Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community Reviews

• Can You Handle the Truth?

  
  By A2ISPZN5ZXJNJ9 on 2000-07-20
  Putnam's commentary on modern American life is frightening at best.

  I read Putnam's article by the same title in college and it left a lasting imprint because it crystalized my feeling that Americans are no longer involving themselves in civic and community life. His new book expounds on this depressing thesis and explains, in tremendous detail how Americans no longer value civic engagement or regard relationships with neighbors as worthwhile. He cites declines in participation in public clubs such as the Shriners and Elks clubs as well as more informal social gatherings like poker playing and family dinners. Using statistics and time diaries he plots indicators of civic engagement from its peak in the early 1960's and its subsequent decline thereafter. The greatest casualty throughout this transformation is in social capital, a term which predates Putnam and describes the emotional and practical benefits of personal relationship.

  Putnam shows that civic clubs that have shown growth in membership since the 1960's have mostly been in massive national organizations whose membership is nothing more than people on mailing lists who pay an annual fee. Furthermore, religious organizations, whose members participate in their communities at greater rates than non church goers, are beginning to change their focus from civic participation to only tending to the needs of their church members.

  The affects of this disengagement have impacted our health, democracy and safety. Putnams points out an axiomatic principle that as people associate with one another in various capacities, whether it be at the kitchen table, the sidewalk, the card club or the PTA, people form relationships that provide a pool of friends who can be relied upon when time are hard, the dog needs to be walked, or the poor elderly woman next door needs her home painted. Each relationship is an asset, the accumulation of which can be called one's "social capital."

  Putnam does not place the blame for this on one source, but cites the entrance of women into the workforce, high levels of divorce, and urban sprawl among others as possible contributors. His most damning remarks are reserved for television. According to Putnam, no single technology has had such a damaging effect on America's civic and personal relationships. I enjoyed his attack on TV on a personal level because I decided 5 years ago to throw away my television and have never looked back.

  Certainly, Putnam's concerns are not new. He admits to this and provides the reader with an excellent look at the Progressive Era when American's decided to solve the vexing problems of an industialized urban society by forming civic clubs and actively involving themselves in their community.

  This is not a particularly fun book to read. In summary, it details how Americans have become spectators on life. The recent success of "reality based" television programs only illustrates how we have traded the potential richness of personal relationships for a false reality on our television screens. Life is about personal relationships, and it is sad to see how Americans have avoided these relationships.

  Putnam is not all gloom and doom. As with everything, hope abounds. After reading this book, one should only be encouraged to find ways to involve himself or herself in their communities and invite the neighbors over for a BBQ. This is an important social commentary, and I encourage all to read it.
  
  

• The Promise of Social Capitalism

  
  By A1SR6MHQ0DFEYM on 2000-05-18
  When I first came across the idea that Robert Putnam wrote about in his 1995 article Bowling Alone, I felt like a whole new world and language had been openned up to me. Every thing he writes about in his book is familiar, and yet it is fresh and insightful. The crux of the matter is that our social connectedness is diminishing. Social capital, or the value that exists in the level of trust and reciprocity between individuals, institutions and communities needs to be strengthen. This isn't just about being better people or having a stronger economy. This is about the network of relationships that determine whether a society, both local and national, can meet the challenges of its problems, and thereby sustain a high quality of life.

  Putnam's book should be read as an exercise in building social capital. By this I mean, you should distribute it to friends, family, coworkers, neighbors and especially elected officials in your community. Then plan to meet and discuss it over lunch or coffee. This book has the potential for being the most significant book on society in a generation. When we scratch our heads and wonder why in the midst of a booming economy, we have such tragic social dysfunction in our society, you can look to Putnam's book as a perspective that offers promise that social capitalism is a signficant aspect of the answer.
  
  

• Good Observations, Bad Conclusions

  
  By on 2003-07-07
  Putnam's research on the decline of social interaction is extensive, and the book is interesting to read. In Bowling Alone's first nine chapters are graphs showing the chrononical trends for every activity from card-playing to church-going. Putnam shows that Baby Boomers and Generation Xers are significantly less involved in civic activities than their parents and grandparents.

  However, while Bowling Alone does a good job illustrating the loss of community involvement, the last fifteen chapters of the book, which discuss the causes of civic disengagement, and how it can be reversed, are seriously wrong. Just to start, Putnam overlooks many of the events of the last forty years. He pejoratively notes that Americans have become more individualist and distrustful of institutions, but he gives little notice to the Vietnam War, Watergate, the failed War on Poverty, and the inummerable political, corporate, and institutional scandals, which have led to this culture of skepticism.

  Furthermore, the book ignores the role of centralized government and litigiousness in weakening communities. People are less likely to vote or get involved in political affairs because top-down bureaucratic mandates and endless lawsuits have undermined local democracy. Putnam laments the drop in the number of Americans who vote, attend town meetings, or write to their Congressman, but does not realize that much of this apathy is comes from the fact that many Americans perhaps rightly believe that these activities are a waste of time. Why should a person give up several hours of their time to go to a town meeting when any decision of significance made at the meeting may be overturned by a federal judge or blocked by a Washington bureaucrat?

  The whole book is permeated with an irritating longing for Babbitt-like organizationalism. Many American do informally interact with their families, friends, and coworkers, but have absolutely no interest joining a fraternal organization, with its secret handshakes and exclusive membership. Likewise, many Americans do give their time time and money to causes (e.g. environmentalism) that they support, but are unwilling to make donations to large, poorly-run charities who have nebullous goals (e.g., United Way, Red Cross). Unfortunately, Putnam seems to overlook the decentralizing social trends of the last several decades.

  The last two chapters of the book are the absolute worst. He expresses some concern that communitarians need to avoid the 'big-brotherism' of the early twentieth century Progressive movement, but then offers some of his own proposals (e.g., more urban planning, campaign finance reform) which themselves seem heavy-handed.

  In spite of these criticism, I do recommend the book. Public apathy is a serious problem, and though I disagree with some of Putnam's conclusions, the book is informative and well-written.
  
  

• Um, the 50's are over...

  
  By A3P04GKMJY4B13 on 2005-07-12
  Robert Putnam's book bemoans the declne in "civic participation" among Americans since its heyday in the 50's and 60's. Although few would argue that bridge clubs aren't what they used to be, who would have predicted the rise of 20,000 member mega-churches back in 1962? This underlines the basic problem with this book: it focuses too much on what constituted "communities" and "activities" in the past, without looking at how people form new and different kinds of communities today. While I agree that television has dramatically increased the couch potato index, and participation in traditional FORMAL organizations has declined, I would argue that membership and participation in new kinds of groups that are more relevant to people in the 21st century has risen. For example, while young people famously are less likely to vote in our dual-party system, college students today volunteer more that any generation before them. In addition, while participation in mainline Protestant churches has stedily declined, engagement in evangelical churches has risen dramatically. While I personally feel that the sterile suburban, drive-everywhere-in-my-SUV existance is soul crushing, and the popularity of reality TV may be a sign of the apocolypse, I also don't pine for the days where mom was expected to stay home with the kids and go to the bridge club once a week, while dad worked 9-5, returned home to supper, and went to the Men's Club on Tuesdays at 8. And while Putnam's basic premise may resonate with many, its fetishization of days past blunts the strength of his overall argument.
  
  

• All In All, Another Brick In The Wall!

  
  By ALR35EFI69S5R on 2000-07-05
  Wow! Once again an academic with an important piece of the truth about the nature of contemporary social reality has become embroiled in an avalanche of escalating public expectations and hyperbole until suddenly he is expected to be some kind of social prophet who's singularly able to explain, detail and unravel the heretofore-mysterious elements of our dilemma. Such is the case here with Professor Putnam's provocative findings regarding social disintegration in the America of the `90s.

  This is an absorbing book, the result of Putnam's efforts to expand a short article Putnam had written regarding the observable facts of increasing social isolation and personal disconnection within our culture. Here he employs new data substantiating and extending the details of his original thesis, indicating that on almost every measure investigated, individual Americans are less likely to regularly socialize with their peers, becoming more isolated, more fractious, and less friendly to others than they have been in the recent past. The book is written in an engaging way, and entertains and seduces the reader with amusing (as well as frightening) facts and figures regarding the degree of animosity and alienation individual citizens feel.

  Of course, it is easy to become so enthralled with reading through the entertaining list of particulars he enumerates than to pay heed to the burgeoning shapes and images lurking beneath the data; i.e., concerned readers should engage themselves in locating all this information usefully within a meaningful social context. Increasing social isolation and the progressive breakdown in what sociologists call social cohesion are not new phenomena, but have been steadily eroding the social fabric and our feelings of connectedness to one another for over a century. In fact, at the turn of the 20th century both Emile Durkheim and Max Weber were warning of the social dangers associated with the rise of a rational, secular and materialistic social milieu. Reading other recent books such as Sales Kirkpatrick's "Rebels Against The Future" or Philip Slater's classic 1970 book "Pursuit of Loneliness" give one a much better grounding in how the degree of social isolation and civil alienation are related to what is happening in the larger social surround individuals find themselves in.

  In essence, the kinds of isolation detailed so well in this tome are the result of the long-term corrosive effects of materialism, with concentration on capital acquisition and gaining more wealth and more affluent lifestyles. Indeed, if one reads the recent book "The Overworked American" by Juliet Schor, one gets the distinct impression that many Americans are so focused on "getting ahead' that anything interfering with this obsessive reach for greater material security gets short shrift in contemporary society. There should be no confusion about the nature of the problem that confronts us; we have no community because we have no culture left. The revolution of scientific change and technical innovation has systematically swept away the web of meanings we once had to integrate and make sense of all this. All we really have today is a mutual acquisition society, based primarily on our mutual lust for material goods and minimally constrained by the skeletal rules and regulations civil society sets for the nature of the material quest. This is a terrific book. Read it.
  
  

• You Don't Have to Be an Expert to Appreciate This Book
  By A3NQU1649SH0Q4 on 2000-06-30
  I'm writing this review for non-sociologists and non-policy experts, for people like me who don't generally curl up with a book of sociology. "Bowling Alone" is an important work because it highlights some very disturbing trends at work in America and suggests some solutions.

  Author Robert Putnam measures "social capital," which is simply the value of people dealing with people--organization and communication, whether it's formal (church council, the PTA), or informal (the neighborhood tavern, the weekly card game). We have suffered a huge drop in such "social capital" over the past 30-35 years; club attendance has fallen by more than half, church attendance is off, home entertaining is off, even card games are off by half. (Yes, there are people who survey for that!)

  Why is this important? Because a society that is rich in social capital is healthier, both for the group and for the individual. The states that have the highest club membership and voter turnouts also have the most income equality and the best schools (and those that have the lowest, have the worst). And according to Putnam, "if you decide to join [a group], you can cut your risk of dying over the next year in half." Younger people are demonstrably less social than their grandparents in the World War II generation. They also feel more malaise. Lack of sociability makes people feel worse.

  While "Bowling Alone" is a work of academic sociology, with charts and graphs, Putnam makes it as reader-friendly as possible with a good honest prose style and a straightforward presentation. His message deserves to be heard. He also suggests some ways for us to get out of our current blight of social disconnectedness, including a call for the USA to re-live the organizational renaissance we once experienced at the turn of the last century, the Progressive Era, which spawned so many organizations like the Sierra Club, PTA and Girl Scouts that are still with us and going strong.

  If you read only one book of sociology this decade, make it "Bowling Alone." The research is astounding, the presentation is great, and the message is one we need to hear.
  
  

• An inspiring beginning to an important national conversation
  By A2U1WVBA2PHILL on 2000-05-05
  This book will be a fascinating, illuminating, and provocative read for anyone who is interested in the social ties that constitute neighborhood, community and nation. Putnam expands on his earlier article in The American Prospect by looking for confirmation of his hypothesis (Americans have become less connected to social networks than they once were) in virtually every corner of our society. From bowling leagues to the workplace to parenthood to television, this has the potential to be a foundational piece of scholarship in the study of 'social capital.' There is also ample material for critical response -- Putnam makes a number of claims and conclusions that need the clarification of further research. Yet, this is one of the refreshing things about this book -- it invites us into a debate about the state of American communities and provides us with impressive tools and data with which to begin. Disclaimer: This reviewer recently completed a seminar with Putnam, and may therefore be more enthusiastic about the subject than he would expect others to be.
  
  
• Terrific & Penetrating View At American Loss Of Community!
  By ALR35EFI69S5R on 2000-07-30
  It amazes me how often an academic with an important piece of the truth about the nature of contemporary social reality becomes embroiled in an avalanche of escalating public expectations & hyperbole until suddenly he is expected to become a hopped-up social prophet singularly able to explain, detail and unravel the heretofore-mysterious elements of our existential dilemma. Such is the case here with Professor Putnam's provocative findings regarding social disintegration in the America of the `90s.

  This is an absorbing book, the result of Putnam's efforts to expand a short article Putnam had written regarding the observable facts of increasing social isolation and personal disconnection within our culture. Here he employs new data substantiating and extending the details of his original thesis, indicating that on almost every measure investigated, individual Americans are less likely to regularly socialize with their peers, becoming more isolated, more fractious, and less friendly to others than they have been in the recent past. The book is written in an engaging way, and entertains and seduces the reader with amusing (as well as frightening) facts and figures regarding the degree of animosity and alienation individual citizens feel.

  Of course, it is easy to become so enthralled with reading through the entertaining list of particulars he enumerates than to pay heed to the burgeoning shapes and images lurking beneath the data; i.e., concerned readers should engage themselves in locating all this information usefully within a meaningful social context. Increasing social isolation and the progressive breakdown in what sociologists call social cohesion are not new phenomena, but have been steadily eroding the social fabric and our feelings of connectedness to one another for over a century. In fact, at the turn of the 20th century both Emile Durkheim and Max Weber were warning of the social dangers associated with the rise of a rational, secular and materialistic social milieu. Reading other recent books such as Sales Kirkpatrick's "Rebels Against The Future" or Philip Slater's classic 1970 book "Pursuit of Loneliness" give one a much better grounding in how the degree of social isolation and civil alienation are related to what is happening in the larger social surround individuals find themselves in.

  In essence, the kinds of isolation detailed so well in this tome are the result of the long-term corrosive effects of materialism, with concentration on capital acquisition and gaining more wealth and more affluent lifestyles. Indeed, if one reads the recent book "The Overworked American" by Juliet Schor, one gets the distinct impression that many Americans are so focused on "getting ahead' that anything interfering with this obsessive reach for greater material security gets short shrift in contemporary society. There should be no confusion about the nature of the problem that confronts us; we have no community because we have no culture left. The revolution of scientific change and technical innovation has systematically swept away the web of meanings we once had to integrate and make sense of all this. All we really have today is a mutual acquisition society, based primarily on our mutual lust for material goods and minimally constrained by the skeletal rules and regulations civil society sets for the nature of the material quest. This is a terrific book. Read it.
  
  

• The Value of Trust and Communication in a Community
  By AKQHP6KA0NINS on 2000-05-29
  The small, midwest city for which I work as a city planner/administrator has experienced a long and steady decline in effective social engagement. The initial temptation among some residents was to assume our situation is unique - that the source for our lack of community is somehow the fault of new residents (largely Latino) or the city administration. To be sure, local government may play a role in this social erosion, but the fact of the matter is that what's at work is a much more widespread erosion of social engagement with our friends, neighbors and coworkers.

  This erosion, contends author Robert Putnam, has occurred not just locally, but throughout the country for the last two and a half decades. Mr. Putnam provides a useful overview of the forces at work behind this trend.

  After one reading, it is my hope that this book could prove to be a useful tome in re-engaging a more effective community dialog locally. Hopefully, several well-worn copies will circulate throughout the city and provide an academic, but enjoyable basis for learning how to become a community again.
  
  

• Disengagement
  By AOTK4QVBIG3CF on 2000-12-08
  Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community Robert Putnam, Simon & Schuster, 2000

  Review

  If you can read only one purportedly academic book this year choose this one. Despite being statistically dense, it reads like a business bestseller - a sort of Tipping Point with meat. Through a exhaustive use of polling and other socioeconomic indices, Putnam paints a compelling picture of a nation fragmenting into smaller and smaller pockets of disjointed individuals. A must read for anyone interested in political action into the next decades.

  Synopsis

  The basic premise here is that a growing social disconnect can be identified in trends of American public opinion over the course of the last century though analysis of "social capital" activities. Social capital is the connection - and the strength, utility and cohesion of these linkages - between individuals in a society.

  Rather than a lamentation on this collapse of civics, Putnam traces polling, voting, memberships and leisure activities to debunk most of the myths that attempt to explain the failure of politics to engage the US public. We still have the same 19-20 hours for relaxation per week and work, with its focal points of `team' capitalism and heightened customer service does not seemingly translate outside the office. By then bringing in Tocqueville's `self interest, rightly served' [135] a clear trail of the decline of American civility is clearly traced.

  The salient thought roaring through Bowling Alone is that "A society characterized by generalized reciprocity is more efficient than a distrustful society, for the same reason that money is more efficient than barter." [21] This is the basic finding that such a simple premise forms the basis of all the political upheavals in America - and with little retinking, Canada - over the past century and of greater importance, since the silent reversal - `disjunctive pattern of decline' - of civic connectives in the middle 70's.

  The criticisms of Bowling Alone hinge primarily on the seeming Ozzie & Harriet lamentation for the good old days [see Mark Kingwell's The World We Want, 2000] when everyone liked each other, but they sorely miss the point of the work. Given that more people bowl in leagues than voted in the 1998 US congressional election , perhaps a look-see at Pleasantville is warranted. Putnam's prescriptions are not `civic broccoli' or predicated on the ubiquitous they coming to our rescue, but simple, easy to articulate and ultimately deliverable.

  Detail

  Putnam typifies 2-type of social capital: bonding and bridging which provides a useful distinction in the book. Bonding capital coalesces similar groups while bridging arches socioeconomic groups. This differentiation provides Although this is a subtle distinction it is at the core of the thesis of Bowling Alone. It allows for a plausible explanation of the rise of chequebook participation and the proliferation of letterheads over civic action by individuals. Collective goals and causes have become secondary to personal growth with thin and cool trust.

  Putnam's exploration of the causes of this decline follows leads from the number of personal injury lawyers, through television into bureaucratization of community action. He sees troubling social tendencies to `hire organizations' for community action and the development of virtual social capital consciousness, which must be regarded as oxymoronic at best. These activities become captives of zealot `dictators' or dilute their effectiveness as they denigrate into gab-feast anarchies. Thus, Putnam questions the effectiveness of the internet as a tool of bonding social capital as it has a tendency to create joy-stick democracy of the paramount individual. This "sociological Astroturf, suitable only where the real thing won't grow." [107]

  Thus, although widespread discontent exists, incumbents are re-elected as astonishing rates in America as there are few focal points for the coalescing social disconnect. This raises the specter of niche markets in politics where single issue consumers' end up supporting causes that in effect erode the social cohesion of their communities. This finding is most troubling for today's youth whose values are filtered through the abstraction of the media - and especially by television the "single most consistent predicator" [229] of declining civic involvement - and are tuned out to organized civic action.

  Overall, Putnam provides clear and compelling evidence that a catalyst is needed to re-engage Americans in collective civic action to address pressing social and growing economic ills that face the nation. Or in a chilling insight, he believes that we are bottoming out in "drive-by" civics.
  
  

• Putnam doesn't remember the Sixties
  By AHSXMZBNS9BPA on 2001-04-14
  This is an impressive book, and one that takes some time to work through with its 544 pages, including close to 100 pages of small print footnotes and tables. However, it's worth the time. Putnam's thesis is that Americans have become disconnected from one another. The book is divided into three sections: first, he demonstrates disconnection; second, he speculates on why it happened; and third, he proposes some solutions. And the sections are valuable in that order.

  In the first section, he amasses a mountain of statistics, drawn from association memberships, academic papers, and even market research (finally market research gets some respect) to prove his basic point - Americans spend less time together, both formally and informally. Not only is club membership down, but Americans today don't talk by phone or even go on picnics together as often as before. His evidence here is clear and convincing.

  The second section is much weaker. Putnam has demonstrated his point about disconnection well, and has shown reasonably good evidence that it is a generational disconnect - i.e., people didn't change their behavior, younger people simply behave differently - and has shown that the turning point was the Sixties. And what went on in the Sixties? The answer positively flaunts itself psychedelically - except to Putnam. He ignores the whole phenomenon of the youth counterculture, merely mentioning that it provided an opporunity for friendships. The Vietnam War receives only a casual mention or two. Are Americans still suffering from the long-term effects of conflicts which tore apart families, friends, and society? This is such an astounding omission that one cannot help asking where Putnam himself was. He is equally dismissive of the "new federalism", which, by taking away control from local governments and centralizing it in Washington, D.C., made participation in local affairs much less relevant and led directly to the huge Washington-based lobbying organizations that so dismay him. He doesn't pay much attention to the growth of welfare, which eliminated the reason for existence of many charitable organizations and simultaneously provided many individuals (especially women)who might otherwise have volunteered with well-paying jobs. He mentions the increased number of lawyers, but not the strain put on even the smallest organizations by lawsuits and insurance. He does mention, but only to dismiss feminism - this even though women were specifically advised by feminists to refuse to volunteer as the first step in their liberation. He is equally dismissive of civil rights, and the backlash against it.

  What then does he hold responsible? He falls back on two old standbys - cars and television. The first even Putnam cannot seem to provide any evidence for - there is not a single survey showing that non-drivers are more socially involved than drivers. The best he can do is show that volunteering is related to commute time - but since commuters by public transit frequently have longer transit times, even this argument turns against him. And the "civic generation" of the Fifties that he so admires was not anti-car - in fact, they were the ones who drove tailfin Chevys and built the Interstate. On television he is on safer ground - here the evidence is all on his side.

  These weaknesses carry over into the third section. After all, if TV and cars are responsible, surely the thing to do is destroy, restrict, or ban them? But while the thought of throwing TVs off the Golden Gate Bridge or demonstrators racing through mall parking lots torching SUVS has a certain appeal, Putnam eschews such suggestions - possibly somebody pointed out to him that East Germany and apartheid-era South Africa (to name 2 societies which did restrict both) are not exactly desirable role models. Instead, he would like to start a new political movement - he doesn't say "party" - along the lines of the Progressive Party of the early 1900s. But what would this movement advocate? As Putnam himself admits, if what is desirable is a society in which people do their own thing and leave others alone, then there is a lot to be said for disconnection. Ignoring undesirable neighbors beats burning crosses on their front lawn. But merely getting together to talk and get warm fuzzies from one another's presence is not enough for anything except a new age encounter group. Yet Putnam gives us no idea of where he wants his movement to go on specific issues. One might as well call up one's neighbors and friends and organize a picnic.

  Nevertheless, this is a valuable and important book. Putnam may not have much sense of the past or future, but he has demonstrated well that there is a problem in the present, and has thrown the prestige of Harvard behind opening discussion on this issue. He has, in old-fashioned terms, performed a valuable public service. Those wishing to join the debate will want to take time to read this book carefully - including all those tables and footnotes.
  
  

• Important Book for Nonprofit and Charity Professionals
  By ASUVZRU28GUSV on 2000-10-18
  Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone is a well-planned and exhaustively researched examination of America's civic and social participation. Few bestselling books have 60 pages of endnotes, over 100 charts and tables, and an index spanning 45 pages. If for no other reason, nonprofit sector professionals should buy this book for its statistical and reference data alone. However, this book is far more than a reference volume; it uses data to tell a compelling story about America's civic and social involvement in the 20th century.

  The data reported in the book confirm all kinds of influences that have been discussed by public policy experts, social researchers, and watercooler gossips for years -- declining civic club memberships; fewer people willing to take leadership positions in PTA, Boy Scouts, school boards, city councils, and countless other "community-building" pursuits. Mr. Putnam addresses changing lifestyles, from two-paycheck and single-parent families to the increasing time consumed by home-workplace commuting, television, and other "cocooning" activities that reduce time and energy for "other-directed" activity.

  The book's subtitle, "The Collapse and Revival of American Community," is an apt description of the book that has been misunderstood by many of its critics. Although Professor Putnam (Public Policy professor at Harvard) spends much of the book demonstrating the decline of civic & social involvement and community in America during the last third of our century, he also discusses possible causal factors and even offers suggestions for renewal.

  The book's final chapter compares America's late 19th century with the late 20th century. He identifies numerous similarities that, he believes, point the way to addressing the current crisis as he sees it. The chapter includes italicized goals for improvement in civic and social involvement.

  The topic and thesis of the book, originally raised in a 1995 magazine article, will be with us for several more years. The Ford Foundation and a group of community foundations have given Mr. Putnam $1 million to conduct additional research on how communities are addressing community-building issues and how effective those initiatives are.

  The exhaustive research, enduring interest in the topic, and guaranteed future events related to this book and author are three of many reasons why this book should be on all reference bookshelves. More importantly, Mr. Putnam challenges our assumptions and offers an important lens though which to view the social and civic habits of our co-workers, volunteers, friends, family, and, ultimately, ourselves.
  
  

• Densely packed but fruitful
  By A135730LG1JRVC on 2000-07-17
  Bowling Alone is a pretty weighty tome with an increidble density of facts and figures. Subtitled "The Collapse and Revival of American Community", that fourth word is the only thing that gets you through the first third of the book which is staggeringly depressing. Using a huge variety of cross-referenced statistics normalized for race, income, and everything else, Robert D. Putnam, a Hahvahd professor of Public Policy, shows how people are participating less and less in politics, civics, religion, workplace-related social connections, informal social connections, volunteering less, trusting less, and generally meeting with others less.

  Section II asks why, looks at changes over generations, blames television and points out that the only factor that is likely to increase a person's social involvement is education. He follows up on the social connections glanced at and questioned at the second of Section I and sums up the reasons for an overwhelming decline in social involvement. Interestingly, he claims the reason for Silicon Valley's greater influence in the world over Boston's Route 128 area is one of greater social capital.

  Section III is the kicker though, and the real problem is that you have to wade through 350 pages of dense and depressing graphs and statistics to get to it, but if you didn't then you wouldn't believe the conclusions. People with more social capital are healthier (backed up by a big metric buttload of statistics, summed up as "people who are socially disconnected are between two and five times more likely to die from all causes, compared with matched individuals who have close ties with family, friendsa nd the community."). Then, on a state-by-state basis, he shows the connection between social capital and health, mortality rate, tax evasion, civic equity and income distribution. It's powerful stuff, and a bit overwhelming, but the results are impressive none the less.

  His conclusions are simply that we need more social capital, more formal and informal group meetings and time spent with others, and that the net gain as individuals and as a society is enormous. He looks at where that's likely to happen and how: I think that's something that can be read from a business point of view as a very big picture. I think that there is an immediate benefit to any thinking about human resources in any way.

  I can't in all conscience recommend that you all read this. It's just too damn dense, too hard and slow to slog through. I'm hoping I'll get around to writing all the pages I dogeared down into a file, as there's some awesome statistics in there: at random, p 212 American adults spend 72 mins driving a day p 321 One half of people get their jobs through a friend or relative p 217 In 1890 the telephone took 67 years to grow from 1% to 75% saturation; in 1948 the television took 7. p 227 85% of adults watch prime-time television; more amazing is that during any given waking hour at least one quarter of adults report some TV viewing.

  Highly recommended for our ethnographers. Recommended for those of you who like backing speeches and presentations up with big-picture statistics. A good bathroom read, sort of a social "A Pattern Language."
  
  

• Fascinating footnotes save this thesis
  By A19BUUUHUESZ59 on 2001-07-30
  At first glance, Putnam's polemic appears to reach back to the good old days, to the Time That Never Was. After I read it, I learned I was right.

  I don't dispute the decay of America. After all, Ozzie and Harriet have been displaced by the Sopranos as America's favorite TV family.

  I disagree with the writer's glorification of fraternal clubs. In 1960, a fraternal group roped me into their dark membership lodge. These were old WASP guys (White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant) who drank beer, smoked cigarettes, and told racist jokes. On weekends, they took their guns to the mountains to kill animals. Then they justified all this with token once-a-year charity work. Not my kind of life style.

  I was surprised to see bowling elevated to an admirable activity. I did it long enough to learn that I didn't like being indoors on a sunny afternoon, choking on second-hand smoke, listening to the bartenders clang glasses as I adjusted my rent-a-shoes.

  This book misses important influences. Woodstock. Communes. Raves. Rock concerts that use the largest structures on Earth. Globalization. Counter culture. Cell phones. Beepers. MTV. Cyberspace. I enjoyed the cyber bashing with terms like cyberapartheid, cyberbalkanization and cyberghetto. The writer needs to spend less time with theories and statistics and go experience a chat room.

  This book also misses the global social unity of the youth movement through music. The most lyrics quoted belong to Bing Crosby while the Beatles are barely mentioned.

  Despite my criticisms, I liked this thought provoking theory: social capital - aka - friendship. I'd suggest that the writer read Aristotle's book on Friendship and distinguish between human nature and sociological surveys. I liked the wealth of research and statistics which, unfortunately, raised more unanswered questions. For example, as a teacher I was surprised to learn that the U.S. graduated 41% of high school students in 1960 but in 1998, 82% graduated (page 186). If so, where's the decay? Why the cry for school reform? It's progress, not devolution.

  The fascinating footnotes gave me a way to read between the lines and draw a conclusion which is diametrically opposed to the writer's. In the first chapter, footnote 18 (page 446) referred to the killer Timothy McVeigh. In a magazine article, McVeigh implies that he hatched his bombing plot with his pals in a bowling alley. The magazine writer observed: "We would have all been better off if Mr. McVeigh had gone bowling alone."

  Since those last two words are the title of the book, I wonder if there was a subliminal message here. If "social capital" results in mass murder, death and destruction, who needs it?
  
  

• An important book worthy of your attention!!!!
  By A1BVCH82W0M2W2 on 2004-04-28
  Robert Putnam has written one of the most important books I have read in a long, long time. When was the last time you called a friend or associate and proposed going out to a ballgame or a show only to be rebuffed because there was a game on TV that night? And how many times has that sort of thing happened to you? "Bowling Alone" discusses the reasons why so many people have become isolated and out of touch with family and friends. The reasons are myriad. Obviously, the aforementioned "boob tube" is a major contributing factor. But as Putnam discusses there are so many more reasons. The go-go 24 hour a day economy has robbed us all of much of our leisure time. And even when we do manage to get some time off everyone else we know is probably working. In addition, our society's seemingly endless quest for "personal fulfillment" has made people withdraw into themselves. Given all of the choices we are now presented with in media and other activities, there are fewer and fewer common experiences we can share at the watercooler.
  Putnam also laments the decline of the various fraternal organizations that sprang up in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Groups like the Elks, the Knights of Columbus and the VFW are all struggling to survive. No one joins groups like these anymore and that is really a shame. Our communities are the big losers because the services provided by these organizations have either disappeared or have had to be assumed by the government.
  This is an extremely thought provoking book. Putnam certainly diagnoses the problems and offers up some solutions. But these problems are not easily solved. If the events of 9/11 did not wake us all up, then one has to wonder if anything will.
  
  
• Putnam And The Flip Side Of McLuhan's Village Prophecy
  By A2KG8WLR1AKO12 on 2000-07-03
  Over thirty years ago Marshall McLuhan predicted that the world would inevitably become more like a village. Technological advances promised to bring people separated by long distances closer together. The overlooked logical conclusion, however, of this line of reasoning, was that this expanding village would ultimately devalue relationships primarily premised upon proximity. Our next door neighbors might become less important to us. This rightfully alarms Robert Putnam, and I'm personally relieved that these issues are not being ignored. Yet, unlike Professor Putnam, I believe that the good far outweighs the bad. The tradeoffs seem to be justified. Our current relationships, it can be argued, are becoming more genuine because location is increasingly less important when choosing friends and associates. Also, the clock will not be turned back; this genie will not be put back into the bottle. There may even be something of a "Moore's Law" inexorably pushing us ahead whether we like it or not. Stop the world, I want to get off, is simply not a viable option.

  I barely say hello to my neighbors. We don't even know each others' names. Nonetheless, we are polite towards each other and occasionally do favors when one of us is in need. I find nothing awkward or cold regarding this arrangement. We simply have little in common. Do our immediate physical communities inordinately suffer because of these evolving relationships? Or is there a "trickle down" effect rewarding everyone? I adamantly respond that the benefits are enormous if we are truly becoming better people for forming stronger and more enriching relationships. One should not ignore that cold fact that many people in the past lived lives of quiet desperation. You were often stuck in destructive and eviscerating relationships because it was very difficult to travel regularly more than a few miles away from your front door. Human beings usually lived out their complete existence within a 50 miles radius from whence they were born.

  I do not wish to take Bob Putnam's concerns lightly. The man is not a Luddite looking for any excuse to mock our new brave world. We must indeed be cautious not to be rude and indifferent towards those sharing our immediate geographical space. I am merely far more optimistic. The human race initially stumbles a bit when confronted by new technology. Eventually, though, we get back on our feet, discuss the problems, and work out a reasonable resolution.
  
  

• Highly thought-provoking and highly persuasive
  By A2FR8GG77M4TP7 on 2000-07-27
  On the positive side, Putnam's thesis is both important and fascinating. There is a ton of food for thought in this well written, thought-provoking and somewhat depressing scholarly work. Moreover, Putnam backs up his conclusions with solid, nearly overwhelming, evidence. I also thought that Chapter 6 (informal social connections) was particularly interesting because for most Americans, it is these connections that are of most importance. Section III (explaining the dropoff in social interactions) was also particularly excellent. The chapter on technology and mass media contains the most compelling evidence one will ever see for the dangers of television. For these reasons, I would certainly recommend the book to anyone interested in the state of American society, circa 2000. (I wonder what Toqueville would say if he were doing his travels now rather than in the 1830's and 1840's?)

  Havis said this, I could not quite bring myself to give the book 5 stars. So much of it was SO dense and statistic-laden that moving through much of the book was like walking through a 2-foot snowdrift--every step a chore. Not all of the book was like this, mind you, but alot of it was. Instead of 400 pages of text and 100 pages of footnotes and appendices, it might have been better if those numbers were reversed.

  Finally, I must comment on the many charts in Section 4 which show all of the correlations between levels of social capital in various States and various quality of life measures (health, violence, TV watching, crime, etc.) Based on these charts, if someone were coming to this country for the first time with their family and deciding where to settle, they would be foolish not to settle in one of the Dakotas, which scored first and second on just about every quality of life index. But something must be wrong with this picture. It just isn't too often that you hear people singing the praises of North Dakota or South Dakota as being Nirvana-like places to live (or about people moving there in droves). The same is true for the other states that scored well--e.g. Nebraska, Montana, etc. Maybe the depressing message is that the only way to have high levels of social capital (and all of the posiitve things that go with it) in 21st century America is to live in a place where there is so little going on and where the climate may be lousy, that people are forced to interact with another on a more frequent basis than if one lived in say, San Francisco. If so, that's a real Hobson's choice. You have a choice of living in a place where there is great community life (because there is nothing to do other than community life in that area) or live in place that has many more inherently desirable characteristics and far lower levels of social capital (and all the negatives that go with that). Perhaps it is too stark to present the choice this way, but that certainly seems to be the message to be derived from Putnam's charts.
  
  

• Changed the way I think about life
  By A2OYA9EMDZQNKT on 2002-04-23
  I saw this book quoted in the newspaper and decided to read it. Now I'm almost done with it and have been amazed by nearly every page. The discussion about the importance of social groups was eye-opening. Putnam would not be surprised that I, as a generation Xer, had never before given social groups much thought. Now I realize I've really been missing out. The discussions about social isolation and its potential causes were fascinating. I was pleased to find out about the effects cars and urban sprawl have on our lives. I was stunned to find out how much people watch television.

  Putnam's approach is wonderful. He backs himself up with scientific evidence and says so when the evidence is substandard or when he is giving his opinion. He tries hard to present the big picture and doesn't hesitate to consider disparate viewpoints.

  Putnam is obviously deeply concerned about the direction of American society, and I believe he has given us something of great value for making the future a better one. I recommend this book for anyone who wants to develop an understanding of how to make America a better place by improving his or her own life.
  
  

• Enlightening, if rather dry
  By A2E9X6B0UYCU60 on 2004-06-25
  Putnam's book presents a detailed look at the decline in overall social participation by Americans over the past half-century. From an analytical perspective, it is an impressive work, demonstrating clearly the general decrease in membership in social groups of both a formal and informal nature amongst Americans, then proposing and evaluating possible explanations. One thing I found strange was that, perhaps in an effort to avoid partisan issues and the like, the book doesn't look as much as it perhaps ought into the rather intense political changes over this period and consider how they may have altered prevailing attitudes.

  The book is a bit too academic to make for a compelling read, though, and runs a bit dull in spots. I found myself wishing for some more pedestrian discussion; some of the brief anecdotes in the book, like the one about the man who found himself a kidney donor through a bowling league, are quite interesting, and leave you wishing there were more of them.
  
  

• Limited view of history and sociology
  By A2MFH7EB3GIHJU on 2001-12-07
  Mr. Putnam makes the same mistake of all social commentators with a tunnel vision view of things.He writes as though societies should't change because change is inherently bad.He makes it sound as though the change of social paradigm is a new phenomenon in human civilization.He laments the fading away of the old lodges and elk clubs and the like,but fails to register the fact that these staples of fifty years ago were also new at one time and replaced older social orders.If we are a more closed off and separated society it is because we have chosen to be.If poeple still wanted bridge clubs then we'd have them,but people don't.Putnam does a good job of cataloging the shift in our society,but falls back into the sentimentality of longing for the good ole days,which by the way never exist except in people's minds.Such an incredible amount of change and speed of change has marked the last 20-30 years;it's only natural that new social paradigms are emerging as older ones fade out.A much better book could've been written on why people fear change and why people cannot accept the inevitable fact of change.
  
  
• A paradigm shift in thinking about ourselves
  By A9U8FM0N2P9LW on 2001-12-09
  As an inveterate reader of non-fiction, especially in the social sciences, I can't think of when I last wanted to give an individual book to virtually everyone I know! But that's how I feel about "Bowling Alone" by Robert Putnam. I want to give it to my fellow Girl Guide leaders as we struggle to find ways of maintaining membership among girls today. I want to give it to several friends who work in public health as they talk about ways of improving community health in tough economic times. I want to give it to friends who are parents of teenagers worrying about the future for their children. And I want to give it to friends who don't necessarily fall into any of those categories because it's just such an exciting and stimulating read.
  I should make it clear: That doesn't mean it's an easy read. It's not. Putnam's writing style is clear and remarkably free of sociological jargon, but this is still reading you have to work at. The book is full of graphs, charts, tables and results of countless sociological studies. That's part of what I really liked about it. It's not just one man's opinion, no matter how interesting that opinion might be. Every single conclusion Putnam draws is copiously backed up with facts and evidence from the many studies. It's also challenging reading because there are so many conclusions that make you stop and think, and challenge the ways we've all thought about our communities and what's changed about them and what's gone wrong with them in the past 20 or 30 years.
  Much of the criticism of Putnam's work has been that he just wants to turn the clock back to the days of "Leave it to Beaver" and "Father Knows Best." I don't think that's true. He recognizes clearly that those days in the '50s and '60s when the sense of community was at its highest also had their own problems -- racism, classism, and gender inequality among them. He doesn't want to return to that.
  Rather what I see him challenging us all to do is to build on the much greater tolerance we've built up today, and try to combine that with a renewed sense of community with all the benefits that could bring.
  I think it's a challenge that should be taken up by every single community in North America.
  
  
• Deals with an important issue.
  By A19AL8BAS9CMZ on 2000-10-23
  Bowling Alone studies the disintegration of American community and its consequences. The first and largest section deals with documenting this collapse. This section is full of interesting statistics, but is not the most important part of the book. I believe very few people would doubt that as a society we are becoming more disconnected from one another.

  The second section speculates as to what is causing this change for the worse, bringing up such factors as longer hours at work, urban sprawl and the negative effects of mass media, particularly television. One factor Putnam discusses, generational change, may be more of a symptom than a cause of the collapse of community. Understanding what has caused the loss of community in America is possibly the most difficult aspect of the book. None the less, I wish it could have been expanded.

  The third section deals with the consequences, from the more obvious effects on neighborhoods and schools, to our economic prosperity and individual health and happiness. The effect of a loss of community on our democracy is also documented. The increased use of professional campaign staff to replace volunteers and the need for corporate and other special interest money to maintain this form of "democracy" is a profound danger. This section is the most chilling part of the book and is the most important reason to read Bowling Alone.

  The fourth section deals with remedies for our predicament. The strongest part of this section is the comparison between our turn of the century and the previous one where we went from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era. In this section and the end of the previous one, some negative forms of community are discussed. These are institutions that are exclusive in nature and have negatively contributed to people's images of what it means to be a "joiner." Putnam effectively distinguishes between the type of community organization whose effect is positive and these others.

  Bowling Alone is a somewhat scholarly work and not pure entertainment. But it is important and enlightening and will hopefully contribute to the revival of American community that it seeks.
  
  

• Pulls Its Punches
  By A2B4YI30VPLUG7 on 2000-07-12
  I was disappointed in this book because it didn't explore what I think is clearly one of the major contributors to the decline in civic culture over the past thirty years: the movement of women into the workplace. Fascist, you say? I'm not suggesting this was a bad development. So much of the social capital discussed by the author, however, was created by women of previous generations, the rise of dual income families and single parenthood has so exacerbated the time crunch, that I have to wonder why the author didn't spend more time on this explenation. The answer, I suspect, is he didn't want to be called a gauleiter. One can point to a change, suggest it had consequences, and not necessarily favor going back (I don't, I think more people have to do what so many women in the past did for free). Still, good book.
  
  
• ZZZZZZZZZZZ.......
  By AZFX7FLEHCWXM on 2000-08-19
  The title of this book is so much more promising that the actual body. The premise that we have been becoming more disconnected as a society,and thus, are more dissatisfied is provocative. This is a book for those who enjoy graphs and indexes, and pie charts. I read it as a class assignment and it felt just like that...homework.
  
  
• most important read
  By ADVSRSN9G74MZ on 2003-07-28
  I found Bowling Alone to be the most important book I've read in a long time. It gives us an honest but sympathetic portraitof the increasing lonely and unconnected American people and the world we've created for ourselves. Putnam manages to display the many faces of community, or lack thereof, in a careful, balanced, and frigetning way. My only regret is that Putnam's "solutions" for our current atomization are less developed than the rest of the book.

  A must-read for anyone who cares about American society.
  
  

• A Cornucopia -- a mixed bag of fruit
  By A2TS996TI2E4L5 on 2000-06-18
  This book is disturbing. It convincingly demonstrates that webs of relationships have many positive yields - and that is threatening to the "silent majority" of Americans who have been victims of other persons, and who avoid others when possible. This book is filled with graphs and documentation showing (a) the decline in social participation, and (b) the negative outcomes of that slide. Unfortunately, it sometimes is so filled with facts that it is difficult to sort the forest from the trees. The author also freely draws conclusions as he goes (fact-opinion-fact-opinion). His evaluations sometimes seem contradictory. On p. 22 he states "Social capital... can be directed toward malevolent, antisocial purposes." On p. 287 he asks "Does social capital have salutary effects on individuals, communities, or even entire nations? Yes, an impressive and growing body of research suggests that civic connections help make us healthy, wealthy, and wise." This work is riddled with this variety of internal contradiction. But even so, it is a goldmine of information. Those of us who fled to cities to avoid the tight-knit relationships we smothered under in our Pleasantville home towns should read it -- maybe we made a mistake. On the other hand, this work does not make me want to join a church to increase my lifespan, nor to start holding barbecues for people who live in my neighborhood so our crime rate will go down. Other readers may not feel that way....
  
  
• Supremely interesting
  By A38KA1KIY2SJ5E on 2000-08-11
  I've never read a book with more facts that was more interesting. Mr. Putnam condenses massive amounts of data collected from surveys and polls that chronicles civic participation (social capital) of Americans since before World War II into a thoughtful work that ponders our declining interest in community participation. He considers all manner of data from "time diaries" to sales of playing cards, and presents a clear case that modern day Americans have a declining stock of social capital. However, the reader is not left in this depressing state. Mr. Putnam considers ways of increasing social capital and community involvement. Bowling Alone is highly readable, and in many ways inspiring. This is well worth reading.
  
  
• Don't belive the hype
  By ACVFUH7IQ76PI on 2003-10-22
  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 idea unless it was one of the areas where he was wrong. He will bury you in 20 pages of Evidence in numbers to support his idea, 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 think, wait he did not even factor in X, and that destorys anything he said. My class had to ask why we even read this, as it was so bad, and evry day was basicly a hour of talking about how wrong he is. This book should only be used to show how lots of numbers can make people fail to think logicly about anything. I know people will say this is a great book, but is worthless. Even the Title seems wrong, we have a very hard time find a lane that does not have Leagues going.
  
  
• Directly applicable to the lives of Public Administrators.
  By A4Y1ZRB1E09KB on 2003-12-14
  The concept of "Social Capital," as it is discussed in Bowling Alone (Putnam 2001) is an attempt to quantify the loss of community connectedness that has been happening over the years. Putnam draws his title from the fact that in recent years people have become more likely to bowl alone than in more social leagues.
  What is striking about the idea of Social Capital is its relevance. Public managers, especially those trying to garner public participation, will run headfirst into the phenomenon discussed in the book. According to Putnam's work on Social Capital, in the future, the Executive Director of a non-profit will have increasing difficulty soliciting volunteers to become involved in the non-profit's mission ((Putnam 1995). This is alarming because volunteers are a common resource such agencies turn to out of limited resources.
  More than just being a warning of things to come, Social Capital gives public managers a framework from which to define the problem and seek strategies to deal with it. Knowing why people are less inclined to volunteer their time to a non-profit lets the Executive Director see the problem for what it is and start to think of creative, targeted strategies that account for social capital and help recruit new volunteers.
  Furthermore, by taking into account Social Capital and seeking new ways to encourage civic participation, we do exactly what needs to be done in order to reinforce the very community we are trying to serve.
  
  
• Excellent review of the decline of community, but somewhat blinded to the causes
  By A680RUE1FDO8B on 2006-09-05
  Professor Putnam has written a superb review of the decliine of community in the United States through the end of the 20th Century. He points to television, urban and suburban sprawl, generational change and changing work habits as being the major causes of the collapse of the American community.
  
  He provides massive amounts of survey and study data to prove what most of already know: Americans don't get together with their friends, neighbors, fellow citizens or even their families as much as they used to.
  
  The presentation of the data is the best part of the book. Putnam's explanations are often insightful and though he also frequently turns a blind eye to the causes of the destruction of the American community, namely several decades of relentless left-wing attacks on American society. The church as a staple of the community? Destroyed by left-wing secularism. The family as a core unit of community? Destroyed in some places by left-wing policies that made family formation not only impossible (i.e., the ban on female headed welfare households admiting to a male presence)and by left-wing agitation for "sexual freedom."
  
  Interestingly, Putnam provides evidence of the proof of the foregoing and more in some of his own data. The places where "social capital" and community remain intact are the so-called Red States, the very communities Putnam's academic colleagues at Harvard deride day after day.
  
  Putnam's cure for the decline of American community, not surprisingly, requires lots of government intervention.
  
  Putnam's book is fascinating if you disagree with his reasoning. What would be more interesting is the same data reviewed by conservatives. There is no doubt that they would agree that the American community has declined, but the reasons given for it and the ways to its revival would be markedly different.
  
  Jerry
  
  

• Better Together: Restoring the American Community

• Better Together: Restoring the American Community
• Democracies in Flux: The Evolution of Social Capital in Contemporary Society
• Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life
• Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action (Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences)
• Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy