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Bowling alone : the collapse and revival of American community

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Bowling Alone at Twenty

Alexandra hudson.

Two decades ago, Robert Putnam published a book that provoked a small cottage industry's worth of responses from pundits and scholars alike. Bowling Alone , based on an essay of the same title Putnam had written for the Journal of Democracy five years earlier, made a claim that cut to the quick of American identity: Americans just aren't doing things together anymore. By choosing to engage in activities individually rather than communally, he asserted, we were putting at risk America's capacity to build social capital and undermining our national character.

It is difficult to overstate the influence of Putnam's thesis. His argument and evidence understandably caused much concern. A subgenre of books followed in Putnam's footsteps, decrying America's civic decline as well as its social fragmentation. Charles Murray's Coming Apart , J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy , Ben Sasse's Them , and Tim Carney's Alienated America are among the most recent and best known of this genre, but they represent just a few of the many civil society "declinists" that are so vocal today.

During the two decades following Bowling Alone 's publication, America has witnessed major changes that have fundamentally altered our social and communal lives. This makes revisiting Putnam's original investigation into American civic health a worthy exercise.

Today, the evidence on the health of civil society is in many ways just as distressing as it was 20 years ago. Not everything has gone as Putnam expected, however; some trends that have emerged since 2000 suggest forms of trouble he did not anticipate. And even in Bowling Alone , Putnam recognized a few trends that ran counter to his declinist thesis — some of which are still gravitating that way today.

Two decades on, the condition of American civil society is more complex than a modern reader of Bowling Alone might imagine. Yet the book's core insights remain essential for understanding our society's prospects. American civic life — as measured by a variety of metrics at earlier points in American history, at the time of Putnam's writing, and today — has endured ebbs and flows, dissipation and re-invention, offering reason to have faith in the resilience of America's civic tradition. In short, we have always been, and in our own way still are, the "nation of joiners" that historian Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., and Alexis de Tocqueville before him, praised. For all its troubles, our civic life is still full of the potential for renewal.

POLITICAL AND CIVIC LIFE

The first touchstone of civic health that Putnam took up in Bowling Alone was political participation — particularly voting rates. For Putnam, voter participation was important because it demonstrated the political interest and knowledge that served as a necessary precondition for other forms of civic involvement. The data he assessed showed voting to be in decline, and Putnam assumed that decline would continue. Surprisingly, though, it hasn't.

Putnam relayed that while 62.8% of the voting-age population turned out to vote in the 1960 presidential election, only 48.9% had done so in 1996. But the trend Putnam identified had begun to reverse even before Bowling Alone went to press. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, turnout in the 1996 election had sunk to a three-decade low and has since recovered about half the ground lost over those years. In 2000, turnout reached 54.7%. In 2004, the voting rate rose to 58.3%. And in 2008, it was 58.2%. Turnout has declined a bit since then, though it is still above 1996 levels: In 2012, 56.5% of the voting-age population cast votes, and in 2016, turnout was 56.0%.

The unexpected increase in voter participation in the 21st century is at least in part a function of increasing political polarization and a growing sense that a great deal hangs on each election. These are not necessarily indicators of civic health. But if voter engagement is a mark of civic energy, then turnout trends suggest that not all indicators continue to point in one direction.

Of course, though political participation is an important indicator of the civic health of any citizen-oriented political arrangement, it does not represent the totality of it. In the 1830s, Tocqueville noted that American involvement in politics is far from America's most distinctive feature:

In the United States, political associations are only one small part of the immense number of different types of associations found there. Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types — religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute....Nothing, in my view, more deserves attention than the intellectual and moral associations in America.

In line with this observation, Putnam examined a second touchstone of civic health: American associational life. This, he lamented, was rapidly collapsing.

In drawing this conclusion, Putnam looked at data on non-profits, which he viewed as essential building blocks of associational life. At first glance, the situation did not appear so dire. According to data from the Encyclopedia of Associations , between 1968 and 1997, the number of national non-profits in America roughly doubled — from 10,299 to 22,901. That rapid growth has only accelerated: From 2005 to 2015, the number of non-profits registered with the Internal Revenue Service increased by 10.4%, from 1.41 million to 1.56 million. If anything, these numbers actually understate the size and growth of the non-profit sector, since not all civic organizations are required to register with the government.

Yet Putnam, drawing on the work of sociologist David Horton Smith, observed that over half of those non-profits did not have any individual members. In Putnam's words, "[t]he organizational eruption between the 1960s and the 1990s represented a proliferation of letterheads, not a boom of grassroots participation."

As in the case of voting, however, there is some evidence of an increase in civic engagement since Putnam wrote. According to the American Time Use Survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the amount of time Americans spent volunteering has remained remarkably steady over the past 17 years. Princeton social scientist Robert Wuthnow argues that new, more innovative forms of civic engagement are replacing more formal ones. Rather than declining, then, American associational life may simply be transforming as people experiment with looser, more sporadic forms of volunteering.

When it comes to both political and civic engagement, it appears some of the trends that Putnam expected to continue declining have at least slowed, if not reversed, their fall.

CHURCH AND WORK

Along with concerns about the trajectory of civil society, Putnam lamented the decline in church membership and attendance. Religious institutions of all faith backgrounds, he argued, are crucial to the health of civil society: They serve as incubators for civic skills, promote community norms and interests, and offer a means of civic recruitment. Indeed, high religiosity rivals high educational attainment as a powerful correlate to civic engagement. Church attendance and membership are key predictors of both volunteering and giving. Religious communities are also particularly central to the social capital and civic engagement of many African Americans; as one leading analyst cited in Bowling Alone noted, "[t]he Black church functioned as the institutional center of the modern civil rights movement."

Putnam was rightfully concerned by trends indicating a decline in church attendance and religiosity in general. And those trends have largely persisted. When Putnam wrote Bowling Alone , American religious engagement had been declining for decades. The portion of Americans who said they ascribed to "no religion" in 1967 was just 2%. By 1990, that number had jumped to 11%. Today, there are so many religiously unaffiliated people that social scientists have coined a name for them: religious "nones." Contemporary survey data indicate that the percentage of Americans who identify as nones is about the same as that of Americans who identify as evangelical or Catholic — about 23% of Americans in 2019, according to Ryan Burge of Eastern Illinois University.

Putnam wrote at the time that the decline in church participation and affiliation was largely explained by generational differences: Younger generations are generally less observant than their parents and grandparents are. This explanation still applies, as today's older generations report religious affiliation at much higher rates than younger ones.

But those generational differences mask an underlying downward trend. It's not simply the case that Americans are less religious in their youth and then become more religious as they grow older. Consider the Baby Boomer generation: In 1980, 13% of 16-34-year-old Boomers — those born between 1946 and 1964 — expressed no religious preference. When members of Generation X — those born between 1965 and 1980 — were the same age, they were markedly less religious: In 1998, 20% of 18-33-year-old Gen-Xers expressed no religious preference. In 2018, between 34% and 36% of 18-34-year-old Millennials — those born between 1981 and 1996 — said the same.

As Putnam wrote, "When they were in their twenties (in the 1960s and 1970s), boomers were more disaffected from religious institutions than their predecessors had been in their twenties....Even now, in their forties and fifties...boomers remain less religiously involved than middle-aged people were a generation ago." In short, Boomers disaffected by religion found church later and in fewer numbers than previous generations had, thus failing to close the gap as they aged. This suggests that members of today's rising generations, who are even less attached to traditional religious institutions, will persist in that disaffiliation. As a result, the portion of the American public that identifies with traditional religion will continue to dwindle.

The rise of the religious nones does not necessarily mean that Americans are growing more secular. It does mean, however, that we are becoming less attached to religious communities . Americans, it seems, are praying alone. And while this may be better than not praying at all, it does bode poorly for our society.

A similar trend can be perceived in the world of work. In Bowling Alone , Putnam observed that work associations and unions — which were an important venue for developing sustained social ties — peaked in the 1950s, when 32.5% of American workers were union members. This percentage plateaued and then endured a sharp, sustained decline during the last third of the century, ultimately cratering at 14.1%. The downward trend in membership was evident not just in traditional labor unions, but in all professional associations, from the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and more. From 1977 to 1998, the number of registered nurses doubled (from 1 million to 2 million), yet the American Nurses Association membership fell so steeply that its "market share" of nurses fell by half, from 18% to just 9%.

Putnam suggested several reasons for the sharp decline in work-association membership. One possible explanation was the excessive dues and stale programs of traditional work associations, coupled with competing local and more specialized associations entering the mix. The more general rise of the "cult of the individual," with its diminished interest in solidarity and the collective good, may have also played a role.

Still another account of what caused these trends involves the rise of work insecurity. Even during economic booms, the business cycles of the 1980s and 1990s led to mass layoffs; one study found that nearly half of firms in America laid off workers — on average up to 10% of each company's workforce — between 1993 and 1994. What's more, technological advances made virtually all jobs contingent and susceptible to automation and displacement — a pattern we are all too familiar with today. Putnam surmised that these developments had led to a shift in how people viewed work and damaged workplace social ties. In short, people stopped expecting to make a lifelong commitment to a vocation.

Work associations have not recovered from the declines Putnam identified two decades ago, and additional changes in workplace dynamics that have occurred in the intervening years have only made matters worse. The rise of the "gig" economy, along with significant growth in the number of non-standard jobs — part-time employees, temp workers, independent contractors, and more — during the first two decades of the 21st century have only doubled down on the trends Putnam observed. In fact, 94% of net jobs created from 2005 to 2015 were these sorts of impermanent jobs. When focusing on both primary and secondary employment using a separate Federal Reserve survey conducted in 2015 and 2016, economists Anat Bracha and Mary Burke found much higher rates of informal work — estimating that a third of adults are engaged in some form of non-standard work today. Similarly, a 2018 Federal Reserve study found that roughly 30% of Americans perform gig work outside of their traditional job, and a recent examination of income-tax data found that "approximately 11 percent of the working adult population in the U.S. are working primarily as full-time independent contractors in the gig economy."

What do modern trends in the workplace reveal about connectedness and social capital in America today? Perhaps the most obvious is the fact that, as in other areas of modern life, Americans have become further atomized in the workplace. For many, this has led to a decline in social ties and increased economic anxiety.

But the news here may not be all bad. Some observers suggest that Americans are simply finding professional satisfaction in different ways now than they did when Putnam wrote Bowling Alone . As such, it is worth noting the upsides to the evolution of workplace dynamics in recent decades — among them greater independence, flatter hierarchies, and more reward for merit and productivity.

Though the primary reason Americans give for taking on a non-standard job is to supplement income, a recent report from the Harvard Business Review explored the motivations of a growing number of what the authors call "harmonic careerists." These are typically younger people who have opted out of taking on a single, monolithic career because they find it draining or unfulfilling. Instead, they construct their working lives by combining multiple non-standard jobs. While they may earn less money and have less stability than their peers who adopt a traditional career path, they gain greater flexibility and meaning. As one Gallup study concluded, "for this generation, a job is about more than a paycheck — it's about a purpose."

In this sense, then, straightforward social trends don't tell a simple story. Putnam's method, which might be summarized as assessing how America had changed since the early 1960s, tells a story of decline only if the American workplace of the 1960s was the ideal. But social changes involve tradeoffs, and in the world of work in particular, it is easy to overlook the advantages of newer arrangements.

VOLUNTEERING AND SOCIALIZING

Charitable and social activities are crucial to building a strong civic backbone in any society. In Bowling Alone , Putnam noted:

When philosophers speak in exalted tones of "civic engagement" and "democratic deliberation," we are inclined to think of community associations and public life as the higher form of social involvement, but in everyday life, friendship and other informal types of sociability provide crucial social support.

In keeping with this observation, Putnam divided builders of social capital into two categories using the Yiddish terms machers and schmoozers . Machers are those involved in formal, institutional civic engagement: They follow current events, attend church and club gatherings, donate blood, give speeches, and frequent local meetings. By contrast, schmoozers are less structured in their social activity. The domain of the schmoozer lies in socializing and communicating — attending or hosting social events, visiting with friends or relatives, and sending greeting cards. The presence of both machers and schmoozers is key to a well-functioning society. Unfortunately, Putnam noted that both were on the decline in America by the end of the 20th century.

In terms of macher activities, Putnam pointed to data on a key civic-health proxy measure: philanthropy. As with voting rates and the proliferation of non-profits, the evidence regarding rates of charitable activity among Americans appeared promising on paper. In 1977, Americans gave $142.4 billion to charity. That number reached $326.9 billion in 2000. By 2017, total private giving from individuals, foundations, and businesses totaled over $410 billion. Even in these inflation-adjusted terms, Americans appear to be more generous than ever.

Yet in Bowling Alone , Putnam drew an important distinction between two forms of charity: the "doing for" form and the "doing with" form. "Doing for" involves giving money or otherwise providing assistance at a distance, while "doing with" involves interpersonal engagement on behalf of people in need. Putnam noted a strong decline in rates of "doing with" in favor of "doing for" — a trend that has only intensified since 2000. In the late 1990s, nearly half of Americans undertook some volunteering behavior. Today, according to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, only an estimated 25.1% of American adults volunteer on a regular basis. Breaking this down along age cohorts, we find that Generation X had a volunteer rate of 28.9%, followed by Baby Boomers at 25.7%. Only 21.9% of Millennials regularly volunteer.

Even if Americans are giving more in terms of dollars, then, a decline in engagement with others has coincided with a decline in voluntary commitments of time for charitable causes. We may not be becoming a less generous nation, but we are becoming less social when engaging in charitable efforts.

And we have become less trusting of one another as well. Putnam relayed that from 1952 to 1998, the number of Americans who thought their fellow citizens led good and honest lives fell from 50% to less than 30%. Similarly, the number of people who agreed with the statement "most people can be trusted" declined from 55% in 1960 to around 35% in the 1980s and '90s, with high-school students being the group with the lowest reported generalized trust at 25%.

More recent data on the measures Putnam used to support his conclusion of a decline in trust — survey data about public perception of general trustworthiness, rates of return for U.S. Census forms, civility as measured by driving habits, and crime rates — are relatively mixed; some metrics have continued declining, while others have not. None, however, have indicated a dramatic reversal of the trends Putnam identified two decades ago. In fact, according to 2017 Gallup data, the decline in generalized trust has only grown more intense. Fully 81% of those polled say the state of moral values in America today is "only fair" or "poor." Meanwhile, 77% say the state of moral values is getting worse.

The evidence Putnam compiled on macher activities told a troubling story of fragmentation and decline — a story that has persisted in the past two decades. However, the recent evidence on some schmoozing trends — including socializing and sending greeting cards — may signal reason for hope.

To be sure, more formal forms of schmoozing may be on the decline. According to the DDB Needham Life Style archive cited by Putnam, in the 1970s, the average American entertained friends at home 15 times a year. By the late 1990s, that number had fallen to eight times annually. More recent data suggest this trend has persisted: A 2017 study found that only "half of Americans entertain guests in their homes at least once a month."

Meanwhile, results from the BLS American Time Use Survey show that the average American aged 15 years and older socialized for 0.72 hours per day in 2013. The 2019 survey found that Americans did so for 0.64 hours. Though these numbers represent a decline, the drop is not dramatic, especially when considering the margin of error. Moreover, these data do not capture all forms of entertaining in the home. The 2019 American Time Use Survey, for instance, indicates that informal, face-to-face socializing and communicating was the second-most common leisure activity for Americans. This suggests that while more formal forms of socializing have declined, looser schmoozing activity has remained at relatively constant levels since the time Putnam wrote.

Rates of communal drinking and dining — the bread and butter of good schmoozers  — were also falling when Bowling Alone was published. Putnam cited three independent studies showing that, from the mid-1970s to the 1990s, the frequency with which Americans, both married and single, went out to such venues as bars and taverns declined between 40% and 50%. This trend, too, has persisted: Americans are going out to eat and drink less often, and those who do are more likely to do so alone. In fact, Americans in general eat more than half of their meals by themselves.

Part of this trend can be explained by a cultural shift from a society that eats designated meals at designated times to one that eats on demand. Meal-delivery services like Uber Eats, Grubhub, and Seamless have made it easier for people to eat at their desks during the workday instead of going out to eat with co-workers. Similar services enable people to spend less time on home-cooked meals — in 2017, a quarter of American adults purchased meal-delivery kits like Blue Apron, Purple Carrot, and HelloFresh, which deliver apportioned ingredients with recipes and cooking instructions right to people's homes. Theoretically, having to spend less time shopping for and preparing food could allow more time for togetherness. But for many people, these innovations appear to be enabling them to continue eating meals by themselves.

The coronavirus pandemic, however, may be starting to reverse that trend. Recent survey data suggest that, during the months of lockdowns and physical distancing, Americans have been eating at home — and families have been dining together — more often than they had before the virus. While it's too early to tell whether these changes will be permanent, such evidence offers some reason for hope.

Putnam also looked at another key schmoozer activity — the practice of sending greeting cards — and found that card-writing among all generations was in decline by the turn of the century. The rise of social media in the years following Bowling Alone might lead one to assume this trend has become more pronounced. Yet surprisingly, the decline Putnam observed has slowed in recent years. Americans may be sending far less mail than they used to (according to the U.S. Postal Service, the volume of mail in the United States has dropped 43% since 2001), but revenue for greeting cards is slightly on the rise.

Experts say that the relative success of online greeting-card companies like Minted, Etsy, and Shutterfly suggests that Millennials are driving much of this growth. Data from Hallmark support this theory: Millennials' spending on greeting cards is growing faster than that of any other generation. According to focus groups convened by the company, 72% of Millennials enjoy giving greeting cards, and a similar percentage save the cards they receive. Many cited social-media fatigue, the ephemeral nature of online communication, and the desire for interactions that had a personal touch as motivators for sending cards.

In some sense, then, Americans are becoming less social. Yet Americans' social lives, like their vocational lives, have undergone dramatic transformations in recent decades. The results of these transformations may suggest that, rather than withdrawing from society, Americans are simply exchanging more structured social activities for less structured ones. In other words, the balance may have simply tilted away from maching and in favor of schmoozing . Studies on one of the primary drivers of this trend — technological innovation — suggest that this may not be a wholly negative development.

SOCIAL CAPITAL IN THE INFORMATION AGE

In addition to the evidence supporting his thesis of American civic decline, in Bowling Alone , Putnam looked at trends that ran counter to his argument, including advances in telecommunications that have led to the rise of social movements.

He claimed, for instance, that while the telephone reduced face-to-face socializing, it also reduced loneliness. The same can be said more recently of the internet. Both the telephone and the internet have liberated us from the constraints of physical space, thereby helping us foster a sense of psychological neighborliness. Indeed, Putnam found the telephone tended to reinforce, rather than replace, existing personal networks; after all, one cannot meet new friends via the telephone alone.

Today, and increasingly in the years since Putnam's writing, people do meet new friends on the internet — through social media, chat rooms, online dating, and many other means. In fact the internet, far more than the telephone, has the potential to act as a substitute, and not just a supplement, for traditional socialization.

This new way of communicating does have its costs, as some aspects of online communication create barriers to building relationships. Molly Crockett, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale University who studies altruism and human decision-making, hypothesizes that social-media interactions depersonalize interlocutors, rendering us less likely to feel empathy for others and making it easier for us to shame opponents. She has also written about the relatively low transaction costs of expressing moral outrage online. As our very idea of what social engagement means comes to be shaped by a medium that emphasizes expression over time spent together in person, it is important to be wary of these drawbacks and to mitigate them where possible.

But internet-enabled communication does have its advantages, too. Some forms of organizing, activism, socializing, and mutual aid are greatly enabled by online interaction. In fact, there are examples of digital communication building social capital and promoting democratic ideals in unprecedented ways.

Take the story of Manal al-Sharif, a Saudi woman whose life changed dramatically after she posted a video of herself driving — in defiance of a de facto ban on female drivers in Saudi Arabia — on YouTube. Her video went viral immediately, but it wasn't until she was released from jail as a result of her video that she realized its full impact. The free world lauded al-Sharif as the "Saudi Rosa Parks"; she was overwhelmed at the outpouring of support from strangers on Twitter and Facebook. Her act inspired other women to do the same, and drew attention to other human-rights abuses in Saudi Arabia. Al-Sharif is even credited with the ultimate end of the ban, which occurred six years after she posted her video.

As Putnam rightly noted in Bowling Alone , the most important question left to answer is not what the internet will do to us, but what we will do with it. How can we use the potential of computer-mediated communication to make our investments in social capital more productive? How can we harness this promising technology to thicken our community ties and relationships? How can we develop the technology to enhance social presence, social feedback, and social cues? These questions and others are among the most relevant in our hyper-connected digital era, and they remain unanswered; after all, we are still in the early years of the digital age.

OPEN QUESTIONS

Bowling Alone has made its way into the pantheon of modern social science for good reason: It sheds light on some crucial truths about modern American society. Its arguments have so thoroughly penetrated our self-understanding that we naturally assume they have grown more true over time.

But the reality of American social life is not quite so simple or so dark. The data reveal a much more nuanced picture of traditional means of building and deploying social capital today. If we avoid treating the America of the mid-20th century as the norm and instead look at both the condition of long-standing social and civic institutions and the emergence of new ones, we would find that American society never stops innovating and experimenting with new forms of common action.

This "civic churn" — a term that describes the creative destruction of American civic institutions and activity — is nothing new. When Tocqueville traversed America examining our norms, institutions, and culture, the national benevolent associations and temperance societies he encountered were relatively new developments. Responding to social and demographic changes related to the increasing integration of the country as a single nation, these groups replaced older civic assemblies like craft guilds and town meetings. Labor unions also began to emerge over the course of the following hundred years as the American economy became more industrialized. Urban missions and settlement houses, which began in England in the 1880s and gradually moved into America, were relatively unknown until the expansion of cities, and it was only at the end of the 19th century that they were seen as an obvious form of civic involvement.

Many areas of associational life remain under-studied or could use the kind of book-length treatment that Putnam devoted to the associations of the mid- to late-20th century. Book clubs are not new, but they appear to be playing a community-building role — perhaps particularly in the upper-middle class — that has yet to be studied. The role of coffee shops in urban areas may be taking on the role that bars and pubs once did, yet there is little formal data on such communal watering holes. Community libraries offer a similar story, as there is limited data on their role as a point of civic and social engagement. The role of youth sports is also an important and under-studied area. Unfortunately, as they have become politicized in the era of Title IX, social scientists have tended to avoid them, leaving crucial questions unanswered.

There is also far too little data on civic and social life among minority communities. Jack and Jill organizations, groups affiliated with churches, and black sororities and fraternity groups that engage in service activities all call for greater attention from scholars. Another under-studied area is the rise and endurance of "giving circles" among minorities and women that serve as a democratizing influence on philanthropy and provide a source of social capital and trust.

Some ebb and flow in American social and civic life is both inevitable and natural. As in Putnam's time, the evidence of American civic health is often mixed. Social, demographic, and technological changes have all put stress on older forms of socializing, but they may also drive the evolution of new ones that are better suited to modern times.

Whatever challenges our social institutions may confront, mankind's underlying hunger for engagement and community can never be eradicated. The fact that such hunger exists does not mean we will succeed in addressing it, but it does mean we are likely to keep trying. In fact, it may be that the alarmism following Putnam's original proclamation of civic atrophy deserves some credit for subsequent bursts of civic renewal. Americans in recent decades may have taken it upon themselves to create new ways of being there for one another. All who are engaged in that effort today owe Putnam a debt of gratitude.

Alexandra Hudson is a former policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Education and a current Novak Fellow writing a book on civility and American civic renewal for St. Martin’s Press.

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• Journal of Democracy

Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital

• Robert D. Putnam
• Johns Hopkins University Press
• Volume 6, Number 1, January 1995
• 10.1353/jod.1995.0002
• View Citation

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Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated: The Collapse and Revival of American Community Paperback – October 13, 2020

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• Print length 592 pages
• Language English
• Publication date October 13, 2020
• Dimensions 6 x 1.48 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 1982130849
• ISBN-13 978-1982130848
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About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., chapter 1 thinking about social change in america no one is left from the glenn valley, pennsylvania, bridge club who can tell us precisely when or why the group broke up, even though its forty-odd members were still playing regularly as recently as 1990, just as they had done for more than half a century. the shock in the little rock, arkansas, sertoma club, however, is still painful: in the mid-1980s, nearly fifty people had attended the weekly luncheon to plan activities to help the hearing- and speech-impaired, but a decade later only seven regulars continued to show up. the roanoke, virginia, chapter of the national association for the advancement of colored people (naacp) had been an active force for civil rights since 1918, but during the 1990s membership withered from about 2,500 to a few hundred. by november 1998 even a heated contest for president drew only fifty-seven voting members. black city councillor carroll swain observed ruefully, “some people today are a wee bit complacent until something jumps up and bites them.” vfw post 2378 in berwyn, illinois, a blue-collar suburb of chicago, was long a bustling “home away from home” for local veterans and a kind of working-class country club for the neighborhood, hosting wedding receptions and class reunions. by 1999, however, membership had so dwindled that it was a struggle just to pay taxes on the yellow brick post hall. although numerous veterans of vietnam and the post-vietnam military lived in the area, tom kissell, national membership director for the vfw, observed, “kids today just aren’t joiners.” 1 the charity league of dallas had met every friday morning for fifty-seven years to sew, knit, and visit, but on april 30, 1999, they held their last meeting; the average age of the group had risen to eighty, the last new member had joined two years earlier, and president pat dilbeck said ruefully, “i feel like this is a sinking ship.” precisely three days later and 1,200 miles to the northeast, the vassar alumnae of washington, d.c., closed down their fifty-first—and last—annual book sale. even though they aimed to sell more than one hundred thousand books to benefit college scholarships in the 1999 event, co-chair alix myerson explained, the volunteers who ran the program “are in their sixties, seventies, and eighties. they’re dying, and they’re not replaceable.” meanwhile, as tewksbury memorial high school (tmhs), just north of boston, opened in the fall of 1999, forty brand-new royal blue uniforms newly purchased for the marching band remained in storage, since only four students signed up to play. roger whittlesey, tmhs band director, recalled that twenty years earlier the band numbered more than eighty, but participation had waned ever since. 2 somehow in the last several decades of the twentieth century all these community groups and tens of thousands like them across america began to fade. it wasn’t so much that old members dropped out—at least not any more rapidly than age and the accidents of life had always meant. but community organizations were no longer continuously revitalized, as they had been in the past, by freshets of new members. organizational leaders were flummoxed. for years they assumed that their problem must have local roots or at least that it was peculiar to their organization, so they commissioned dozens of studies to recommend reforms. 3 the slowdown was puzzling because for as long as anyone could remember, membership rolls and activity lists had lengthened steadily. in the 1960s, in fact, community groups across america had seemed to stand on the threshold of a new era of expanded involvement. except for the civic drought induced by the great depression, their activity had shot up year after year, cultivated by assiduous civic gardeners and watered by increasing affluence and education. each annual report registered rising membership. churches and synagogues were packed, as more americans worshiped together than only a few decades earlier, perhaps more than ever in american history. moreover, americans seemed to have time on their hands. a 1958 study under the auspices of the newly inaugurated center for the study of leisure at the university of chicago fretted that “the most dangerous threat hanging over american society is the threat of leisure,” a startling claim in the decade in which the soviets got the bomb. 4 life magazine echoed the warning about the new challenge of free time: “americans now face a glut of leisure,” ran a headline in february 1964. “the task ahead: how to take life easy.” as a matter of fact, mankind now possesses for the first time the tools and knowledge to create whatever kind of world he wants…. despite our protestant ethic, there are many signs that the message is beginning to get through to some people…. not only are americans flocking into bowling leagues and garden clubs, they are satisfying their gregarious urges in countless neighborhood committees to improve the local roads and garbage collections and to hound their public servants into doing what the name implies. 5 the civic-minded world war ii generation was, as its own john f. kennedy proclaimed at his inauguration, picking up the torch of leadership, not only in the nation’s highest office, but in cities and towns across the land. summarizing dozens of studies, political scientist robert e. lane wrote in 1959 that “the ratio of political activists to the general population, and even the ratio of male activists to the male population, has generally increased over the past fifty years.” as the 1960s ended, sociologists daniel bell and virginia held reported that “there is more participation than ever before in america… and more opportunity for the active interested person to express his personal and political concerns.” 6 even the simplest political act, voting, was becoming ever more common. from 1920, when women got the vote, through 1960, turnout in presidential elections had risen at the rate of 1.6 percent every four years, so on a simple straight-line projection it seemed reasonable, as a leading political scientist later observed, to expect turnout to be nearly 70 percent and rising on the nation’s two hundredth birthday in 1976. 7 by 1965 disrespect for public life, so endemic in our history, seemed to be waning. gallup pollsters discovered that the number of americans who would like to see their children “go into politics as a life’s work” had nearly doubled over little more than a decade. although this gauge of esteem for politics stood at only 36 percent, it had never before been recorded so high, nor has it since. more strikingly, americans felt increased confidence in their neighbors. the proportion that agreed that “most people can be trusted,” for example, rose from an already high 66 percent during and after world war ii to a peak of 77 percent in 1964. 8 the fifties and sixties were hardly a “golden age,” especially for those americans who were marginalized because of their race or gender or social class or sexual orientation. segregation, by race legally and by gender socially, was the norm, and intolerance, though declining, was still disturbingly high. environmental degradation had only just been exposed by rachel carson, and betty friedan had not yet deconstructed the feminine mystique. grinding rural poverty had still to be discovered by the national media. infant mortality, a standard measure of public health, stood at twenty-six per one thousand births—forty-four per one thousand for black infants—in 1960, nearly four times worse than those indexes would be at the end of the century. america in life was white, straight, christian, comfortable, and (in the public square, at least) male. 9 social reformers had their work cut out for them. however, engagement in community affairs and the sense of shared identity and reciprocity had never been greater in modern america, so the prospects for broad-based civic mobilization to address our national failings seemed bright. the signs of burgeoning civic vitality were also favorable among the younger generation, as the first of the baby boomers approached college. dozens of studies confirmed that education was by far the best predictor of engagement in civic life, and universities were in the midst of the most far-reaching expansion in american history. education seemed the key to both greater tolerance and greater social involvement. simultaneously shamed and inspired by the quickening struggle for civil rights launched by young african americans in the south, white colleges in the north began to awaken from the silence of the fifties. describing the induction of this new generation into the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, sociologist doug mcadam emphasizes their self-assurance: we were a “can do” people, who accomplished whatever we set out to do. we had licked the depression, turned the tide in world war ii, and rebuilt europe after the war…. freedom summer was an audacious undertaking consistent with the exaggerated sense of importance and potency shared by the privileged members of america’s postwar generation. 10 the baby boom meant that america’s population was unusually young, whereas civic involvement generally doesn’t bloom until middle age. in the short run, therefore, our youthful demography actually tended to dampen the ebullience of civil society. but that very bulge at the bottom of the nation’s demographic pyramid boded well for the future of community organizations, for they could look forward to swelling membership rolls in the 1980s, when the boomers would reach the peak “joining” years of the life cycle. and in the meantime, the bull session buzz about “participatory democracy” and “all power to the people” seemed to augur ever more widespread engagement in community affairs. one of america’s most acute social observers prophesied in 1968, “participatory democracy has all along been the political style (if not the slogan) of the american middle and upper class. it will become a more widespread style as more persons enter into those classes.” 11 never in our history had the future of civic life looked brighter. what happened next to civic and social life in american communities is the subject of this book. in recent years social scientists have framed concerns about the changing character of american society in terms of the concept of “social capital.” by analogy with notions of physical capital and human capital—tools and training that enhance individual productivity—the core idea of social capital theory is that social networks have value. just as a screwdriver (physical capital) or a college education (human capital) can increase productivity (both individual and collective), so too social contacts affect the productivity of individuals and groups. whereas physical capital refers to physical objects and human capital refers to properties of individuals, social capital refers to connections among individuals—social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them. in that sense social capital is closely related to what some have called “civic virtue.” the difference is that “social capital” calls attention to the fact that civic virtue is most powerful when embedded in a dense network of reciprocal social relations. a society of many virtuous but isolated individuals is not necessarily rich in social capital. the term social capital itself turns out to have been independently invented at least six times over the twentieth century, each time to call attention to the ways in which our lives are made more productive by social ties. the first known use of the concept was not by some cloistered theoretician, but by a practical reformer of the progressive era—l. j. hanifan, state supervisor of rural schools in west virginia. writing in 1916 to urge the importance of community involvement for successful schools, hanifan invoked the idea of “social capital” to explain why. for hanifan, social capital referred to those tangible substances [that] count for most in the daily lives of people: namely good will, fellowship, sympathy, and social intercourse among the individuals and families who make up a social unit…. the individual is helpless socially, if left to himself…. if he comes into contact with his neighbor, and they with other neighbors, there will be an accumulation of social capital, which may immediately satisfy his social needs and which may bear a social potentiality sufficient to the substantial improvement of living conditions in the whole community. the community as a whole will benefit by the coöperation of all its parts, while the individual will find in his associations the advantages of the help, the sympathy, and the fellowship of his neighbors. 12 hanifan’s account of social capital anticipated virtually all the crucial elements in later interpretations, but his conceptual invention apparently attracted no notice from other social commentators and disappeared without a trace. but like sunken treasure recurrently revealed by shifting sands and tides, the same idea was independently rediscovered in the 1950s by canadian sociologists to characterize the club memberships of arriviste suburbanites, in the 1960s by urbanist jane jacobs to laud neighborliness in the modern metropolis, in the 1970s by economist glenn loury to analyze the social legacy of slavery, and in the 1980s by french social theorist pierre bourdieu and by german economist ekkehart schlicht to underline the social and economic resources embodied in social networks. sociologist james s. coleman put the term firmly and finally on the intellectual agenda in the late 1980s, using it (as hanifan had originally done) to highlight the social context of education. 13 as this array of independent coinages indicates, social capital has both an individual and a collective aspect—a private face and a public face. first, individuals form connections that benefit our own interests. one pervasive strategem of ambitious job seekers is “networking,” for most of us get our jobs because of whom we know, not what we know—that is, our social capital, not our human capital. economic sociologist ronald burt has shown that executives with bounteous rolodex files enjoy faster career advancement. nor is the private return to social capital limited to economic rewards. as claude s. fischer, a sociologist of friendship, has noted, “social networks are important in all our lives, often for finding jobs, more often for finding a helping hand, companionship, or a shoulder to cry on.” 14 if individual clout and companionship were all there were to social capital, we’d expect foresighted, self-interested individuals to invest the right amount of time and energy in creating or acquiring it. however, social capital also can have “externalities” that affect the wider community, so that not all the costs and benefits of social connections accrue to the person making the contact. 15 as we shall see later in this book, a well-connected individual in a poorly connected society is not as productive as a well-connected individual in a well-connected society. and even a poorly connected individual may derive some of the spillover benefits from living in a well-connected community. if the crime rate in my neighborhood is lowered by neighbors keeping an eye on one another’s homes, i benefit even if i personally spend most of my time on the road and never even nod to another resident on the street. social capital can thus be simultaneously a “private good” and a “public good.” some of the benefit from an investment in social capital goes to bystanders, while some of the benefit redounds to the immediate interest of the person making the investment. for example, service clubs, like rotary or lions, mobilize local energies to raise scholarships or fight disease at the same time that they provide members with friendships and business connections that pay off personally. social connections are also important for the rules of conduct that they sustain. networks involve (almost by definition) mutual obligations; they are not interesting as mere “contacts.” networks of community engagement foster sturdy norms of reciprocity: i’ll do this for you now, in the expectation that you (or perhaps someone else) will return the favor. “social capital is akin to what tom wolfe called ‘the favor bank’ in his novel the bonfire of the vanities, ” notes economist robert frank. 16 it was, however, neither a novelist nor an economist, but yogi berra who offered the most succinct definition of reciprocity: “if you don’t go to somebody’s funeral, they won’t come to yours.” sometimes, as in these cases, reciprocity is specific: i’ll do this for you if you do that for me. even more valuable, however, is a norm of generalized reciprocity: i’ll do this for you without expecting anything specific back from you, in the confident expectation that someone else will do something for me down the road. the golden rule is one formulation of generalized reciprocity. equally instructive is the t-shirt slogan used by the gold beach, oregon, volunteer fire department to publicize their annual fund-raising effort: “come to our breakfast, we’ll come to your fire.” “we act on a norm of specific reciprocity,” the firefighters seem to be saying, but onlookers smile because they recognize the underlying norm of generalized reciprocity—the firefighters will come even if you don’t. when blanche dubois depended on the kindness of strangers, she too was relying on generalized reciprocity. a society characterized by generalized reciprocity is more efficient than a distrustful society, for the same reason that money is more efficient than barter. if we don’t have to balance every exchange instantly, we can get a lot more accomplished. trustworthiness lubricates social life. frequent interaction among a diverse set of people tends to produce a norm of generalized reciprocity. civic engagement and social capital entail mutual obligation and responsibility for action. as l. j. hanifan and his successors recognized, social networks and norms of reciprocity can facilitate cooperation for mutual benefit. when economic and political dealing is embedded in dense networks of social interaction, incentives for opportunism and malfeasance are reduced. this is why the diamond trade, with its extreme possibilities for fraud, is concentrated within close-knit ethnic enclaves. dense social ties facilitate gossip and other valuable ways of cultivating reputation—an essential foundation for trust in a complex society. physical capital is not a single “thing,” and different forms of physical capital are not interchangeable. an eggbeater and an aircraft carrier both appear as physical capital in our national accounts, but the eggbeater is not much use for national defense, and the carrier would not be much help with your morning omelet. similarly, social capital—that is, social networks and the associated norms of reciprocity—comes in many different shapes and sizes with many different uses. your extended family represents a form of social capital, as do your sunday school class, the regulars who play poker on your commuter train, your college roommates, the civic organizations to which you belong, the internet chat group in which you participate, and the network of professional acquaintances recorded in your address book. sometimes “social capital,” like its conceptual cousin “community,” sounds warm and cuddly. urban sociologist xavier de souza briggs, however, properly warns us to beware of a treacly sweet, “kumbaya” interpretation of social capital. 17 networks and the associated norms of reciprocity are generally good for those inside the network, but the external effects of social capital are by no means always positive. it was social capital, for example, that enabled timothy mcveigh to bomb the alfred p. murrah federal building in oklahoma city. mcveigh’s network of friends, bound together by a norm of reciprocity, enabled him to do what he could not have done alone. similarly, urban gangs, nimby (“not in my backyard”) movements, and power elites often exploit social capital to achieve ends that are antisocial from a wider perspective. indeed, it is rhetorically useful for such groups to obscure the difference between the pro-social and antisocial consequences of community organizations. when floridians objected to plans by the ku klux klan to “adopt a highway,” jeff coleman, grand wizard of the royal knights of the kkk, protested, “really, we’re just like the lions or the elks. we want to be involved in the community.” 18 social capital, in short, can be directed toward malevolent, antisocial purposes, just like any other form of capital. 19 (mcveigh also relied on physical capital, like the explosive-laden truck, and human capital, like bomb-making expertise, to achieve his purposes.) therefore it is important to ask how the positive consequences of social capital—mutual support, cooperation, trust, institutional effectiveness—can be maximized and the negative manifestations—sectarianism, ethnocentrism, corruption—minimized. toward this end, scholars have begun to distinguish many different forms of social capital. some forms involve repeated, intensive, multistranded networks—like a group of steelworkers who meet for drinks every friday after work and see each other at mass on sunday—and some are episodic, single stranded, and anonymous, like the faintly familiar face you see several times a month in the supermarket checkout line. some types of social capital, like a parent-teacher association, are formally organized, with incorporation papers, regular meetings, a written constitution, and connection to a national federation, whereas others, like a pickup basketball game, are more informal. some forms of social capital, like a volunteer ambulance squad, have explicit public-regarding purposes; some, like a bridge club, exist for the private enjoyment of the members; and some, like the rotary club mentioned earlier, serve both public and private ends. of all the dimensions along which forms of social capital vary, perhaps the most important is the distinction between bridging (or inclusive) and bonding (or exclusive). 20 some forms of social capital are, by choice or necessity, inward looking and tend to reinforce exclusive identities and homogeneous groups. examples of bonding social capital include ethnic fraternal organizations, church-based women’s reading groups, and fashionable country clubs. other networks are outward looking and encompass people across diverse social cleavages. examples of bridging social capital include the civil rights movement, many youth service groups, and ecumenical religious organizations. bonding social capital is good for undergirding specific reciprocity and mobilizing solidarity. dense networks in ethnic enclaves, for example, provide crucial social and psychological support for less fortunate members of the community, while furnishing start-up financing, markets, and reliable labor for local entrepreneurs. bridging networks, by contrast, are better for linkage to external assets and for information diffusion. economic sociologist mark granovetter has pointed out that when seeking jobs—or political allies—the “weak” ties that link me to distant acquaintances who move in different circles from mine are actually more valuable than the “strong” ties that link me to relatives and intimate friends whose sociological niche is very like my own. bonding social capital is, as xavier de souza briggs puts it, good for “getting by,” but bridging social capital is crucial for “getting ahead.” 21 moreover, bridging social capital can generate broader identities and reciprocity, whereas bonding social capital bolsters our narrower selves. in 1829 at the founding of a community lyceum in the bustling whaling port of new bedford, massachusetts, thomas greene eloquently expressed this crucial insight: we come from all the divisions, ranks and classes of society… to teach and to be taught in our turn. while we mingle together in these pursuits, we shall learn to know each other more intimately; we shall remove many of the prejudices which ignorance or partial acquaintance with each other had fostered…. in the parties and sects into which we are divided, we sometimes learn to love our brother at the expense of him whom we do not in so many respects regard as a brother…. we may return to our homes and firesides [from the lyceum] with kindlier feelings toward one another, because we have learned to know one another better. 22 bonding social capital constitutes a kind of sociological superglue, whereas bridging social capital provides a sociological wd-40. bonding social capital, by creating strong in-group loyalty, may also create strong out-group antagonism, as thomas greene and his neighbors in new bedford knew, and for that reason we might expect negative external effects to be more common with this form of social capital. nevertheless, under many circumstances both bridging and bonding social capital can have powerfully positive social effects. many groups simultaneously bond along some social dimensions and bridge across others. the black church, for example, brings together people of the same race and religion across class lines. the knights of columbus was created to bridge cleavages among different ethnic communities while bonding along religious and gender lines. internet chat groups may bridge across geography, gender, age, and religion, while being tightly homogeneous in education and ideology. in short, bonding and bridging are not “either-or” categories into which social networks can be neatly divided, but “more or less” dimensions along which we can compare different forms of social capital. it would obviously be valuable to have distinct measures of the evolution of these various forms of social capital over time. however, like researchers on global warming, we must make do with the imperfect evidence that we can find, not merely lament its deficiencies. exhaustive descriptions of social networks in america—even at a single point in time—do not exist. i have found no reliable, comprehensive, nationwide measures of social capital that neatly distinguish “bridgingness” and “bondingness.” in our empirical account of recent social trends in this book, therefore, this distinction will be less prominent than i would prefer. on the other hand, we must keep this conceptual differentiation at the back of our minds as we proceed, recognizing that bridging and bonding social capital are not interchangeable. “social capital” is to some extent merely new language for a very old debate in american intellectual circles. community has warred incessantly with individualism for preeminence in our political hagiology. liberation from ossified community bonds is a recurrent and honored theme in our culture, from the pilgrims’ storied escape from religious convention in the seventeenth century to the lyric nineteenth-century paeans to individualism by emerson (“self-reliance”), thoreau (“civil disobedience”), and whitman (“song of myself”) to sherwood anderson’s twentieth-century celebration of the struggle against conformism by ordinary citizens in winesburg, ohio to the latest clint eastwood film. even alexis de tocqueville, patron saint of american communitarians, acknowledged the uniquely democratic claim of individualism, “a calm and considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends; with this little society formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the greater society to look after itself.” 23 our national myths often exaggerate the role of individual heroes and understate the importance of collective effort. historian david hackett fischer’s gripping account of opening night in the american revolution, for example, reminds us that paul revere’s alarum was successful only because of networks of civic engagement in the middlesex villages. towns without well-organized local militia, no matter how patriotic their inhabitants, were awol from lexington and concord. 24 nevertheless, the myth of rugged individualism continues to strike a powerful inner chord in the american psyche. debates about the waxing and waning of “community” have been endemic for at least two centuries. “declensionist narratives”—postmodernist jargon for tales of decline and fall—have a long pedigree in our letters. we seem perennially tempted to contrast our tawdry todays with past golden ages. we apparently share this nostalgic predilection with the rest of humanity. as sociologist barry wellman observes, it is likely that pundits have worried about the impact of social change on communities ever since human beings ventured beyond their caves…. in the [past] two centuries many leading social commentators have been gainfully employed suggesting various ways in which large-scale social changes associated with the industrial revolution may have affected the structure and operation of communities…. this ambivalence about the consequences of large-scale changes continued well into the twentieth century. analysts have kept asking if things have, in fact, fallen apart. 25 at the conclusion of the twentieth century, ordinary americans shared this sense of civic malaise. we were reasonably content about our economic prospects, hardly a surprise after an expansion of unprecedented length, but we were not equally convinced that we were on the right track morally or culturally. of baby boomers interviewed in 1987, 53 percent thought their parents’ generation was better in terms of “being a concerned citizen, involved in helping others in the community,” as compared with only 21 percent who thought their own generation was better. fully 77 percent said the nation was worse off because of “less involvement in community activities.” in 1992 three-quarters of the u.s. workforce said that “the breakdown of community” and “selfishness” were “serious” or “extremely serious” problems in america. in 1996 only 8 percent of all americans said that “the honesty and integrity of the average american” were improving, as compared with 50 percent of us who thought we were becoming less trustworthy. those of us who said that people had become less civil over the preceding ten years outnumbered those who thought people had become more civil, 80 percent to 12 percent. in several surveys in 1999 two-thirds of americans said that america’s civic life had weakened in recent years, that social and moral values were higher when they were growing up, and that our society was focused more on the individual than the community. more than 80 percent said there should be more emphasis on community, even if that put more demands on individuals. 26 americans’ concern about weakening community bonds may be misplaced or exaggerated, but a decent respect for the opinion of our fellow citizens suggests that we should explore the issue more thoroughly. it is emphatically not my view that community bonds in america have weakened steadily throughout our history—or even throughout the last hundred years. on the contrary, american history carefully examined is a story of ups and downs in civic engagement, not just downs —a story of collapse and of renewal. as i have already hinted in the opening pages of this book, within living memory the bonds of community in america were becoming stronger, not weaker, and as i shall argue in the concluding pages, it is within our power to reverse the decline of the last several decades. nevertheless, my argument is, at least in appearance, in the declensionist tradition, so it is important to avoid simple nostalgia. precisely because the theme of this book might lend itself to gauzy self-deception, our methods must be transparent. is life in communities as we enter the twenty-first century really so different after all from the reality of american communities in the 1950s and 1960s one way of curbing nostalgia is to count things. are club meetings really less crowded today than yesterday, or does it just seem so do we really know our neighbors less well than our parents did, or is our childhood recollection of neighborhood barbecues suffused with a golden glow of wishful reminiscence are friendly poker games less common now, or is it merely that we ourselves have outgrown poker league bowling may be passé, but how about softball and soccer are strangers less trustworthy now are boomers and x’ers really less engaged in community life after all, it was the preceding generation that was once scorned as “silent.” perhaps the younger generation today is no less engaged than their predecessors, but engaged in new ways. in the chapters that follow we explore these questions with the best available evidence. the challenge of studying the evolving social climate is analogous in some respects to the challenge facing meteorologists who measure global warming: we know what kind of evidence we would ideally want from the past, but time’s arrow means that we can’t go back to conduct those well-designed studies. thus if we are to explore how our society is like or unlike our parents’, we must make imperfect inferences from all the evidence that we can find. the most powerful strategy for paleometeorologists seeking to assess global climate change is to triangulate among diverse sources of evidence. if pollen counts in polar ice, and the width of southwestern tree rings, and temperature records of the british admiralty all point in a similar direction, the inference of global warming is stronger than if the cord of evidence has only a single strand. for much the same reason, prudent journalists follow a “two source” rule: never report anything unless at least two independent sources confirm it. in this book i follow that same maxim. nearly every major generalization here rests on more than one body of independent evidence, and where i have discovered divergent results from credible sources, i note that disparity as well. i have a case to make, but like any officer of the court, i have a professional obligation to present all relevant evidence i have found, exculpatory as well as incriminating. to avoid cluttering the text with masses of redundant evidence, i have typically put confirmatory evidence from multiple studies in the notes, so skeptical “show me” readers should examine those notes as well as the text. 27 i have sought as diverse a range of evidence as possible on continuities and change in american social life. if the transformation that i discern is as broad and deep as i believe it to be, it ought to show up in many different places, so i have cast a broad net. of course, social change, like climatic change, is inevitably uneven. life is not lived in a single dimension. we should not expect to find everything changing in the same direction and at the same speed, but those very anomalies may contain important clues to what is happening. american society, like the continent on which we live, is massive and polymorphous, and our civic engagement historically has come in many sizes and shapes. a few of us still share plowing chores with neighbors, while many more pitch in to wire classrooms to the internet. some of us run for congress, and others join self-help groups. some of us hang out at the local bar association and others at the local bar. some of us attend mass once a day, while others struggle to remember to send holiday greetings once a year. the forms of our social capital—the ways in which we connect with friends and neighbors and strangers—are varied. so our review of trends in social capital and civic engagement ranges widely across various sectors of this complex society. in the chapters that follow we begin by charting americans’ participation in the most public forum—politics and public affairs. we next turn to the institutions of our communities—clubs and community associations, religious bodies, and work-related organizations, such as unions and professional societies. then we explore the almost infinite variety of informal ties that link americans—card parties and bowling leagues, bar cliques and ball games, picnics and parties. next we examine the changing patterns of trust and altruism in america—philanthropy, volunteering, honesty, reciprocity. finally we turn to three apparent counterexamples to the decline of connectedness—small groups, social movements, and the internet. in each domain we shall encounter currents and crosscurrents and eddies, but in each we shall also discover common, powerful tidal movements that have swept across american society in the twentieth century. the dominant theme is simple: for the first two-thirds of the twentieth century a powerful tide bore americans into ever deeper engagement in the life of their communities, but a few decades ago—silently, without warning—that tide reversed and we were overtaken by a treacherous rip current. without at first noticing, we have been pulled apart from one another and from our communities over the last third of the century. the impact of these tides on all aspects of american society, their causes and consequences and what we might do to reverse them, is the subject of the rest of this book. section iii explores a wide range of possible explanations—from overwork to suburban sprawl, from the welfare state to the women’s revolution, from racism to television, from the growth of mobility to the growth of divorce. some of these factors turn out to have played no significant role at all in the erosion of social capital, but we shall be able to identify three or four critical sources of our problem. whereas section iii asks “why” section iv asks “so what” social capital turns out to have forceful, even quantifiable effects on many different aspects of our lives. what is at stake is not merely warm, cuddly feelings or frissons of community pride. we shall review hard evidence that our schools and neighborhoods don’t work so well when community bonds slacken, that our economy, our democracy, and even our health and happiness depend on adequate stocks of social capital. finally, in section v we turn from the necessary but cheerless task of diagnosis to the more optimistic challenge of contemplating possible therapies. a century ago, it turns out, americans faced social and political issues that were strikingly similar to those that we must now address. from our predecessors’ responses, we have much to learn—not least that civic decay like that around us can be reversed. this volume offers no simple cures for our contemporary ills. in the final section my aim is to provoke (and perhaps contribute to) a period of national deliberation and experimentation about how we can renew american civic engagement and social connectedness in the twenty-first century. before october 29, 1997, john lambert and andy boschma knew each other only through their local bowling league at the ypsi-arbor lanes in ypsilanti, michigan. lambert, a sixty-four-year-old retired employee of the university of michigan hospital, had been on a kidney transplant waiting list for three years when boschma, a thirty-three-year-old accountant, learned casually of lambert’s need and unexpectedly approached him to offer to donate one of his own kidneys. “andy saw something in me that others didn’t,” said lambert. “when we were in the hospital andy said to me, ‘john, i really like you and have a lot of respect for you. i wouldn’t hesitate to do this all over again.’ i got choked up.” boschma returned the feeling: “i obviously feel a kinship [with lambert]. i cared about him before, but now i’m really rooting for him.” this moving story speaks for itself, but the photograph that accompanied this report in the ann arbor news reveals that in addition to their differences in profession and generation, boschma is white and lambert is african american. that they bowled together made all the difference. 28 in small ways like this—and in larger ways, too—we americans need to reconnect with one another. that is the simple argument of this book., product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster; Anniversary edition (October 13, 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 592 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1982130849
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1982130848
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.24 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.48 x 9 inches
• #17 in Public Affairs & Policy Politics Books
• #32 in Historical Study (Books)
• #96 in United States History (Books)

About the author

Robert d. putnam.

Robert D. Putnam is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University and founder of the Saguaro Seminar, a program dedicated to fostering civic engagement in America. He is the author or coauthor of ten previous books and is former dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

By robert d. putnam, summary written by brett reeder, conflict research consortium, citation:  putnam, robert d., 2000,  bowling alone: the collapse and revival of american community , simon & schuster, new york, ny.

Social capital refers to "the connections among individuals' social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them." (p 19) Much like the economic concepts of physical and human capital, the social networks of social capital are thought to have value.  Bowling Alone  empirically demonstrates a drop in social capital in contemporary America, identifies the cause and consequences of this drop, and suggests ways to improve social capital in the future.

Though social capital varies across many dimensions, according to Putnam. the most important distinction is between bridging (inclusive) and bonding (exclusive) social capital. Bonding social capital networks are inward-looking and tend to reinforce exclusive identities and homogenous groups. Examples of such networks include ethnic fraternal organizations and country clubs. On the other hand, bridging social capital networks are outward looking and include people across "diverse social cleavages." Examples of bridging social capital include the civil rights movement and youth service groups.

In general, bonding networks are most useful when specific reciprocity and mobilizing solidarity is necessary for "getting by" in oppressive situations. Bridging networks are good for linking to external assets and for information diffusion for the purpose of "getting ahead" of the status quo. As Putnam put it, "bonding social capital constitutes a kind of sociological superglue, whereas bridging social capital provides a sociological WD-40" (p 23). While useful for analytical purposes, this bonding/bridging distinction is not an "either or" category, but is rather a "more or less" dimension. That is, social capital can (and usually does) exist in both a bonding and a bridging forms simultaneously. For example: a black church may bond individuals based on race and religious belief, but bridge individuals across class lines.

Having described what social capital is, Putnam turns his attention to how it has changed over time by conducting a meta-analysis of a large body of data from various sources. In doing so, he identifies a dominant theme: "For the first two-thirds of the twentieth century a powerful tide bore Americans into ever deeper engagement in the life of their communities, but a few decades ago--silently, without warning--that tide reversed and we were overtaken by a treacherous rip current" (p 27). Thus, social capital increased in the US until the 1970s and then suddenly decreased right up to the present. This theme is consistent across seven separate measures of social capital, including: political participation, civic participation, religious participation, workplace networks, informal networks, mutual trust, and altruism.

Though most measures indicate a significant drop in social capital over the last three decades, Putman identifies four exceptions: an increase in volunteerism among youth, the growth in telecommunications, grassroots activity among evangelical conservatives, and an increase in self-help support. However, these exceptions do not offset the overall trend, indeed, by virtually every conceivable measure, social capital has eroded steadily and sometimes dramatically over the past two generations." (p 287)

To identify why this might be, Putnam looked to see "whether the declines in civic engagement (social capital) are correlated across time and space with certain social characteristics" (p 185). Once he identified a correlation, he applied three additional tests to ensure the validity of potential causal factors. First, all correlations he identified had to lack spuriousness. Second, the proposed explanatory factor had to change in the relevant way. Finally, the direction of causation (result vs. cause) was questioned. Using these standards, Putnam rejected several common explanations for the contemporary drop in social capital, none of which were found to have had a statistically significant effect. These included educational deficiency, destruction of the nuclear family, race and racism, big government and the welfare state, and market economics.

Additionally he identified four social characteristics that passed his tests of validity: pressures of time and money, mobility and sprawl, television, and generational differences. The lion's share (up to 50%) of the change in social capital over the last three decades is thought to be attributable to generational differences. People born in the 20s and 30s are significantly more socially connected than later generations, largely as a result of social habits and values developed during the "great mid-century cataclysm" or World War II. Generational differences are also synergistic with TV, as different generations have different habits regarding TV. As a whole, TV is thought to contribute up to 25%, the pressures of time and money, about 10%, and sprawl another 10% because it takes more time to get places. Sprawl is hence associated with increasing social segregation, and it disrupts community "boundedness". This leaves at least 15% unexplained.

But does it really matter that social capital is declining? Putnam argues that, indeed, it does, as social capital "has many features that help people translate aspirations into realities." (p 288) Putnam identifies five such features. First, social capital makes collective problems easier to resolve, as there is less opposition between parties. This results in improved social environments, such as safer and more productive neighborhoods. Second, it makes business transactions easier, since when people trust each other, there is less of a need to spend time and money enforcing contracts. As a result, economic prosperity increases generally. Third, social capital widens our awareness of our mutual connectivity. This can improve the quality of our civic and democratic institutions. Fourth, it helps to increase and speed up the flow of information, which, in turn, improves education and economic production. Finally, social capital improves our health and happiness through both psychological and biological processes which require human contact.

Unfortunately the effects of social capital are not always positive. Indeed, bonding social capital, in particular, can lead to destructive divisions within and between societies as groups develop a collective identity based largely on exclusion. But the "classical liberal argument" against community (or social capital networks) is its potential to restrict freedom and tolerance. Closely-linked communities (those with high social capital) can restrict individual freedoms through social pressure, especially if tolerance and freedom are not values of the community. Putnam acknowledges that this can happen, but it is not an inherent effect of social capital. In fact, he provides evidence to the contrary which suggests that, "Far from being incompatible, liberty and fraternity (or bonding social capital) are mutually supportive, and this remains true when we control for other factors" (p 356).

Another argument against community holds that social capital can encourage inequality by concentrating wealth in closed communities. Again, Putnam acknowledges that this can happen, but is not a necessary consequence of community or social capital. Instead he argues that while "[s]ocial inequalities may sometimes be embedded in social capital ...both across space and across time, equality and fraternity (bonding social capital) are strongly positively correlated." (p 358-359). Thus, while social capital can, at times, restrict freedom, and enhance inequality, it does not inherently do so. On the contrary, empirical evidence suggests that social capital, freedom, and equality are in general, mutually reinforcing.

But what can we do to improve our social capital? According to Putnam, we should first learn from the past where "lessons can be found in a period uncannily like our own" (p 367). The period he is referring to consists of roughly 1870-1915. During this time "dramatic technological, economic, and social change rendered obsolete a significant stock of social capital" (p 368) due to industrial revolution, urbanization, and waves of new immigration. In response, the leaders of the day re-developed social capital with an "extraordinary burst of social inventiveness and political reform" (p 368), which included the founding or refurbishing of most of our contemporary civic institutions such as the Boy Scouts, the NRA and the NAACP.

While the specific reforms of this time period "are no longer appropriate for our time...the practical, enthusiastic idealism of that era--and its achievements-- should inspire us" (p 401). In this vein, Putnam makes general suggestions in seven "spheres deserving special attention" with the intention of encouraging readers to develop contemporary innovative solutions.

• First, he suggests educational reforms be undertaken, including improved civics education, well designed service learning programs, extra curricular activities and smaller schools.
• He argues for a more family-oriented workplace which allows for the formation of social capital on the job.
• He encourages further efforts at new urbanism.
• He would like to see religion become both more influential and at the same time more tolerant.
• The technologies that reinforce, rather than replace, face-to-face interaction should be encouraged.
• Art and culture should become more interactive.
• Finally, politics requires campaign reforms and a decentralization of power.

In this important book, Putnam demonstrates that social capital increased between 1900 and the late 1960s and then dramatically decreased, largely as a result of generational succession, television, urban sprawl and the increasing pressures of time and money. This has resulted in an increase in a variety of social problems ranging from ineffective education to economic strain, to social conflict between individuals as well as groups. The solution to these problems likely rests with re-developing social capital, much like was done in the Progressive Era (but with solutions designed for contemporary America).

Though not inherent to community development, such a project must take into account the potential of social capital to limit liberty and equality. This is particularly true when developing bonding social capital which is unfortunately much easier to develop than bridging social capital as, "Social capital is often most easily created in opposition to something or someone else." (p 361) While bonding social capital can help oppressed people to "get by" through solidarity, bridging social capital is required to "get ahead" through increased generalized norms of reciprocity. The development of innovative forms of such social capital is Putnam's ultimate challenge to the reader.

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• About the book
• Robert D. Putnam
• Social Capital Primer
• Historical Perspective from the Progressive Era

Social Capital: Historical Perspective from the Progressive Era

The thesis of Bowling Alone is that a variety of technological, social, and economic changes over the last three decades have “rendered obsolete” a stock of social capital. Shorthand for saying that things like television, two-career family, generational changes have made fewer of us go on picnics, join the Rotary or hang out at the bar.

Approximately one century ago, Americans faced a similar pattern. Rapid industrialization, immigration, and urbanization brought waves of populations from a farm in Appleton Wisconsin to Chicago or from a shetl to the Lower East Side of Manhattan. In the process millions of Americans left friends, families and social institutions behind.

What’s amazing about the Progressive Era is that from this civic nadir, Americans were hugely inventive about creating the social institutions to reconnect Americans in their changes circumstances. And the founding dates of most of the civic pillars that endure to this date were founded in a brief several decade period beginning in the late 1800s: from Hasassah to the Boy Scouts to the League of Women Voters to the Rotary to the NAACP. In the process, Americans founded reading groups and playgrounds and kindergardens and settlement houses and so much more.

Chapter 23 of Bowling Alone describes the amazing parallels between the Progressive Era and our current civic predicament and the moving story of civic invention in that period. Putnam focuses on the shortcomings of this period in the hopes that Americans sparking a similar civic resurgence can do so in a way that better fosters a stronger civic America.

Joining and participating in one group cuts in half your odds of dying next year.

Every ten minutes of commuting reduces all forms of social capital by 10%

Watching commercial entertainment TV is the only leisure activity where doing more of it is associated with lower social capital.

Declining Social Capital: Trends over the last 25 years

Attending Club Meetings 58% drop

Family dinners 43% drop

Having friends over 35% drop

Copyright © 2024 Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam. All rights reserved.. All rights reserved.

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Book Reviews

In 'the upswing,' history holds the keys to moving away from today's tumultuous age.

Martha Anne Toll

The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again , by Robert R. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett Simon & Schuster hide caption

The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again , by Robert R. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett

The Upswing , written by Robert D. Putnam in partnership with Shaylyn Romney Garrett, argues that history holds the answers for how to move out of today's tumultuous age.

Putnam is the Malkin Research Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University and author of 14 books. Garrett is a social entrepreneur, writer, and founding contributor to "Weave: The Social Fabric Project," an Aspen Institute initiative.

The Upswing follows Putnam's Our Kids , which decried narrowing social mobility for America's young people, and Bowling Alone , published in 2000, which became a bestseller. Sifting through evidence from nearly 500,000 interviews, Bowling Alone argued that Americans have become increasingly disconnected from one another. For this proposition, Putnam cited Americans' disintegrating participation in organizations such as bowling leagues, parent-teacher associations, and other volunteer groups that help weave together civil society.

The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again takes a different tack. Beginning with a chapter called "What's Past is Prologue," The Upswing's thesis is that America's Gilded Age — 1870s through 1890s — shows remarkable similarity to our own, including a yawning gap between rich and poor, and a societal focus on "I" rather than "we." During the Gilded Age:

"Inequality, political polarization, social dislocation, and cultural narcissism prevailed — all accompanied, as they are now, by unprecedented technological advances, prosperity, and material well-being."

In other words, if we have righted our American ship before, we can right it again.

Putnam and Garrett plot a hill-shaped curve to reflect trends from the Gilded Age to the present. They see an "I-we-I" curve crosscutting these issues over the past 125 years. The height of the curve represents the lowest gap between rich and poor; most favorable health indicators; highest social spending to help the poor; lowest political polarization; and the apex of America's sense of moving forward together, as opposed to the toxic fractionalization of today. Roughly speaking, the height of the curve occurred mid-20th century and has headed downward ever since.

Most of The Upswing is taken up with ho w the curve evolved. It is less clear why the curve evolved. The authors take great pains to untangle complex and nuanced explanations, none of which can solely explain the curve's trajectory.

In a chapter on cultural change, the authors make use of "Ngram" data. As Google has digitized millions of books, scholars can now search the frequency of words to evaluate social trends. Putnam and Garrett searched American books post-1880 for terms like "survival of the fittest." That term faded through most of the 20th century, "only to win a new lease on life in the twenty-first century." The cultural salience of terms like "association," "cooperation," and "socialism" rose from 1880, peaked around 1970, and declined thereafter. Use of the term "common man" rose steadily from 1880 to a peak in the late 1940s and plunged sharply thereafter.

One can question the reliability of this kind of evaluation, but Ngrams are only one part of the authors' much larger analyses. No doubt, future writers and researchers will appreciate the nearly 100 pages of endnotes. The Upswing is saturated with data and charts, so much so that it can be difficult for a lay person to weigh and evaluate what is presented. This matters, because readers will be eager for guidance to move the curve toward a more connected, unified "we."

The authors divide the book into chapters that examine economic realities, politics, society, and culture. They also break out separate chapters on race and gender. Given how structural racism underlies everything from economic security to health and political participation, I would have preferred that race was a more intentional through line, rather than a stand-alone chapter. As the authors note, "Renewed party polarization of the last half century began with race — the one constant and central conflict in American history...."

I had similar feelings about addressing gender in a stand-alone chapter. After all, half the American population did not have voting rights until the 20th century, and grossly lagged on economic rights. To be fair, Putnam and Garrett do mention race and gender in other chapters. But I couldn't help wondering how their interpretation of data might have changed with more deliberate inclusion of non-white, non-male theorists throughout.

Most of all, I longed for clear, prescriptive solutions for a better, more inclusive future. In a final chapter called "Drift and Mastery," the authors review hallmarks of the Progressive Era (roughly 1890s to 1920s) to tease out ideas for today. They highlight the importance of leaders with a strong moral compass, heavy youth participation, and a "groundswell" of agitation along with an insistence on political action. They caution against overreach, such as Prohibition, an unfortunate overcorrection "into social control by well-meaning reformers who sought to protect women, children, and the poor."

Martha Anne Toll just completed 26 years at the Butler Family Fund , a social justice philanthropy. She won the 2020 Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction and her novel, Three Muses , is forthcoming in 2022.

Social Capital: Historical Perspective from the Progressive Era The thesis of Bowling Alone is that a variety of technological, social, and economic changes over the last three decades have “rendered obsolete” a stock of social capital. Shorthand for saying that things like television, two-career family, generational changes have made fewer of us go on picnics, join the Rotary or hang out at the bar.

Approximately one century ago, Americans faced a similar pattern. Rapid industrialization, immigration, and urbanization brought waves of populations from a farm in Appleton Wisconsin to Chicago or from a shetl to the Lower East Side of Manhattan. In the process millions of Americans left friends, families and social institutions behind.

What’s amazing about the Progressive Era is that from this civic nadir, Americans were hugely inventive about creating the social institutions to reconnect Americans in their changes circumstances. And the founding dates of most of the civic pillars that endure to this date were founded in a brief several decade period beginning in the late 1800s: from Hasassah to the Boy Scouts to the League of Women Voters to the Rotary to the NAACP. In the process, Americans founded reading groups and playgrounds and kindergardens and settlement houses and so much more.

Chapter 23 of Bowling Alone describes the amazing parallels between the Progressive Era and our current civic predicament and the moving story of civic invention in that period. Putnam focuses on the shortcomings of this period in the hopes that Americans sparking a similar civic resurgence can do so in a way that better fosters a stronger civic America.

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Lonely Bowlers, Unite: Mend the Social Fabric; A Political Scientist Renews His Alarm At the Erosion of Community Ties

By Louis Uchitelle

• May 6, 2000

Robert D. Putnam, a political scientist at Harvard University, is a big, red-faced, enthusiastic man with the Amish whiskers and explosive gestures of a 19th-century fundamentalist preacher -- useful characteristics for the ''hell will get us if we don't mend our ways'' thesis that has taken over his life in the last five years.

His message, familiar to millions of Americans, is that the civic engagement -- the neighborhood friendships, the dinner parties, the group discussions, the club memberships, the church committees, the political participation; all the involvements, even the street protests, that make a democracy work -- has declined over the last 30 years. Trust and reciprocity, which Mr. Putnam calls social capital, have been damaged, he says, and the nation has grown cantankerous and less efficient.

Being a spiritual man, deeply committed to his own findings, he proselytizes. Tapping foundations for funds, Mr. Putnam organizes seminars, surveys ''social connectedness'' in numerous cities (the hope being that local groups will then fix the shortcomings), speaks tirelessly, and generally tries to recreate a modern version of the community bonds that flourished at the turn of the 20th century and again after World War II.

''I don't want to say that I am a Jane Addams or a John Dewey, but I aspire to that role,'' Mr. Putnam said, naming two turn-of-the-century social reformers who were both scholars and doers. ''In academia now it has become a less prestigious activity to be concerned about social reforms.''

The first time Mr. Putnam put forth his message, in an academic article published five years ago, he caught lots of attention, as much for the title, ''Bowling Alone,'' as for the findings. People bowled more frequently than before, he had learned, but they bowled with their children or with a few friends: basically alone. What had declined were the organized leagues and the lively conversations and social interaction over beer and pizza that the leagues had fostered.

''Bowling Alone'' touched a public nerve and became a metaphor for a much larger national malaise. Mr. Putnam suddenly found himself profiled in People magazine. He appeared on talk shows, and President Clinton invited him to Camp David. Most recently both Al Gore and George W. Bush have tapped him for advice, or their aides have.

''They know perfectly well, these politicians, that Americans are worried about their communities,'' Mr. Putnam said over lunch recently, putting down his fork to emphasize his point forcefully with both hands. ''They know that if they could come up with some coherent response, there is a market for that politically.''

Despite the political appeal, that first paper drew plenty of criticism. His evidence was faulty and too sparse, some said. He failed to appreciate the new forms of civic participation that had emerged in the late 20th century, others argued. There was concern that the decline in church activity, for example, once a big source of civic engagement, might only mean that organized religion no longer spoke to people's needs as did, say, self-help groups like Gamblers Anonymous or Weight Watchers. (These have proliferated.)

But now Mr. Putnam, after five more years of research, has reaffirmed his original conclusions and supported them with greatly expanded data, all presented in a new book, ''Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community'' (Simon & Schuster), sent to stores this week. The criticism has not gone away, but critics of Mr. Putnam's concepts who have read galley proofs of the book said that it would almost certainly become the framework for a revived debate about civic engagement.

''He is definitely right that a lot of our connections with one another are more tenuous than they used to be, and he is right, in his final chapter, to call us to task,'' said Robert Wuthnow, a Princeton University sociologist. ''But he has a single-minded thesis that fails to paint the complex picture that actually exists.''

He ignores, for example, the proliferation of nonprofit groups, ''from soup kitchens to private schools to foundations to think tanks to social welfare organizations,'' Mr. Wuthnow said. ''These are mostly small, and they function like the civic groups that Putnam says are declining.''

Some nonprofits do function that way, but others are created in wills to avoid estate taxes, Mr. Putnam replies. At 59, he has sampled the post-World War II stages of civic engagement, from its heyday in the late 1940's and 50's, when he was growing up in Port Clinton, Ohio, a rural town on Lake Erie, to its decline, which he has experienced mostly as a resident of Lexington, Mass., a Boston suburb. As a teenager he bowled on Saturdays in a league. A photo of his five-member team, recently found among his mother's belongings, decorates the jacket of his new book. Two of the boys are black. (Mr. Putnam is white.)

''The fact of the matter is that bowling leagues, even in the 1950's, did bring people together, across class lines; it is the least class-specific sport in America,'' he said. ''You need this sort of bridging social capital for civic engagement to really work.''

Whatever the virtues of bowling, Mr. Putnam was not particularly good at it, with scores averaging less than 150 a game. As an adult he has rarely bowled, apart from occasional outings when his two children, now married, were still young: family bowling, not league bowling. Lately, however, in recognition of the publicity his research has brought to the sport, his students celebrate the end of a semester with a bowling party or by giving him bowling knickknacks.

Others have given him knickknacks, too. He ticks them off: bowling salt and pepper shakers, bowling towels and shoes, books about bowling, jokes about bowling, a tie decorated with a bowling lane. Tchotchkes, he calls them, invoking a Yiddish word, and a reminder that religion has played a big role in civic engagement and his life. Raised a Methodist, he converted to Judaism, his wife's religion, when they married 37 years ago. ''We agreed it was important that we have one religion,'' Rosemary Putnam said.

Now Mrs. Putnam, 59, a public school special-education teacher, is the one who is civically engaged: playing French horn in the Lexington band, active in her temple's sisterhood, member of a book group, volunteer tutor of immigrants in English, active in a teachers association. Her husband sang in the town chorus for a year or two; but absorbed in his teaching, research and writing, he withdrew, becoming an example of the disengagement he now chronicles.

The Putnam thesis dwells on the precipitous decline since 1970 of community groups: the Elks, the Rotary, the Masons, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, the American Legion, parent-teacher associations, local chapters of political parties, religious institutions, softball teams, art groups, union locals, town bands and scores of others. Apart from not joining, people vote less, give fewer dinner parties, and are more likely to have unlisted phone numbers, to sue and to rely on security guards. Trust has in effect declined, and trust is a big element of social capital fostered by civic connectedness, Mr. Putnam argues.

''Connectedness really matters,'' he said at a White House conference last month. ''Wonderful studies, controlling for your blood chemistry and how old you are and your gender and whether you jog and whether you smoke and so on, show that your chances of dying over the next year are cut in half by joining one group. Cut in a quarter by joining two groups.''

Much of Mr. Putnam's evidence for the decline in civic engagement came from a huge mass of previously untapped lifestyle surveys compiled over the years by Roper and DDB Needham. Polls designed for marketing and then stored away became in Mr. Putnam's hands historical data on civic engagement. ''If the client was Hallmark, it wanted to know about churchgoing, and food companies wanted to know about family dinner trends,'' Mr. Putnam said.

Other community activities have grown, of course. Volunteering is one. And children play soccer more than ever, on teams organized by parents, although Mr. Putnam found that ''if every single soccer mom and dad in America went to every single soccer game, that would not be as large a number as the number of people who stopped bowling in leagues.''

Theda Skocpol, a Harvard sociologist, says that beyond the community, advocacy groups -- organizations like the Sierra Club, the Children's Defense Fund, the American Association of Retired Persons -- have become a new form of social connectedness. They are an outgrowth of the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam War protests, women's liberation: issues that the old civic engagement failed to address.

But she adds that rather than fostering give-and-take conversation, the advocacy groups are run by ''elite people more than ever,'' while the millions of members mail in their dues and contributions. It is a system that ''contributes to the sense of most Americans that everything is going on above their heads,'' Ms. Skocpol said, causing them to pull back from public life.

Whether Internet communication can reverse this trend, recreating the old conversation in a new format, Mr. Putnam says he does not know. He guesses that the Internet will complement rather than replace face-to-face communications. But he is not sure. ''I am worried,'' he said, ''that I will end up in the long sweep of history having written a book about disconnection at the very moment that technology was changing the equation.''

Although Mr. Putnam acknowledges that the rise of the two-earner family cuts into time available for civic engagement, economics plays a relatively small role in his scheme. Electronic entertainment, mostly television, gets 25 percent of the blame.

Just as they bowl alone, people increasingly watch television alone. It isolates. So does suburban sprawl and the additional commuting time, alone in a car, that sprawl requires. People increasingly live in one suburb, work in another and shop at malls in a third location, Mr. Putnam finds.

The biggest culprit, however, is generational change, he concluded. The Depression and World War II produced a generation of civic-minded Americans. As that generation has aged, giving way to less trustful more isolated Americans, civic engagement and social capital have declined. Still, Mr. Putnam is optimistic. Just as the mass immigration in the late 19th century and the shift from farms to cities resulted in the creation of the community groups and ties now in decline, the new circumstances should create new institutions.

That leap of faith is greeted with skepticism by Ms. Skocpol and other social scientists. But Mr. Putnam, in his enthusiasm, sees his own efforts and those of a few others engaged in community organization as the beginning of a revival of the old connectedness in new ways not yet evident. Or as he puts it in the last sentences of his book: ''Henry Ward Beecher's advice a century ago to 'multiply picnics' is not entirely ridiculous today. We should do this, ironically, not because it will be good for America -- though it will be -- but because it will be good for us.''

Bowling Alone

54 pages • 1 hour read

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

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Section 1, Chapter 1-Section 2, Chapters 2-5

Section 2, Chapters 6-9

Section 3, Chapters 10-15

Section 4, Chapters 16-22

Section 5, Chapters 23-24

Key Figures

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Summary and Study Guide

In Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community , Robert D. Putnam chronicles the decline of civic engagement and social connectedness in the late 20th-century United States and highlights the importance of renewing these forms of social capital for the sake of individual, societal, and democratic health. Putnam, a political science professor and former dean, has the expertise to contribute this work to the academic literature in social science. Originally published in 2000, the book became a national bestseller. In the academic world, the book became a seminal one, widely cited, and Putnam was awarded the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science in 2006, largely for this work and his efforts to increase civic engagement. All quotations and references in this guide are from the 2001 paperback edition.

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Drawing upon organizational records, survey reports, time diaries, and consumer spending, Putnam details a comprehensive decline in American communal life in the last third of the 20th century. Because of this decline, the US has a dwindling stock of social capital, which is essential to the health of American society and politics.

He begins with the decline in political participation, noting that not only voting but all forms of political participation have decreased. As a result, political institutions are hollowed out, and public discourse is less civil. Active involvement in face-to-face civic organizations, such as the Parent Teacher Association (PTA), has substantially slipped in this period as well. New civic organizations, such as many environmental groups, are professionally and centrally run and therefore do not enrich social capital. Religious institutions, previously a critical source of social capital in the US, have experienced a 25% decline in attendance and participation in this period. Evangelicals are an exception to this trend but historically have not been as involved with the broader community as other denominations. Workplace connections have deteriorated in this period too, with union membership down and the percentage of professionals joining organizations decreased. What is more, Americans are connecting with one another less informally, too. They entertain one another almost 50% less, vacation together less frequently, and dine together less. Putnam highlights the trend in bowling: Americans still bowl a lot in the 1990s, but they are much less likely to join bowling leagues with the social commitment that entails.

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As a percentage of income, charitable contributions are down in the 1990s. However, volunteering has increased. Similarly, Putnam argues that the nature of volunteering has changed, and people are less likely to engage in collective projects. They volunteer individually or to work one-on-one, and such commitments are more fragile.

Collective forms of participation in politics, religion, and other spheres have sharply decreased while individual actions, such as writing a letter, have not seen the same levels of decline. People are going it alone, forsaking the community for individualism. As a result, the reciprocity upon which civil society depends is in jeopardy. Reciprocity, or the willingness to do something for someone with no expectation of immediate reward but the understanding someone else will return the favor down the road, depends on social trust. That too decreased substantially in this period.

Putnam emphasizes that social capital has waxed and waned in American history: Prior to this dip, the US had experienced an increase in social capital. He repeatedly emphasizes the pattern of rising social capital after World War II followed by a plateau and then decline in the last third of the 20th century.

After chronicling the decline in this period, he uses statistical analysis to search for explanations. The most significant explanation is generational succession or replacement. The long civic generation , born between 1910 and 1940, is gradually being replaced by Baby Boomers , born between 1950 and 1964, and Generation X , born between 1965 and 1980. The latter generations are not as civically and socially engaged as the long civic generation. That latter generation experienced World War II, which required communal sacrifice. In contrast, the two younger generations are more individualistic. Putnam attributes about half of the decline in social capital to this factor, but it is not the only explanation since the decline in social capital is evident in all age categories. Electronic entertainment, specifically television, bears considerable blame, approximately 25%, as well. Importantly, the long civic generation is the last one to grow up without television. Television keeps people at home and provides an individual form of entertainment. Its rise coincides precisely with the decline in social capital. Putnam assigns limited responsibility to other factors, such as suburban sprawl and the commuting time it spawns, financial and time pressures, and other unknown factors.

Next, Putnam considers the potential impact of such a sharp decline in social capital. Drawing upon secondary sources, he relays the benefits of social capital in several areas, such as education, safety, and the economy. Children are more likely to thrive in communities with high amounts of social capital, and educational outcomes are better in such states. Safety and lower crime rates are associated with high amounts of social capital as well. While social connections clearly advantage individuals economically, Putnam argues that social capital results in more economic prosperity for the community, too. Lower crime rates and good educational systems, for example, add up to higher housing values.

Social capital provides health benefits, both physically and psychologically. Arguing that the benefits of social connectedness are akin to those from quitting smoking, Putnam cites multiple studies that associate good health at the community level with social capital. Additionally, people are happier in societies with high amounts of social capital. Indicative of this fact, Putnam observes the high suicide rates of young people, who are the least socially connected in the 1990s. In the 1950s, older people were more likely to commit suicide.

Most importantly, social capital is critical to the functioning of a democracy. Active participation in the community provides individuals with cooperative attitudes and cultivates trust and reciprocity. An actively engaged citizenry demands better government. Without the ability to combine voices with others, individuals are left politically powerless, and democracy withers. In short, it is imperative that Americans refurbish their stock of social capital.

Comparing the end of the 20th century to the end of the 19th century, Putnam finds a model for such refurbishment with the Progressives. In the late 19th century, social capital ebbed, and resultingly, there were high crime rates, poor levels of education, urban poverty and decay, and political corruption. The Progressives did not seek to restore earlier forms of social capital as they would no longer accommodate an increasingly urban society. Instead, they created new organizations, such as the PTA and Boy Scouts, to fit the times. Putnam wants to emulate that example. The early 21st century calls for new types of institutions. He encourages a multi-faceted approach to rebuilding social capital and sets ambitious goals for its renewal by 2010.

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Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone chronicled the growing loneliness and isolation of wealthy societies. Twenty years later, the problem is far worse than he could have imagined.

Illustration by George Wylesol

Last year, the Survey Center on American Life published a study tracking friendship patterns in the United States. The report was anything but heartening. Registering a “friendship recession,” the report noted how Americans were increasingly lonely and isolated: 12 percent of them now say they do not have close friendships, compared to 3 percent in 1990, and almost 50 percent said they lost contact with friends during the COVID-19 pandemic. The psychosomatic fallout was dire: heart disease, sleep disruptions, increased risk of Alzheimer’s. The friendship recession has had potentially lethal effects.

The center’s study offered a miniaturized model of a much broader process that has overtaken countries beyond the United States in the last thirty years. As the quintessential voluntary association, friendship circles stand in for other institutions in our collective life — unions, parties, clubs. In his memoirs, French philosopher Jean-Claude Michéa said that one of the most disconcerting moments of his childhood was the day he discovered that there were people in the village who were not members of the Communist Party. “That seemed unimaginable,” he recalled, as if those people “lived outside of society.” Not coincidentally, in May 1968, French students sometimes compared the relationship of workers to the Communist Party with that of Christians to the church. The Christians yearned for God, and the workers for revolution. Instead, “the Christians got the church, and the working class got the party.”

The son of communist parents, Michéa saw the party as an extension of a more primary social unit. Friendship patterns have always served as a useful indicator for broader social trends, and writers at Vox were quick to apply the data to political analysis. The researchers invoked Hannah Arendt’s dictum that friendship was the best antidote for authoritarianism. At the end of 1951’s The Origins of Totalitarianism , Arendt postulated that a new form of loneliness had overtaken Westerners in the twentieth century, leading them to join new secular cults to remedy their perdition. “What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world,” she claimed, “is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience.” The conclusions were clear. As Americans become lonelier and more isolated in the new century, the same totalitarian temptation now lurks.

Putnam’s Warning

To social scientists, this refrain must sound tiredly familiar: it is the stock-in-trade of one of the classics of early twenty-first-century political science, Robert Putnam’s 2000 book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community . That book noted a curious pattern: more and more Americans took up bowling toward the end of the twentieth century, but they increasingly undertook the activity alone , with the sudden decline of many bowling leagues the clearest explanation. Such a crisis was by no means limited to sports clubs. From churches to trade unions to shooting establishments to Masonic lodges, all experienced a dramatic contraction of membership in the 1980s and 1990s and began to disband. What remained was a wasteland of sociability.

Putnam surveyed a variety of causes for this great disengagement. The luring of the middle class from city centers to exurbs in the 1960s encouraged privacy. Removed from American cities, citizens ended up in suburbs designed mainly for motorists and without footpaths. Consumption was democratized in the postwar boom. People spent more time in their cars, a mobile privatization of public space. Corner stores were bulldozed in favor of shopping malls, and train tracks lost out to highways. With the steady entry of women into the labor market, voluntary associations lost a central base of support. Employees began working longer hours than their parents had and found little time for volunteering. Television locked citizens at home in the evening: the tombstone of postwar loneliness.

Putnam also debunked some powerful misconceptions about the crisis of civil society. The first was that the welfare state was the real culprit. The transfer of social services from the community to the state level, the argument ran, would threaten citizens’ self-reliance. Putnam was skeptical: both strong (Scandinavia) and weak (United States) welfare states had seen a decline in civic capacity. In France and Belgium, a “red” civil society was even allowed to manage part of the social security budget. Battles over integration also proved an insufficient explanation: both black and white Americans withdrew from clubs, while overall distrust between racial groups was declining.

Putnam had no use for panaceas either. Back in 2000, he had already presaged that the internet would offer a poor substitute for those old associations and reinforce antisocial tendencies. In 2020, holed up in his New Hampshire home during the pandemic, the social scientist added an afterword to a new edition of Bowling Alone . Its tone was characteristically melancholic: there was no “correlation between internet usage and civic engagement,” while “cyberbalkanization” and not “digital democracy” was the future. The stock of “social capital” had not been replenished.

Testing Time

The weaknesses in this approach were already plain to see by the early 2000s. For one, Bowling Alone spent too little time investigating the structural transformation of its civil society — the rise of new NGOs as substitutes for mass membership organizations, the ascent of new sporting clubs, the revival of association in evangelical megachurches and schools.

Putnam also deployed a highly dubious notion of social capital. In this aspect, the book spoke to the market-friendly sensibilities of the late 1990s: civic ties were useful as a means for social mobility, not as expressions of collective power. They could adorn college applications or help people land trainee programs, not change nations or make revolutions.

Such economism also explained a glaring gap in Putnam’s book — the aggressive drop in union strength at the close of the century. In a book of more than five hundred pages, there was no index entry for “deindustrialization.” With limited discussions of labor as well, Bowling Alone had little to say about how capital’s offensive contributed to the decline of civil society — and how representative worker power was for civic life as a whole. The dwindling of union membership not only had dramatic consequences on the Left but also disoriented the Right — a side of the story that barely appears in Bowling Alone .

Despite these evident faults, however, Putnam’s book has stood the test of time. Statistics still point to a steady decline for many secular membership organizations. Despite growing public approval for union efforts, the US unionization rate declined by 0.5 percentage points to a mere 10.3 percent in 2021, returning to its 2019 rate. The political developments of the last decade, from COVID-19 lockdowns to the escalating downsizing of classical parties, also validated Putnam’s intuition. More than that, his book has now been used to explain the uncertainty of the Donald Trump years, in which the controlled demolition of the public sphere in the 1980s and 1990s drove a new form of resentment politics.

The hyperpolitics of the 2010s also hardly falsified Putnam’s thesis. While the interactive internet has largely replaced the monological television set, the general crisis of belonging and place that the new media inaugurated has not abated. Even in a society ever more heavily politicized and riven by partisan conflict, the levers for collective action, from states to unions to community groups, remain brittle. Despite surges of militancy in some sectors, the “great resignation” ushered in by COVID’s tight labor markets has not led to a politics of collective voice but rather to one of individual “exit,” as Daniel Zamora put it. European unions have suffered a similar fate, losing members to self-employment. While Putnam noted the upswing in voter turnout in the 2020 election, this was “voting alone,” vastly different from the organized bands that found their way to the ballot box in the nineteenth century.

There are both push and pull factors involved here. Since the 1980s, citizens have been actively ejected from associations through anti-union legislation or globalized labor markets. At the same time, passive alternatives to union and party power — cheap credit, self-help, cryptocurrency, online forums — have multiplied. The result is an increasingly capsular world where, as commentator Matthew Yglesias warned, our home has become an ever-greater source of comfort, allowing citizens to interact without ever leaving their house. “Sitting at home alone has become a lot less boring,” he claims, ushering in a world where we could all “stream alone.” The civic results will be dire.

Putnam From the Left

Here, then, was the rational core of the Putnam thesis: far beyond the bowling alley, social life in the West had indeed become increasingly atomistic over the course of the 1980s and 1990s. The economic rationale for this restructuring was evident, and a Marxist interpretation proved a useful supplement to the Putnamite view: individualization was an imperative for capital, and collective life had to be diminished in order for the market to find new avenues for accumulation. By 1980, states could either cut ties with existing civil society organizations and let go of the inflationary threat or face ballooning public debt.

This heavily conditioned the responses to the 2008 financial crash. Behind the short-term chaos of the credit crisis stood a much longer process: the slow but steady decline of party democracy since the 1973 slump. Parties also remain the paradigmatic victim of Putnam’s disengagement. As fortresses built between individuals and their states, these institutions secured people’s hold on the state throughout the twentieth century. The Austrian social democratic party in the 1930s hosted a theater club, a child welfare committee, a cremation society, a cycling club, workers’ radio and athletic clubs, and even a rabbit breeders’ association.

On the conservative side, this legacy was bemoaned as a dangerous drive toward politicization that would ideologically supervise individuals from cradle to grave. Still, left-wing intellectuals like Gáspár Miklós Tamás saw the new parties as an essential part of not just socialist politics but of modernity itself. They comprised

a counter-power of working-class trade unions and parties, with their own savings banks, health and pension funds, newspapers, extramural popular academies, workingmen’s clubs, libraries, choirs, brass bands, engagé intellectuals, songs, novels, philosophical treatises, learned journals, pamphlets, well-entrenched local governments, temperance societies — all with their own mores, manners and style.

As “total organizations,” Tamás’s parties were predictably described as modern institutions par excellence. Unlike medieval guilds, membership in a party was not obligatory — it was a free association, in which members could join and defend their interests. As Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci had it, the party thereby served as the modern equivalent of the Machiavellian prince, who could manage complex situations with tact and insight; here, parties worked from the top down, but also from the bottom up.

In the past thirty years, these pillars of party democracy have gradually eroded and been hollowed out. Two trends remain symptomatic of this process. The first is the declining membership of parties across the board, coupled with the increasing median ages of their members. On the Left, the German Social Democratic Party went from one million members in 1986 to 660,000 in 2003; the Dutch Socialists went from 90,000 to 57,000. The French Communist Party tumbled from 632,000 members in 1978 to 210,000 in 1998; its Italian sister party went from 1,753,323 to 621,670 in the same period. The British Labour Party counted 675,906 members in 1978, falling to 200,000 in 2005.

While the trend remains more marked for the classical left — which has always relied more squarely on mass mobilization — it is no less striking on the Right. The British Conservatives lost one million members between 1973 and 1994, while the French Gaullists dropped from 760,000 to 80,000. The Tories — the first mass party in European history — now receive more donations from dead members than from living ones, excluding their (now rebuffed) Russian oligarchs.

The United States has often served as a natural outlier to these European cases. Americans never had any true mass parties after 1896, the last major examples being the antislavery agitation of the 1850s and the rise of the original Populist and Socialist movement in the 1880s and 1890s. After the People’s Party’s defeat — in the South with stuffed ballot boxes and guns, in the North by electoral inertia — America’s bipartisan elites constructed a system that essentially neutered any third-party challengers. American parties nonetheless had a variety of bases and roots within society. These organizations effectively made, for example, the New Deal Democratic Party a mass party by proxy, tied to a hinterland of labor, union, and civil organizations that represented popular sectors. On both the Left and the Right, workers, employers, and shop owners have defended their interests in local clubs, committees, trade guilds, and syndicates.

This infrastructure was also a key launching pad for the revolts that detonated the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. Detroit labor leader Walter Reuther marched with Martin Luther King Jr in the early 1960s, while one of the foremost supporters of the 1963 March on Washington was A. Philip Randolph, the union radical who had begun by organizing workers under Jim Crow. The relation of these forces to the Democratic Party was always complicated and stepmotherly. Overall, however, they ensured that the party remained a “party of workers” without ever becoming a workers’ party.

From the 1970s onward, this same landscape began to desiccate, both passively and actively. The Tocquevillian utopia portrayed by generations of European visitors to North America was replaced by the reality of bowling alone. Instead of mass membership organizations, voluntary associations increasingly turned to a nonprofit model to organize advocacy in Washington.

The shift to the nonprofit drastically changed the composition of these advocacy groups. Instead of relying on dues-paying members, they reached out to wealthy donors to fill their coffers. In a United States in which the government was increasingly giving up its redistributive role, this move created a natural constituency from new welfare recipients. The logic was self-evident: associations that practically operated as businesses but did not want to fulfill their tax obligations to the state saw an opportunity in the nonprofit model. The American political scientist Theda Skocpol casts them as “advocates without members”: nonprofit organizations functioning as the lawyers of a mute defendant.

The Populist Moment

The abandonment of mass parties and the growing alienation between politicians and citizens can only be temporarily averted by television commercials and marketing stunts. By 2010, it was clear that both classical PR and protest politics were falling short of their promises. Austerity was decimating pensions and public sectors across the Global South. Public debt, itself channeled by private debt, was rising. In March 2013, a group of leftist academics energized by the Indignados movement began to meet at Madrid’s Complutense University. One year later, they ran for office in the European election as Podemos and won seats. La France Insoumise’s organizers would reach for the same playbook in late 2016, looking at the Spanish example.

For socialists, the transition from mass to cartel parties was shot through with ambiguity. On one hand, it generated real opportunities for radicals to appeal to disaffected voters who could no longer voice discontent within parties. The Left could politicize the prevailing antiestablishment mood, turning anti-politics into politics.

Yet it also heavily constrained the space in which left-wing politics itself could operate. The social landscape sculpted by the neoliberal reforms meant not just an estrangement from traditional parties but a retreat from the public sphere as such, only weakly compensated for by the new medium of the internet. Left populists had to mobilize profoundly demobilized societies.

The first signal of this populist shift was audible in the rhetoric of these forces themselves. From 2012 onwards, the subject of “the people” became a central referent for left-wing parties, both old and new. The adoption of a cross-class language was not a novelty for the Left. The theorists most strongly associated with it — thinkers such as Argentine philosopher Ernesto Laclau and Belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe — had drafted their theses decades before. In the world of bowling alone, they finally found an application.

Yet Laclau and Mouffe’s populism also took a highly specific organizational form in the 2010s, both in Europe and the United States, including the coalition of groups it tried to tie together. Instead of the mass parties of the twentieth century, leftists had to face a profoundly disorganized civil society that had driven civilians out of politics altogether and rendered relations between elites and average citizens highly volatile. The crises of the 2010s thus confronted the Left with a twin set of dilemmas: one of substance and one of form.

The first concerned the question of what the natural base for a left-wing program was — where it lay and how it could be assembled. This puzzle always assumed a particular shape for twentieth-century social democrats. As Polish political scientist Adam Przeworski saw it, there was a clear threshold beyond which left-wing parties would trade talk of the working class with that of “the people.”

The famous dilemma ran as follows. On the one hand, social democrats hoped that the expansion of industry would usher in a working-class majority, which would allow them to capture political office and reform their route to socialism. On the other, the continuing stagnation and eventual shrinkage of that class created a quandary. Broadening the base would require concessions to middle-class constituencies, who had to remain the fiscal providers to the welfare state and use the same public services as lower classes. On the other hand, the more benefits were granted to the middle classes in terms of consumption goods, the less breathing room domestic industry would have, and the material bases of proletarian strength and support would wither. Hence the bitter choice laid out by Przeworski.

Przeworski’s dilemma received a shifting set of answers across the history of social democracy. For German Social Democratic Party theorist Karl Kautsky, it implied a promise of land redistribution to appease peasants. For a reformist like Eduard Bernstein, it meant a tactical alliance between the new middle classes and the working classes — a bridge built from office to factory. For Gramsci, it meant reaching out to Italy’s peasantry, held in check by the fascist state and mainly situated in the South. For French thinkers such as Serge Mallet and André Gorz, in turn, it meant a focus on the student class rather than the industrial proletariat of yesterday. All these options already exhibited a populist temptation, trading the working class for the people.

In the 2010s, left parties again had to solder together an older working class and a middle class squeezed by the financial crisis. Most left populists moved to the former by starting with the latter, generating several predicaments along the way. Yet the makeup of those groups was also vastly different from the working and middle classes socialists encountered in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, driven out of not only the factory but the public arena itself. Here, then, was the real result of Putnam’s bowling alone, the second and even more vexing dilemma for the populists. How was the Left to respond to the secular impoverishment of political life since the 1970s, and what opportunities, if any, could it offer?

This in turn acted as a multiplier on the puzzle that had troubled social democracy from the start. While socialists classically had an industrial working class and middle class to rely on, left populists could assume the support of neither of these two groups. Instead, the 1980s’ deindustrialization and ensuing crisis of civil society opened a void between citizens and states, radically decoupling elites from their societies. This void dislocated the boundaries of left-wing politics in an even more disorienting way — in a world in which politics itself was in crisis, the Left’s goals appeared tenuous at best, and actively unrealistic at worst. Hence the resort to a populist strategy from within the Left: to rethink mobilization for an age of demobilization — or how to stop people from bowling alone.

This was no undemanding task, and in the end, such an option put leftists in a crippling double bind. They could go full populist, soliciting the wider base of citizens driven out from traditional politics and disaffected by social democracy. But this approach risked emptying out the Left’s historic commitments, condemning people to “posting alone.” Eschewing this left strategy also meant a heavily digital and top-down approach to coalition building. Moreover, such a strategy might not grant the Left enough organizational heft to face the forces of capital on their own terrain.

On the other hand, falling back on a classical left-wing identity could also scare off voters whose loyalty to the traditional left was now fading. Partly through the latter’s participation in the Third Way and the demands of the post-2008 austerity program, a return to this tradition had become a liability. Once again, the trade-off between the middle and working classes that had troubled social democracy from the beginning now found a new manifestation in the compromise between a populist and a socialist approach. Reshuffling the first, the second dilemma was intimately tied to the crisis of political engagement so specific to the twenty-first century.

As the sociologist Dylan John Riley noted in 2012, “the contemporary politics of the advanced-capitalist world bears scant resemblance to that of the interwar period.” At the time, “populations organized themselves into mass parties of the left and right,” not an era of “a crisis of politics as a form of human activity,” where it was “unlikely that either Bernstein or Lenin can offer lessons directly applicable.”

Debating Fascism

A view of today’s politics as a direct productof the 2010s thus necessitates an emancipation from a series of frames we have inherited from an older age — and chief among them is a vision that sees our age as one of fascist resurgence. In the six years since Donald Trump’s election, a waspish debate on whether he should be classified as a fascist has overtaken American and European academia. The January 6 riots proved shocking and unsurprising to these observers.

Putnam had already warned that social capital was never an unqualified good, and subsequent writers have regularly spoken about “Bowling for Fascism” as an adequate description of Nazi strength in the 1930s. As Putnam himself noted: “It was social capital, for example, that enabled Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. McVeigh’s network of friends, bound together by a norm of reciprocity, enabled him to do what he could not have done alone.”

Ever since this warning, readings of Trumpism as heralding a new age of association have multiplied. In a recent paper , three social scientists have claimed that voters in flyover states have gone from bowling alone to “golfing with Trump,” arguing that “the rise in votes for Trump has been the result of long-term economic and population decline in areas with strong social capital.” The conclusion seems inescapable: since Germans and Italians first went bowling for fascism in the 1930s, Trump is now deserving of the same term.

This reading has appeared in both prudent and imprudent versions. For academics such as historian Timothy Snyder or philosopher Jason Stanley, Trump and Jair Bolsonaro appear in perfect continuity with the strongmen of the 1930s, with the former president as “the original sin of American history in the post-slavery era, our closest brush with fascism so far.” This was still “pre-fascism” to Snyder, and “for a coup to work in 2024, the breakers will require something that Trump never quite had: an angry minority, organized for nationwide violence, ready to add intimidation to an election. . . . Four years of amplifying a big lie just might get them this.” Journalists like Paul Mason and Sarah Kendzior have drafted texts instructing us in “ how to stop fascism ,” while anti-fascist in chief Madeleine Albright published Fascism: A Warning .

More subtle versions of this thesis are available. Writers Gabriel Winant and Alberto Toscano, for instance, have proposed a frame of “racial fascism” to read Trumpism on a broader timeline. In their view, white identity politics and fascism have always been interlinked. As Winant notes , “The primary factor of social cohesion in Tocqueville’s America was nothing other than white supremacy. Given that this structure has endured . . . it makes little sense to imagine our society as formerly rich with association, but now bereft of it.” Although “the gun-waving McCloskeys in St. Louis are presumably not members of the same kind of fraternal organizations that were popular in the 19th century … they are members of a homeowners’ association,” and they rely on “whiteness [as] a kind of inchoate associational gel, out of which a variety of more specific associations may grow in a given historical conjuncture.”

Hence, if Trump looks like a racial fascist, swims like a racial fascist, and quacks like a racial fascist, then he probably is a racial fascist. Voices in high quarters have recently joined Winant on this point. In a September 1 speech, President Joe Biden castigated Trumpist Republicans as a “threat to the republic” and saw them tending toward “semi-fascism.”

This reading now faces its own chorus of critics. To scholars like Riley and Corey Robin, Trumpism is better theorized as a form of Bonapartism that shares little with the “superpoliticized” fascisms of the interwar period. Above all, the two crucial preconditions for any fascist movement remain lacking: a prerevolutionary working class on the verge of power and a population’s shared experience of total war, which would create a mass body. Fascism in power, they claim, has a hegemonic character and is not content to meddle on the margins. Just like pagans in a Christian world, they would have little purchase in the new order.

One of the most recurrent responses to this critique points at asymmetries between Left and Right. While the 1980s and ’90s saw a dramatic decline in left-wing civic life, the Right has weathered Putnam’s era fairly better, with police unions and neighborhood defense clubs surviving the neoliberal onslaught. Fascism, after all, is the mentality of rank-and-file police elevated to state policy, a type of countermobilization for a militant working class. It’s no surprise that Marine Le Pen has received overwhelming support from French policemen.

A similar argument has been made for the British Conservative Party. This outfit has supposedly retained its bastions of strength across society in private schools, Oxbridge, and sporting clubs. As political scientist R. W. Johnson noted in 2015, “the atomisation and dispersal of the Labour vote” has led to “whole chunks falling off the side to the SNP and Ukip,” while “the institutional base of the Tory Party — private schools, the Anglican Church, wealthy housing districts, the expanded private sector and even home ownership in general — is as healthy as ever.” The result was “a one-sided decay of the class cleavage, with the Tories holding onto their old hinterland far better than Labour has.” From Oxford’s Bullingdon Club to the City guilds, conservative parties have managed to preserve their elite incubators and retain deeper pools of personnel.

It is difficult to see how such statements invalidate Putnam’s original hypothesis, however. The metrics for social capital used by anti-Putnamites are, for instance, curiously indeterminate. Collapsing NGOs and homeowner associations into the same category as parties and unions tells us little about the relative strength of civil society institutions. Rather than civic fortresses, NGOs function as heads without bodies — finding it easier to attract donors than members.

Even if Trump and other nationalists did rely on high associational density, this would not detract from the overall context of demobilization in which they operate. As islands in a minoritarian political system, they can only retain power by exploiting the Constitution’s most anti-majoritarian features. This is worlds removed from the anti-constitutionalism of the Nazis, who saw the Weimar Republic as born with socialist birthmarks. Fascist parties were hardly card-playing clubs, and golfing with Trump is a pallid replacement for fascist boot camps.

What about the Right’s other reserve institutions, from “white-ness” to homeownership? It is indeed true that many right-wing institutions have fared better in the neoliberal age. Yet an argument such as Winant’s makes it unclear how we should distinguish between being white and being a member of the Ku Klux Klan, just like being an employer is not the same as paying dues to an employer’s organization. In an age in which legal segregation has been abolished, racial status is not the guarantee of civic inclusion that it used to be under the Jim Crow regime. And a homeowner’s convention is no John Birch Society chapter, much like Bolsonaro’s WhatsApp groups are not Benito Mussolini’s squadristi .

The Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations might well count as the first properly fascist organizations in history. But as institutions, they have been on the wane for decades, and they do not supply the shock troops for white supremacy that they did in the past. Militias like the Proud Boys and the boogaloo movement instead thrive as “individualized commandos,” as Adam Tooze put it, far removed from the veterans that populated the Freikorps or the Black and Tans in the early 1920s. These were highly disciplined formations with direct experience of combat, not lumpen loners who drove out to protect car dealerships.

The same holds true in European cases. Giorgia Meloni’s post-fascist Fratelli d’Italia has grown precipitously in the last year and now presides over one hundred thousand members and leads a governing coalition. Still, it will not equal the 230,000 members that its predecessor MSI had in the early 1960s, leading to a fascism with “no squads, uniforms or baseball bats.” Both numerically and qualitatively, the hard right remains a shadow of its former self —  as does the center right.

The Tory Primrose League was disbanded in 2004, and visitors to the British Isles will quickly be struck by the fading colors of the “Conservative Club” placards in thecountry’s rural towns. Like the old Workingmen’s Associations, these clubs scarcely function as mass mobilizers anymore, often appearing more like retirement homes (the median age of the Conservative Party membership is now estimated at seventy-two). As New Left Review ’s Tariq Ali has noted, this self-immolation was itself a product of the neoliberal 1980s. Margaret Thatcher’s market reforms led to “the decimation of the Tories’ provincial base of local gentry, bank managers and businessmen through the waves of trans-Atlantic acquisitions and privatizations she unleashed.”

There are exceptions to this rule, of course — the anti-Obama Tea Party activists who met up in basements in the early 2010s, the Hindu youth clubs run by Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), or the anti-immigrant “defense leagues” organized by the Scandinavian far right. In general, however, the civic pattern looks as disarticulated on the Right as it does on the Left.

Perfecting Oligarchy

Why, then, has the Right nonetheless done better than the Left in the age of Putnam? The reasons are unsurprising: the Right has always grown organically out of capitalist society and relies on the default forms of association that capital generates. As Friedrich Engels pointed out in a report to British trade unionists in 1881:

Capitalists are always organized. They need in most cases no formal union, no rules, officers, etc. Their small number, as compared with that of the workman, the fact of their forming a separate class, their constant social and commercial intercourse stand them in lieu of that. . . . On the other hand, the workpeople from the very beginning cannot do without a strong organization, well-defined by rules and delegating its authority to officers and committees.

The crisis of civil society, in the latter sense, poses more of a problem on the Left than on the Right because the benchmarks of any successful socialist politics are always higher. To the Right, the stabilization or preservation of property relations is mostly enough. Inertia and resignation, more than militancy, remain its great assets. Nonetheless, homeowner associations, QAnon groups, and golf clubs are no durable replacement for this older civic infrastructure.

Clear parallels between the current day and the 1930s need not be minimized, of course. Like Adolf Hitler and Mussolini, Trump was an eminently lazy regent, happy to leave his policies to specialists and high-ranking officials, while, like a digital Napoleon Bonaparte, he dabbles with the crowds. And like those leaders, Trump owes his power mainly to that group of compliant conservatives in the Republican Party who seek to deploy the far right as a wedge against rival oligarchs.

After that, the analogies quickly weaken. Trump built on the executive power unbound by presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Nor do Republicans owe their power to a mass movement in a tightly organized party. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell regularly complains of slacking parliamentary discipline in the Majorie Taylor Greenes of the party. The Republicans thereby prefer to derive power from preexisting posts in the US state, which always exhibited aggressively elitist traits since the eighteenth century. Corey Robin rightly speaks of “gonzo constitutionalism”: a merciless deployment of the most antidemocratic features of the US political order.

The most unsettling fact about MAGA Republicanism is, as Robin writes, that it does not depend “upon these bogeymen of democracy — not on demagoguery, populism, or the masses — but upon the constitutional mainstays we learned about in high-school civics.” Only in 2004 did the GOP win the presidential election with a popular majority, when Bush Jr took a narrow 50.7 percent of the vote. Otherwise, the Republican Party strengthened its grip on the state apparatus mainly through minority mechanisms: appointing judges to the Supreme Court, gerrymandering, and filibustering.

Rather than a fascist threat, the party offers a pared-down oligarchy — the wielding of the last anti-majoritarian levers in the American ancien régime. “Nationalizing our elections is just a multi-decade Democratic Party goal in constant search of a justification,” McConnell stated in Congress last year, openly admitting that low voter turnout is a boon to his party. “Semi-fascism” might be a rhetorically grateful term for this behavior — but at the end of the day, not everything that is bad is the same.

Online and Offline

In the past ten years, pundits across the political spectrum have scouted for technical fixes for Putnam’s crisis. Undoubtedly the most appealing of these has been the new online world. This is an old story: two decades ago, when Putnam published his book, theorists were already wondering whether the internet’s new global connectivity, conceived in the bosom of the American security state, could remake society. Today, the children of the internet retain little faith in Twitter or TikTok’s capacity for good, much like Putnam doubted that online engagement could replace older civic mores.

This skepticism is mirrored by a confusion about the internet’s supposed political potential. If the Scylla of social media analysis was the naive utopianism of the early 2000s, its Charybdis is our current digital pessimism, which sees so much of the world’s problems — from political polarization to sexual impotence to declining literacy rates — as both the causes and consequences of being “too online.”

Clearly, the internet only becomes comprehensible in the world of the lonely bowler. Online culture thrives on the atomization that the neoliberal offensive has inflicted on society — there is now ample research showing positive correlation between declining civic commitment and broadband access. At the same time, the internet accelerates and entrenches social atomization. The exit and entry costs of this new, simulated civil society are extremely low, and the stigma of leaving a Facebook group or a Twitter subculture is incomparable to being forced to move out of a neighborhood because a worker scabbed during a strike.

The extreme marketization of Putnam’s 1980s and 1990s also made the world vulnerable to the perils of social media. The dissolution of voluntary organizations, the decline of Fordist job stability, the death of religious life, the evaporation of amateur athletic associations, the “dissolution of the masses,” and the rise of a multitudinous crowd of individuals were all forces that generated the demand for social media long before there was a product like Facebook or Instagram. Social media could only grow in a void that was not of its own making.

Disorganizing Capital

The internet is thus best read as a Pharmakon — a Greek noun that denotes both a means of remedy and a poison, a supposed antidote that can only exacerbate the disease. This also poses sensitive issues for the Right, particularly as capital itself had become increasingly divided in the preceding decades. As Paul Heideman has noted about the GOP in Catalyst , the assault on working-class organizations of the 1980s removed the external sources of discipline that once grouped capitalists together and imposed a common policy agenda.

Without this opponent, internal fractures are likely to widen. With the compounding “weakening of the parties since the 1970s, and the political disorganization of corporate America since the 1980s,” it is, as the academic Cathie Jo Martin has argued, “much harder for U.S. employers to think about their collective long-term interests.” And rather than a process of realignment in which Republicans have seized working-class votes, it is the ruthless march of “dealignment” that drives our age of political tumult.

Capital’s disorganization provides a much more rewarding frame for the “populist explosion” than ahistorical references to the authoritarianism of the 1930s. The German author Heinrich Geiselberger has noted how, without “the enemies of socialism,” the Right “can only invoke its spectre.” Geiselberger, together with Tamás, prefers to speak of post-fascism: an attempt to make citizenship less universal and confine it to national borders, but without the organizational clout that fascists demonstrated in the twentieth century. The new right is therefore “atomised, volatile, swarm-like, with porous borders between gravity and earnestness, sincerity and irony.”

Above all, the new politics is consistently informal. The mob that expressed unconditional support for Trump on January 6 does not even have membership lists. QAnon and the anti-lockdown movement are a subculture that thrives mostly on blogs, Instagram, and Facebook groups. There are, of course, more and less prominent QAnon figures — influencers, so to speak. Yet their leadership is not official or mandated by votes. Rather than a militarily drilled mass, we see a roving swarm, incited by a clique of self-selected activists.

This informality also manifests itself economically. In the past year, Trump extorted thousands of dollars from his followers and continued to rake in funds, without ever building a clear party structure. As early as 1920, sociologist Max Weber noted how charismatic leaders did not pay their followers and backers with fixed salaries, but rather worked through “donations, booty or bequests.” Unsurprisingly, charismatic leadership was also a thoroughly unstable mode of rule: succession to the throne could not simply be guaranteed for the mob, which would now have to look for its next redeemer.

What would a viable alternative to this fascist frame look like? As Riley suggests, a far more powerful precedent for our situation can be found in Karl Marx’s account of the 1848 revolution. At the revolution’s close, instead of giving in to this unrest, Napoleon III gathered an apathetic peasant population and ordered them to quell the revolution. Marx described these French peasants as a “sack of potatoes” for whom the “identity of their interests fosters no community spirit, no national association and no political organization.” And since the peasants could not represent themselves, “they must be represented” — in this case by a king.

Rather than a politics pitting workers against bosses, structured by the capital-labor opposition, Bonaparte’s was a politics of debtors and creditors — another shared feature with the 2010s, in which private debts transferred onto public accounts fueled the American and European debt crises. Bonaparte’s peasants focused on circulation and taxes rather than on production. Instead of peering aimlessly at the 1930s, we would have to look at a much older, primal age of democracy for suitable parallels with our populist era.

Yet the fascist frame also carries an even graver risk: an overestimation of socialist strength. Fascism implies a popular front and strategic alliances with liberalism, including no-strike pledges. Rather than force focus, the fascist frame will distract and confuse us from the crisis of political engagement so typical of the twenty-first century.

Putnam was right, but for the wrong reasons: associationalism matters for democracy, but it hardly matters to capital — and might even threaten it. For those contemplating a 2024 Bernie Sanders run, the question of the legacy the campaign leaves behind seems of even greater importance than what it accomplishes, let alone whether it will allow Bernie to ascend to the presidency. Only in that case will we see a true test of constitutional loyalty for capital, and only then can we gauge money’s alignment with liberal democracy. In the absence of this threat, both on left and right, we will keep on bowling alone.