Bowling Alone

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, 20th anniversary edition of the bestseller updated with New Preface and Afterward,  by Robert D. Putnam, Simon & Schuster 2020

Do you think our new forms of human community social relationships hurt us?  Do you think too much Facebook destroys the possibility of real connections?  And do you think younger people will find a healthy way to combine their media connections with their required human contacts?  Putnam offers us several possible answers in his scenarios - including what he calls "alloys," the amalgams of social media and person-to-person relationships.  

But here is the zinger:  Putnam believes that social bonds are the most powerful predictor of life satisfaction - and I would add, health.  He says that the disappearance of real social bonds is reflected in our rising crazy crime rates and other neighborhood problems, as well as polarized election campaigns.  It seems that we have decided that our safety lies in isolation - not cooperation and not community. Hmmm.  Putnam says we are now seeing unprecedented levels of alienation and isolation, as well as crime, as a result of that unfortunate shift.   

Putnam's illustrations are striking and persuasive, particularly his breakdown of declining participation in a long list of  organizations, from the 4-H clubs whose base was rural youths and whose membership growth, peaks and lows clearly point to "something" happening after its year of peak membership in 1950, to its -26% decline seen in 1997. The same pattern of social breakdown shows up in Putnam's other examples, including the American Association of University Women, the American Bowling Congress ( (men aged 20 and over), the American Legion (down 47%), Boy Scouts (down 5%), Girl Scouts (down 15%), Eastern Star (women aged 20 and over) (down 73%), Elks (men aged 20 and over), (down 46%).   Even given shifts due to working women, the long list of "disinvolvements" is striking.  

Further support shows up in Appendix Table 1 "Leisure Activities as Measured in Two National Survey Archives," where we see more examples of a shift from active to sedentary activities. Increased  internet platform usage in 2018-2019 is consistently higher among teens, compared with adults, with the exception of Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn,  WhatsApp, and Reddit.  Putnam tells us that the key question about the development of the internet in the last 20 years is not whether usage has grown but whether that growth both quantitively and qualitatively has offset the decline in face-to-face social capital recorded in his first edition of Bowling Alone.  In fact, he summarizes that state of our internet vs. in-person activity thus:  "Most of these virtual communities are not intended to - and really couldn't - replace face-to-face networks." In fact that is what they appear to be doing. 

But dare we ponder a resolution, a repair and restructuring of these torn human community threads - our social capital?  Like every other mass change we have attempted, not only is it very hard work requiring different leaders and different facilitators, but it does not always work out in everyone's best interest. Think of the great migrations, the US' Dustbowl and slavery, the Holocaust, voting rights and introduction of basic social welfare programs like Franklin Roosevelt's CCC camps, social security, and World War II rationing, all presented with well-intended mass solutions that did not work for all individuals.   So we find ourselves discovering the value of social capital, wondering if, like a good stock pick, we can determine ways to protect and grow the fund.

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers, pemoody@aol.com, patriciaemoody@gmail.com

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