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Ellen Isaacs | |
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Bowling Alone is an impressive book that examines why American's participation in social activities has been declining since the 1960s. It addresses all the reasons you might anticipate, effectively disproving some and reinforcing others with good evidence. Putnam's methods are solid. He gathers an extraordinary amount of data from across a wide range of fields, and is appropriately conservative about drawing conclusions from them. He is very mindful that he is dealing mainly in correlations, which don't prove causation. Given that, he is able to piece together some very interesting conclusions. The first section of the book demonstrates how participation in social activities grew steadily from the early part of the century until the 60s, with a dip during the depression, and then has steadily declined ever since. He looks at just about any activity you can think of, including participation in organized activities (religion, clubs, civic organizations, school-related activities, and of course bowling teams) as well as informal social activities (having friends over for dinner, socializing at work, hanging out in bars, even going on picnics). Across the board, every one has declined in just about the same pattern. He explains how the declines have reduced "social capital," which is correlated with lower trust, higher crime, higher stress, and many other bad things. He makes a distinction between "briding capital" (light connections among people of different groups) and "bonding capital" (strong connections among those within groups), explaining that briding capital is more effective at bringing positive social effects. In the second section, he takes on the reasons for the decline. Since this isn't a mystery novel, I'll give the interesting punchline (which should whet your appetite for more): Mostly it's because each generation since the pre-war generation has been less socially inclined -- the people haven't been changing, the generations have. WWII had a lot to do with this. The other big reasons is television. TV has sucked up most of our free time, and each generation has watched more of it, more often alone, and more often just to "see what's on" rather than watching specific shows. More minor causes are the entry of women in the workforce (since women do a lot more organizing of social events than men) and urban sprawl (since it takes a lot more time and effort to see friends or attend events). Most other explanations don't pan out at all. The last section talks about the "So what?" He shows how social capital is the strongest correlate with quality of education (not government spending). Higher social capital is also related to safer neighborhoods, better health, more happiness, and higher tolerance. There is also an interesting discussion of the use of technology and its relationship to social capital, although he rightly says that it is far too early to tell what effect the Internet will have on social captial, since he is dealing in such broad trends. I got a lot out of reading this book and it has made me think about the choices I've made in favor of independence over the obligations of social membership. Although well written, the book was a little more academic than I expected. (Once he'd established his credibility, I probably would have believed him with a lot less data, especially in the first section.) I also wasn't quite clear on the "why" behind the generations finding. Surely the war did have an effect, but it didn't explain why the children of baby boomers are even more individualist than their parents. It seemed like there was more explaining to do. Putnam also has a silly last section that is a call to action that seems inappropriate for this book. Still, this is an impressive book that had changed my thinking. I hope it is used by public policy experts and other decision makers.
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