54 pages • 1 hour read
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
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Background
Critical Context: An Academic Debate Sparked
The publication of this work and a scholarly article of the same title in 1995 triggered academic literature on the topic of social capital. Already, others, such as Robert Bellah et al. (Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. California UP, 1985), had sparked a discussion about Americans’ withdrawal from community. Putnam offered statistical evidence to support these concerns. Many scholars lauded Putnam’s work for its insightfulness and continued to evaluate the state of social capital 20 years after its publication. Others have offered critical analysis (D. Stolle and M. Hooghe. “Review Article: Inaccurate, Exceptional, One-Sided or Irrelevant? The Debate about the Alleged Decline of Social Capital in Western Societies,” B.J.pol.S. 35, 2004, 149-67). A common critique concerns the conceptual vagueness surrounding the central concept of the book, social capital. Putnam’s definition is inconsistent, referring at times to social networks and at other times to levels of civic engagement. Scholars have additionally criticized his conflation of causality with correlation. Putnam assigns factors to blame for the decline of social capital with numeric specificity, and critics argue that such causality and specificity are not justified by his analysis.
Another important source of criticism concerns the inference of generational blame for the decline in social capital. The Baby Boomers created and participated in civil rights movements, student movements, anti-war movements, feminism, and environmental movements, as well as others. Putnam glosses over that fact. This generation has declining rates of participation in older types of organizations that Putnam himself admits have a history of racism and sexism. Thus, it is not that surprising that Baby Boomers have withdrawn from those organizations in favor of others. Critics also note that small group membership and volunteering have increased, dismissing Putnam’s concerns that volunteering has taken a more individualist form. In other words, they give more significance to the high rate of volunteering among Generation X rather than the fact that the groups are smaller. To the critics’ minds, Putnam is too quick to dismiss hopeful signs and fails to recognize that those older forms of organizations no longer fit the values of the upcoming generations.
Historical Context: The Reagan Era
Publishing the work at the end of the 20th century, Putnam is partly reacting to a context of materialistic values and political apathy. Missing in the 1980s and 1990s were grassroots social movements seeking idealistic goals. The Reagan Revolution, beginning with Ronald Reagan’s election to the Presidency in 1980, ushered in a prolonged period of conservative dominance. There were cuts to the social safety net, such as welfare benefits, anti-union policies, reductions in taxes, and substantial penalties for crimes, particularly drug crimes. Although Bill Clinton, a Democrat, served two terms in the Presidency in the 1990s, he ran as a centrist who heeded most of this agenda. It was in his presidency that a right to welfare was terminated and that the Effective Death Penalty Act was passed. At the time, politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, perceived election to be possible only if they were tough on crime and mindful of tax burdens.
As a result, there was a growing disparity in wealth between the rich and the poor in the 1990s. In fact, the US surpassed the United Kingdom in class disparity in this decade. The young were perceived to be less interested in politics than financial security. The public conversation was more about tax burdens than it was about equity or duty to others. The poor, in fact, were demonized as draining public resources. Putnam is writing in this context and is deeply worried about this rampant individualism and materialism that he sees as detrimental to society overall. Hoping to rekindle a public spiritedness, Putnam first seeks to go beyond perceptions of the era and provide hard evidence of these tendencies. His goal is to shift the emphasis from unfettered individualism to one centered in communities.
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