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Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
By Robert D. Putnam
Simon &Schuster
544 pp $26

Here's an easy one. If you're a nicotine addict and want to significantly cut your chances of dying, you should:

A) Stop smoking.

B) Join a civic association.

And the answer, of course, is: either one -- at least according to Robert Putnam, the author of Bowling Alone. That's one of the startling claims that Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard University, makes in this statistics-laden, often fascinating, occasionally repetitious 554-page book. If it sounds oversimplified, Putnam acknowledges as much. But a statistical association between hooking up with the Kiwanis Club or Junior League and cutting the chances of death within the next year is just one tiny speck in the mounds of evidence he marshals to support his principle thesis: A marked decline in social cohesiveness and connectedness over the past 30 years or so has severely undermined our collective and personal well-being, both physical and psychological.

The book is, essentially, a paean to the remarkable benefits of "social capital," a term encapsulating the degree to which people associate with one another, either formally through civic associations, organized sports activities, and political involvement, or informally through family dinners and picnics with friends. "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," writes Putnam.

It is Putnam's thesis -- and he backs it up with an astonishing amount of data drawn from a wealth of lifestyle, demographic, sociological and other studies -- that the past few decades have witnessed a sharp decline in social capital. And that decline is having a disastrous effect on all aspects of our communal life, as Putnam explained in a recent interview with the Atlantic Monthly.

"The most startling fact about social connectedness is how pervasive are its effects," he says in the interview. "We are not talking here simply about nostalgia for the 1950s. School performance, public health, crime rates, clinical depression, tax compliance, philanthropy, race relations, community development, census returns, teen suicide, economic productivity, campaign finance, even simple human happiness -- all are demonstrably affected by how (and whether) we connect with our family and friends and neighbors and co-workers."

Of all the book's surprising claims, some of the most surprising involve the impact of social capital on public health. "The more integrated we are with our community, the less likely we are to experience colds, heart attacks, strokes, cancer, depression, and premature death of all sorts," he writes. "Such protective effects have been confirmed for close family ties, for friendship networks, for participation in social events, and even for simple affiliation with religious and other civic associations."

He cites study after study documenting these connections. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, for example, have shown that those with a greater variety of social ties get colds less frequently. A study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health found that people living in states with high rates of mutual distrust were more likely to report that their health was only fair or poor.

"As a rough rule of thumb," writes Putnam, "if you belong to no groups but decide to join one, you cut your risk of dying over the next year in half. If you smoke and belong to no groups, it's a toss-up statistically whether you should stop smoking or start joining. These findings are in some ways heartening: it's easier to join a group than to lose weight, exercise regularly, or quit smoking."

The book's title stems from Putnam's observation that participation in bowling leagues has declined precipitously since the mid-1960s, when 8 percent of men and 5 percent of women took part. People still bowl, Putnam acknowledges, but in occasional informal groupings that do not build up the same amount of social capital as more organized and regularly scheduled outings.

Bowling Alone is Putnam's response to critics who questioned the premise of a 1995 article of the same name that he wrote for the Journal of Democracy. The article generated much attention and tapped into a widespread wistfulness for a remembered golden age of civic participation, when more than half the eligible population voted, membership in Kiwanis clubs and PTAs was at its peak, and high school students clamored to join school marching bands.

Putnam broadens his argument in the book by drawing on research measuring all manner of informal social capital, and he uncovers a host of intriguing tidbits. In the past 25 years, he tells us, the average number of times Americans go out to bars and nightclubs has plummeted by up to 50 percent -- which may seem a refreshing change to those of us over 40 -- although Putnam views it as evidence of increasing social isolation. Since 1981, the average frequency of card playing among adults has fallen from 16 to eight times per year, and the number of evenings spent with a neighbor has also declined significantly.

Many of these changes, Putnam writes, are not noticeable at first glance. "The ebbing of community over the last several decades has been silent and deceptive," he writes. "Weakened social capital is manifest in the things that have vanished almost unnoticed -- neighborhood parties and get-togethers with friends, the unreflective kindness of strangers, the shared pursuit of the public good rather than a solitary quest for private goods."

This could all elicit a big "So what?" from those, like me, who have no overwhelming desire to boost society's social capital by donning an Elks hat or T-shirt or whatever it is they wear, sitting around a campfire roasting marshmallows with a Boy Scout troupe or boogying semi-drunk amid flashing lights in the bowels of some trashy disco with other sweaty folk. I don't fully grasp how any of those activities will lower my chances of developing liver cancer or improve the math scores of the third-grade class at the elementary school down the block.

But Putnam gamely persists in pressing his argument, and the way he gathers the supporting data is both the book's strength and its weakness. The sheer volume of evidence is ultimately hard to ignore; even if individual claims may overshoot the mark, Putnam has clearly hit on something that bears further investigation and debate. And it helps that he acknowledges the obvious: that some forms of social capital -- membership in the Ku Klux Klan, to take one example -- can adversely impact the body politic.

But just because the overall argument is convincing, it does not mean the book is a riveting read. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a page-turner. Because Putnam finds pretty much the same trends in all spheres of social activity, Bowling Alone frequently has a reductive, cookie-cutter feel. In every area of exploration, Putnam finds that a decline in social capital is associated with a comparable decline in whatever -- public heath, educational achievement, democratic participation, and so forth. The data so perfectly match his thesis that perusing the book straight through from cover to cover feels like overkill. We've already gotten the message.

Putnam attributes the decline to a host of factors, among them the rise in two-career families and the pressures it places on time, urban sprawl, and the rise in commuting. He also cites the isolating impact of television and a generational shift in values. While the weight he gives to each of these factors is speculative, his overall argument is compelling. And Putnam refreshingly eschews the trendy jargon that mars the writing of so many academics in favor of straightforward prose.

The overall thrust of Bowling Alone is bleak, but Putnam appears to be an optimist at heart. In the book's final section, he offers a number of ideas to improve the situation. He suggests, among other remedies, better civic education in schools to foster political involvement among the young; greater workplace flexibility to ensure that families have enough time to spend together; an attempt to encourage increased engagement with spiritual communities, and creative efforts to wean America off its television habit in favor of more interactive forms of electronic entertainment.

Putnam is not extremely specific about how to achieve these goals. But at least he has grappled with tough questions and outlined a major problem -- one that clearly resonates with a broad spectrum of people. If his solutions are not perfect, or even feasible, they at least provide a starting point for an intelligent and searching public policy debate.

-- David Tuller, a former staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, has written for The New York Times, the Washington Post, and Salon.com. He is also the author of "Cracks in the Iron Closet: Travels in Gay and Lesbian Russia" (Faber &Faber 1996).

First published October 20, 2000
Last updated October 29, 2008
Copyright © 2000 Consumer Health Interactive

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