Putnam2001: Putnam, Robert. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. pp. 15-23
Discussion leader/summarizer: Rebecca Tremaglio

Key Points/Claims

The chapter begins with an overview of the decline of community organizations of all kinds in the United States over the last three decades. It recounts the dramatic rise in civic engagement and participation in community organizations that peaked in the late 60’s, and sets the stage for the difference in community involvement that has followed.

The author describes how the concept of social capital plays a role in the societal factors that are evidenced by the degree of our collective community involvement. He defines social capital as “connections among individuals—social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them (p 19).” He considers different facets of social capital, including its individual and collective aspects, and concludes that individuals cultivating the kinds of connections that develop social capital can also affect the others around them in their various communities. In this way, he relates social capital as both a private good and a public good.

Social capital is also characterized by “a norm of generalized reciprocity: I’ll do this for you without expecting anything specific back from you, in the confident expectation that someone will do something for me down the road (p 21).” Putnam makes the point that this is makes society more efficient, in that we are not always expecting an equivalent gesture immediately in return if we are confident that someone will do us a good turn in the future when we require it. He also points out that the effects of this reciprocity are not always positive, citing the ways that groups generally considered anti-social (such as the KKK) try to capitalize on the cohesive nature of social capital by trying to hold themselves up as equivalent to other socially-beneficial groups.

Social capital, according to Putnam, also consists of two types: bonding and bridging. Bonding social capital “is good for undergirding specific reciprocity and mobilizing solidarity,” while bridging social capital is “better for linkage to external assets and for information diffusion (p 22).” Both aspects of social capital, as one reinforces the strong ties we already have, while the other helps us extend our ties to people outside of our closest affiliations. These two types of social capital and the networks they influence are not part of a dichotomy, but one or the other may play a larger role in any particular interaction or group.

The last substantial point Putnam makes in this section concerns the tension in American society between the value of being involved in one’s community and the value of being an individual not beholden to societal concerns. Citing the history of debate about whether or not society is coming apart at the seams due to the increased emphasis on individualism, Putnam posits that this is actually a cyclical phenomenon and that we need to look beyond a nostalgic view of the past to see whether or not the facts back up the current notion that our concern for community is on the decline. He lays out this idea as the basis for exploration of evidence that will be examined throughout the rest of the book.

Critique

Putnam points out that the conclusions he will draw in the rest of the book will be based on evidence that is less robust than might be ideal, as whatever facts he examines are not necessarily based on the same type of research that we might perform today. I can’t do much of a critique on this evidence at this point, not having read it, but I think it is useful that he does raise the issue himself, instead of ignoring what would probably be voiced as criticism by others if he did not recognize this potential shortcoming.

A small point: I think it would have been helpful if Putnam had spent a little more time illustrating the ways in which social can capital manifest as a negative influence or be used for “malevolent” ends, especially if he is going to assert that its power can be harnessed for good or ill. The few examples he gives of its negative presence are short and cursory, and are not sufficiently strong to balance the strong case he makes for the positive effects of increased social capital.

Otherwise, the concepts discussed in this section are well-defined and the ways in which Putnam intends to illustrate their influence across many sections of society are presented as the common ground from which he will be advancing his analysis.

FrankLester: I would also have liked to see more emphasis on the negative side of the social capital ledger sheet, although I wonder whether that was something that Putnam may have focused on in greater detail in the later chapters of the book. (Maybe someone who's read the whole book can comment?)

AndrewBabson: Putnam's intro is a great example of the kind of social research that, on the one hand, sounds straightforward- almost intuitive- while on the other, leaves you with the nagging feeling that something's wrong. "Communities are falling apart, and there's something we need to do about it- if 70% of the population says it, it must be somewhat true." Call me skeptical but I find that a major mission of any research is to debunk assumptions and illuminate the counterintuitive. With that said, why trust conventional wisdom, or any poll for that matter? What do you mean by "the community"- whose community, who's defining it? What about the _new ways_ in which communities can form because of the Internet -the subject of our course? Putnam has a conflicted relationship with his own declensionist appraisal, so why doesn't he look at the more interesting question of why people think communities are falling apart? As NoorAliHasan mentions below, people are always going to be relating to each other- so if the Vassar College bake sale is running out of members, the researcher shouldn't be asking "Why is America falling apart?!" The question should be, what are else are these women doing with their time, and how can different relationship patterns be examined as contingent upon the historical processes within which they are embedded?

Connections with other readings, ideas, etc.

NoorAliHasan: FrankLester had posted this NYTimes article∞ to the class blogs a few weeks ago. It's a good recent example of social capital enabling negative causes.

Is this so very different from the common-bond and common-identity dichotomy we discussed a couple weeks ago? Most of us are familiar with these concepts, as they are fundamental to the CIC curriculum. This is what, supposedly, eCommunities are trying to develop through an online medium. We have seen examples, such as the Netville community in Canada, where ITC infrastructure has increased the social interaction, and thus the social capital, of community members who share both a neighborhood and a communications network. The implications for us, I think, are that both bridging and bonding social capital are important. . . and that, as community managers, we have to look for ways to develop both in our sites--not just catering to the audience we have, but actively reaching out to attract new members, as well. The internet, with its wide availability, is ideal for developing bridging capital--as well as for providing private (login-secured) places to explore in-depth bonding capital.

CathyLu: Are you inferring that the common-bond concept is analogous to the bonding social capital raised by Putnam and the common-identity concept to the bridging social capital? The only doubt I hold to this article is that the environment Putnam focuses on is the American society which is distinct from online communities. I am not certain if we can directly transplant his ideas. My question is how we can define a model for online communities to measure the social capital reciprocity as well as to differentiate the bridging capital and the bonding capital. I remember Kate Williams was doing studies in this area for offline communities and had formed a type of measuring model. We may be able to talk about how to revise her model for online communities in class.

DerekHansen: I think of common-bond and common-identity as different, but perhaps related concepts to bonding and bridging social capital. All of them describe the type of social ties that connect individuals together, however they highlight different things and apply to different situations. Common-bond and common-identity are generally used to describe the primary type of social tie that connects existing group members together. Whether this tie is based upon people liking each other (i.e., common-bond) or having a shared goal/purpose/interest (i.e., common-identity). These can be thought of as describing different types of groups. Bonding and bridging social capital don't necessarily describe types of communities/groups, but rather types of social capital (i.e., social networks). The key difference is that bonding ties are exclusive in nature and bridging ties are inclusive in nature. Putnam also mentions that bonding social capital is generally made up of strong ties, whereas bridging social capital is made up of primarily weak ties.

NoorAliHasan: I think Kate's research is pretty relevant. I believe she was mapping social networks of ICT use in Manchester, England.

Discussion

LaurieBuis: I enjoyed this reading quite a bit and look forward to reading more of the book when I have time. Specifically, I like that Putnam isn't writing a book in which he complains that people are losing their sense of community as well as civic engagement. Rather, he gives attention to the fact that "perhaps the younger generation today is no less engaged than their predecessors, but engaged in new ways" (pg. 26). I also enjoyed Putnam's discussion of bridging and boding. Putnam understands (unlike many others) that bridging and bonding can occur at the same time. While there may be others who agree with this idea as well, Putnam is the first I've seen who has given explicit examples showing how both functions can co-exist.

AycaObekci: I think what Putnam describes for the US is relevant to other modern societies, too. I think people spend less time in community related activities because they have less time for everything other than work and obligations. With the progress of technology and the computers all around, people have to work more. Everything's changing fast, professions, job requirements changing fast, so they need to spend extra time for their work just to keep up with the developments. The period that Putnam puts for the start of the decline, 1990's, is also the time for the rise of the personal computers. My friends from college are expected to continue working at their home using the laptop and VPN their company provided for them, so there are times they can't come to the alumni meeting, or even see their boyfriends. What is available for us out in the information world is so much more than it used to be 20 years ago, and we are expected to learn as much as possible. We want to read news, answer email (how many hours does it take if you answer them all?), learn the new technologies, be aware of cool sites.. All IT people I know naturally work extra hours. I don't know the cashier in the grocery store and the gas station, because I use the self-checkout machine and pay with credit card. I am not claiming that technology is evil or "oh, those good times in the past..", but I say technology is a reason. I don't feel bad not helping the children's park project in the neighborhood, because I feel ok by helping hunger.org online, so maybe technology changed the kind of engagement, as Putnam (and Laurie) says. Another reason may be that the rate of professional women is increasing, but the 'womanly duties' are not decreasing (childcare, housework, make up, dressing nice-yes, some companies expect women to make up and dress fashionably, this is just a matter of attraction, I think. I read a study telling that HR people think women who make up are more self-confident. I am not saying that women should make up and go to solarium, I am saying that some of them do, because they think this is expected by the society they live in; and it takes time to work, take care of oneself, take care of the children etc.); so especially women have less time for community involvement than they did before.
Actually, it's not just a matter of time, because I think one can find time for everything, if s/he really wants to. So, it's a matter of priority. The priorities are work, family, close friends.. and bowling league comes later and can be postponed when there are more important or more urgent things to do, dictated by the 2000's.

NoorAliHasan: I agree with AycaObekci that we all prioritize our interactions. Nonetheless, we have a basic human need to interact with other people. Whether we get that from family, co-workers, friends, the bowling league, a Meetup, or a chatroom is really a far more interesting question (and its implications on the individual and society as a whole). I think the interesting part of being involved in something like a bowling league or Meetup is that it may expose you to people are really outside of your social network and perhaps help you form ties to distant social networks. I'm not sure if this is Putnam's message or not but what I'm taking away from this week's readings is that involvement in some sort of a community activity helps us build ties to that community. When we're well-connected to a community, we actually care about its well-being and thus are more likely to participate in acts of reciprocity.

On an unrelated note, I wonder if the decline in community involvement in the United States is related to the changing demographics of the nation and/or the change in media reporting. Did people become less involved in their communities due to their fears of people who are different from them (as Putnam points out, our communities aren't mostly composed of white 2-parent families)? Or did people become less involved in their communities because of the perceptions that they formed about their communities based on media reporting? In the past few decades, the reporting of the news has become largely sensationalized and a great emphasis has been placed on violent crimes.

YongKim: Putnam in his talk at ICOS *cautiously* addressed (ethnic) diversity might be linked with low social capital and high (economic) inequality, at least in the short run, despite all other positive outcomes it also brings with. I wonder how his findings may change in the context of online communities in which ethnic diversity seems often inherent due to the global accessibility to many communities. Does ethnic diversity harm the development of social capital in online communities? Probably not because like-minded (?) people self-selectively join the communities….?

JudeYew: My take on social capital and community involvement is that it's very contextual and different for individual countries. The physical, cultural, historical and psychological makeup of individual countries of course determines to a large extent what is deemed as a social/civic sphere where members of a community are able to participate in. For example, in Singapore, there is much debate now as to how much participation the citizens of the country can have in the running of the country. The debate on declining social capital is one which is complex and difficult to come to solutions to. Would the same arguments that Putnam makes for the physical/offline communities apply to ones that are virtual/online?