to socialize more, in some ways less.

While Putnam is invested in rebuilding a liberal civic America, this book is still valuable.
It leaves you with a lot to think about. While I don’t care about political participation, I am concerned with a decline in social life. It’s tempting to blame the internet for this phenomenon, but home PC use and high-speed internet had not taken off when this book was being written in the late Nineties.

One use I have of this book is something to point to when people claim the internet brings us all together. Perhaps in some perverted way it does, but one of the main reason we were all so lonely before it was because of a different entertainment media: TV!

Putnam talks about American life somewhat defined as a reaction to stifling, traditional community bonds. Thoreau and Emerson heralded the individual going against the herd, while the Pilgrims were escaping conformist religious persecution. This got me thinking: it can feel suffocating to have all of your actions scrutinized by peers or family members. Additionally, if people are only doing good because someone is watching them, how valuable really is their behavior?

While we may herald the communal life of the European commons, from what researchers have gathered, the people in those villages often hated and resented each other. There must be some ways to gain the benefits of community while maintaining priority for the individual.
Putnam spends lots of time explaining his sources and methods, which makes me trust the results he compiles. Academic reviewers seemed mostly friendly towards the book. The main critique I read surrounded the concept “social capital.” Why make networks and friendship into “capital”? One reviewer, a sociologist, argued that this is done to be taken seriously by other disciplines like economics. Also, not all connections are “capital.” Having a sibling who is an addict is just one example where this concept falls apart.

Overall this was an informative and thought-provoking read. Highly recommended. ( )

Very interesting and important, but too long and dry. ( )

Amazing use of archival data and formal US survey information. I read the edition published in 2000; I wish it were being updates for 2020. Very timely issues about civic engagement. ( )

Probably the last of the older titles that has been on my reading list too long. Though it is dated in some ways, I was glad to finally get through this one and understand why so many planners have cited this. Putnam did have an ambitious undertaking here, and went through a serious amount of quantitative data to support his claims. A useful follow-up would be a new edition that takes into account where the trends in meeting people and forming clubs and associations have evolved now that the internet is as ubiquitous as it has become twenty years later. He did touch on the nascent changes that this was bringing at the time of publication, which was prescient. ( )

Slow going. Has a lot of interesting info, but as I got halfway through I found myself going to the end of each chapter to read the recap/summary of it. I'm mainly doing that b/c I have other things I want to read more, and no longer want to put in the time to finish this one. There's nothing wrong with it, per se. It's definitely structured as a sociological analysis. ( )

A study of non-participation in community building. ( )

I'm doing my best not to hold sundry of Putnam's shortcomings against him: first, there is entirely too much corrobrating evidence and statistical detail on the decline of social capital for readers of a putatively generalist book that wants to change real things in real America (we just want the flashiest factoids, some reassurance that there's more where that came from, and then on to the discussion); second, though it was perhaps inevitable, he misreads the internet as TV 2.0 (it was 2000) and doesn't anticipate the complex effects of social media; third, he has little in the way of prescriptions (though of course neither do I); and there are lesser ones like his failure to consider more than two racial-cultural groups (black and white, of course) and a kind of general tone of bringing dark tidings that just, I dunno, I was 20 in 2000 and I think we were all very aware that neoliberalism was bringing losses of community with the increases in individual consumer/lifestyle freedom, but I guess Putnam was older and writing to many of his generation who perhaps had a bit of false consciousness and were repairing picket fences on the sunny suburb of the heart and not looking around and realizing how dire things had become. Watching "Friends" instead of seeing friends, as one of P's better oneliners goes.

No, I am not going to over-fuss and walk out about these things, because the empirical scholarship is certainly there as a base and then on top of that this is a rallying cry, a histology (back to the last time things got this bad in the US, in the "Gilded Age" of the late 19th century, giving rise to new forms of community action, organization-based dogooderism, etc., in the "Progressive Era" of the early 20th), an etiology (TV is huge, which is why a proper treatment of the lonely crowded internet as a complex development is key; so are commutes; so are women working outside the home … and the book does do a good if perfunctory job reminding us that social capital too has its potential price in social repression a la the 1950s--and if our social capital is rising again now I would say that it is coming with new orthodoxies, no longer fifties monolithic but multiple and parallel as our likeminded communities are), and a polemic on the seriousness of the effects of the loss on our democracy, our economies, our happiness, our schools, our health. It does these things well, and they are important things. It'll be pretty clear to you which parts you can skim. ( )

The present withdrawal of the individual from social organizations now resembles the situation after WW I as depicted in Chapter IX of Eckstein's Rites of Spring, in which he describes veteran's eschewal of social commitments.

Rife with statistics, which are essential to back up the points Putnam is making. A really valuable study of public disengagement, even if dry at times. ( )

The breakdown of community is not just a hunch of social commentators, but a socialogical fact with severe consequences. Americans spent about 80 miniutes a day schmoozing with their friends in 1965, but only 57 minutes a day doing this in 1995

The data Putnam collected and analyzed represents a major achievement. Yet, after doing all that hard work he failed to go very far down some paths his data showed him. For example, more Americans are part of the work force than in previous decades, when many two-adult families had only one adult in the work force, leaving the other free to participate in community and neighborhood activities. The phenomena of overwork and overspending, explored brilliantly by Juliet Schor, is tied to the decline in social capital, but in this book is not given its due. ( )

I loved this book! A fascinating analysis of the decline of civic and social participation in American society. Every community organizer should read this. Putnam's prose is very accessible and his analysis makes for an interesting read.Will be interested in exploring Putnam's websites to see what he thinks of the developments with the internet and the impact the Obama campaign have had over the last ten years. ( )

Excellent book. Read it for an undergraduate political science class. From this book, my interest in social capital really took off. I bought several books on the subject after reading this one, but this one is the very best. Highly recommended. ( )

A must read for new church planters and anyone who wants to shape community. ( )

Wow is all I can say: what a landmark book. It's difficult to review due to the sheer scope, but Putnam does a masterful job of making sense of huge reams of data. There is a compelling case that our social capital in America has been slowly eroding for decades, even though many supposed indicators of social engagement have not reflected that. An incredible work and one worth revisiting someday. ( )

I classify Bowling Alone, which discusses that decline of "social capital" in the US, as part of my pregnancy reading. I have been wanting to read it for quite some time, but the thoughts of the isolation of not being at work for a longish time, and the idea of the different life my child would lead growing up near Boston, rather than in small town NS, inspired me to final bend the bindings. What I discovered was a very well written and exceptionally well researched book. Bowling Alone is a rare "artsy" book in which the author start with a premise and provides data to support or refute his own premise. While none of the ideas he come up with are at all new, the manner in which he addresses the growing problem of lack of trust between citizens through prioritizes his ideas based on data certainly is.

While in general, he presents the substantial lowering of attendance at clubs as an inherently bad thing, along with the notion that the separation of people in cities relative to small towns is a bad thing, I appreciated the chapter he added to examine whether many of the clubs weren't a superficial search for sameness in the first place. When you lived in both an intolerant cohesive small town and a tolerant larger city, you start to realize that having everybody know your name (and your business) can be a burden as much as a security blanket.

The one issue he did not examine that I wish he had covered was how the change in corporate values has crossed over into the rest of people's lives - i.e. decades long loyalty to the firm means nothing come layoff time. Additionally, as is usually the case in long books that do a great job in defining issues - his chapter on solutions is very weak and devoid of supporting data.

Worth reading, does make you think. ( )

A oft-quoted, but little read piece of American social science. In the field of civic engagement this is the new book to know. Really a breakthrough in social science research. Finally, if you are reading this review you are living this competeing with this book's thesis---Welcome to "Virtual" social capital!

Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone is an intriguing look at the role of social capital (basically, the aggregate of people's various types of social interactions with each other in a community) in America. Social capital, it's argued, plays a role similar to other kinds of capital, and, it turns out, is a strong predictor for practically every community trait, positive or negative, that one can think of. In communities with lots of social capital, Putnam argues based on extensive statistical evidence, people are healthier and less likely to be depressed or commit suicide; kids do better in school and are less likely to get in trouble; there's less gap between rich and poor; and there's a myriad of other interesting outcomes.

The problem, of course, is that since the mid-1960s, there's been a drastic decline in social capital in America. We trust our neighbors less, engage in politics less, we're less involved in volunteer organizations, churches, bowling leagues, even having friends over for dinner. Putnam's data seems to show the decline is generational: the "long civic generation" that came of age around World War II is as socially connected as it always has been, but that generation is steadily dying out while the succeeding generations, from the baby boomers on down the line, are all much less socially involved. One key in assigning blame for the generational decline in social capital is television; watching television (unsurprisingly) seems to have a striking negative impact on one's social connectedness.

As I said, it's a very interesting book and leaves you with plenty to digest. Highly recommended to anyone who's interested in problems of contemporary culture.

horrible. while putnam writes well, he is hoodwinked into thinking that the era where everyone rushed to join up for whatever everyone else was doing is somehow preferable to the era of individualism which followed it. he paints those after the sixties as slackers, sitting mind-numbingly in front of the television, consuming whatever they are told to. in actuality, it is the members of the fifties themselves who were so paranoid about not fitting in that they created consumptive lifestyles to checklist their inclusion. those in the sixties were too busy tuning in, turning on and dropping out to be part of the slacker mindset -- most didn't have eletricity let alone television. ( )

Trevor Phillips OBE ,head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, has chosen to discuss Robert D Putnam’s Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community , on FiveBooks (http://five-books.com) as one of the top five on his subject - Equality, saying that:

“…In the half million interviews compiled for this book, they found that people in American society are less connected, they do fewer things together, they don’t sign petitions. Where they used to go bowling in leagues they now go bowling alone. This fragmentation of society that Putnam describes is becoming more severe because of technology making people more alienated from each other..…”.

The full interview is available here: http://thebrowser.com/books/interviews/trevor-phillips ( )

This is a book that is so familiar, that not even having read it, I feel as though I already knew the comments. Putnam was catapulted into the limelight with the publication of this book and the mostly obscurely appreciated academic became well-known virtually overnight. The thesis is compelling and commonly accepted by the ordinary general reader who largely accepted, if they could not produce the requisite evidence, for a point that they intuitively sensed to be true. Americans are bowling alone which is an effective metaphor for the cataclysmic shift in American's use of time and commitment to public life and the shared space.

Cf. http://www.hks.harvard.edu/about/faculty-staff-directory/robert-putnam

For an application of bowling to religious issues:
http://www.librarything.com/work/346675/details/50170154