Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

Christian Century, July 19, 2000 by Mark Chaves

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.

By Robert D. Putnam. Simon & Schuster, 544 pp., $26.00.

THE PHRASE "bowling alone"--the title of an article Robert Putnam published in 1995 in a relatively obscure academic journal--quickly became shorthand for the arresting claim that civic engagement is in decline. Putnam's point was that though we may be bowling as much as we used to, we are much less likely to be doing it in organized leagues. The article did not, of course, rest mainly on bowling statistics. It pointed to evidence of declining participation in a variety of civic arenas--politics, churches, labor unions, parent-teacher organizations and fraternal organizations.

As civic participation in these arenas declined, Putnam claimed, so did America's stock of social capital--the connections between people that foster cooperation and trust. To be sure, social capital can be used malevolently--to restrict employment opportunities for those outside one's own group, for example, or to battle real or imagined enemies. But because it also serves as a resource for many benevolent activities, we should be concerned about its decline.

Many commentators found Putnam's original article unpersuasive. By focusing on formal membership in organizations such as the League of Women Voters, the Boy Scouts and the Elks, critics said, Putnam overlooked other, newer kinds of civic engagement that have compensated for the decline in these particular organizations. Declining church attendance may be offset by increased participation in small support groups. Perhaps shrinking membership in the League of Women Voters and the Shriners is offset by membership gains in the Sierra Club or the American Association of Retired Persons. Bowling leagues may be dwindling, but what about the soccer explosion? Putnam, the criticism went, mistook change for decline. The vessels through which Americans channel their civic engagement may be different, but the overall level of engagement has not declined much. At the very least, the critics asserted, the case for decline has not been proven.

This long book is Putnam's response to his critics. It is plainly argued and compulsively readable. To the fundamental question, "Are we in a time of declining civic engagement?" Putnam answers with a resounding and definitive yes. His claim is supported by a massive amount of evidence drawn from a wide range of sources and covering a broad spectrum of specific activities. Putnam shows that the present decline in civic engagement does not characterize the 20th century as a whole. Rather, civic engagement seems to have steadily increased for the first two-thirds of the century, stagnating and declining only in the last third. The decline began in the 1960s and '70s and accelerated in the '80s and '90s.

What is the evidence? With stunning consistency, virtually every indicator of civic engagement currently available shows the same pattern of increase followed by stagnation and decline--newspaper reading; TV news watching; attending political meetings; petition signing; running for public office; attending public meetings; serving as an officer or committee member in any local clubs or organizations; writing letters to the editor; participating in local meetings of national organizations; attending religious services; socializing informally with friends, relatives or neighbors; attending club meetings; joining unions; entertaining friends at home; participating in picnics; eating the evening meal with the whole family; going out to bars, nightclubs, discos or taverns; playing cards; sending greeting cards; attending parties; playing sports; donating money as a percentage of income; working on community projects; giving blood.

The evidence covers partisan political activity and nonpartisan community activity; it covers religious activity and secular activity; it covers high-commitment activities and low-commitment activities; it covers things one can do as an individual as well as things requiring the cooperation of others; it covers informal socializing as well as participation in formal organizations. Though the details vary for specific items, the consistency of the pattern is compelling. It might be possible to quibble about one or another detail of one or another indicator, but such quibbling would miss the deeper point. Even if one finds some flaw in the evidence about, say, card playing, there are still several dozen other indicators showing the same trend. Putnam draws an apt analogy to global warming. Standing alone, evidence from tree ring research might not amount to much. But when tree rings, pollen counts in polar ice, and temperature records from multiple places around the world all point in the same direction, we become increasingly confident that global warming is a reality. Congruence across multiple kinds of evidence from multiple sources is powerfully persuasive.

NOT EVERYTHING has declined, and Putnam's argument is greatly strengthened by his close attention to potentially countervailing trends. For example, contributions to political parties have increased. Nevertheless, writing a check does not forge social connections in the same way attending a local meeting does. The number of nonprofit associations is up, and Americans formally belong to just as many organizations now as they did several decades ago, but these are more likely to be mailing-list organizations that never bring members into contact with one another.