AMERICA’S DECLINING SOCIAL CAPITAL

Robert D. Putnam on the Loss of Public Spirit and Engagement

By Warnfried Dettling

[This book review of Robert D. Putnam’s “Bowling Alone. America’s Declining Social Capital” originally published in: DIE ZEIT 43/2000 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.zeit.de/archiv/2000/43/200043+p-putnam.xml.]

In January 1995, an essay appeared in the Journal of Democracy under the somewhat strange title: “Bowling Alone. America’s Declining Social Capital”. Only several experts from the academic world knew the author at that time. Robert D. Putnam, political scientist at Harvard, published remarkable studies in the seventies on the socio-cultural presuppositions of democracy. “Bowling Alone” became the most-cited article in social science. Now the book is published, an impressive work of over 500 pages with 100 pages of tables, diagrams and footnotes. This book will surely attract great attention.

Fifty years ago David Riesman saw the “Lonely Crowd” brewing. John K. Galbraith analyzed the contradictions of “The Affluent Society”. Later Betty Friedan deconstructed the femininity delusion and Rachel Carson in “The Silent Spring” saw the writing on the wall. Robert Putnam now warns of the other catastrophe, the “social” environmental catastrophe.

The notoriety of these books did not come from their scholarliness or their proposals but from the circumstance that they struck a nerve of the time. They discussed an important theme with courage for theory and patience for empirical detail and re-focused public attention through a simple, clear and effective message. In addition, Putnam wrote a book that reads well, isn’t boring on any page and allows the reader to join in the journey from bizarre observations to original theories. One day he was struck by the fact that more and more Americans pursue this strange leisure entertainment (bowling) while fewer and fewer do this in groups. “Bowling Alone” was invented. In Italy he asked why local democracy functions very well in some regions and very poorly in others. He discovered: the more democracy, the better were politics and administration.

In his book “Making Democracy Work”, he stressed the importance of social capital for the state, economy and society. “The central idea”, he writes, “is that social networks are valuable. Social networks increase individual and collective productivity just like a screwdriver (physical capital) and a good education (human capital). “The book shows how and why social capital disappears and the consequences of that disappearance. He makes proposals including an Agenda for Social Capitalists.

SOCIAL VIRTUES ARE BOTH GOOD AND USEFUL

Putnam diagnoses a social turning of the tide for the US. “In the first two thirds of the 20th century, a mighty stream brought Americans into stronger engagement for their communities. However this stream turned unspectacularly and without warning a few decades ago. Without noticing at first, we moved away from one another and from our communities in the last third of the century.”

Putnam describes a society where people have lost trust in one another and in politics, a society in which the engagement of citizens in and for the community declines more and more “among men and women, rich Americans, poor Americans, college professors and graduates, on the east coast, on the west coast, in the Middle West, in the large cities, the suburbs and in the countryside.”

What are the causes? Putnam names the shortages in time and money in an increasingly harsh society, urbanization of the suburbs and the long distance between home and work. However the consequences of television and electronic entertainment generally that lead to a privatistic use of free time seem more important to him. “We don’t watch television together. Everyone watches by him or herself.” Nevertheless he sees the most important cause for the declining social capital in the succession of generations. “Every year, death takes away a number of engaged persons from American society who are replaced by less engaged people.” So what? one could ask the author, what is really so bad about this?

The passages in which he analyzes the positive effects of social connectedness and the social catastrophes occurring with the collapse of social cohesion are among the highlights of the book. The more vital the society, the “civic culture” of a community, the better are the chances for good schools and good health, inner security and economic prosperity and the worse are the prospects for criminality, drug consumption or unemployment. With good reasons and many statistics, he points out that a society without social capital cannot reach its goals or successfully combat social evil.

Putnam is often criticized for focusing too much on traditional forms of social engagement. He doesn’t claim that his findings are transferable. However he presents them with such force that one could assume that the decline of social capital is a necessary consequence of modernization. This decline is in no way inevitable. Development depends on political decisions and on the social offers and possibilities. Still a policy that averts social disintegration and strengthens the cohesion must be carefully differentiated and harmonize its possibilities to the respective milieu. Putnam’s proposals are pale because they lack this differentiation.

Still Putnam’s grandiose book raises a very different question about the connection of social capital and economic success. Since he argues that the individual benefits and society becomes more productive, his thinking is rooted in calculations and balances of “social” capitalism. Now it makes a certain sense to say social virtues are practical and useful and not only good. However the question could be posed whether or not an ultimately utilitarian philosophy has capitulated before the possibility of discussing public things differently than in the language of calculation and advantages and thus unintentionally accelerated a process that Putnam wanted to prevent: the collapse of social capital.