Product Description

In a groundbreaking book based on vast new data, Robert Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbours and our democratic structures- and how we may reconnect. BOWLING ALONE warns Americans that their stock of "social capital", the very fabric of their connections with each other, has been accelerating down. Putnam describes the resulting impoverishment of their lives and communities. Drawing on evidence that includes nearly half a million interviews conducted over a quarter of a century in America, Putnam shows how changes in work, family structure, age, suburban life, television, computers, women's roles and other factors are isolating Americans from each other in a trend whose reflection can clearly be seen in British society. We sign 30 percent fewer petitions than we did ten years ago. Membership in organisations- from the Boy Scouts to political parties and the Church is falling. Ties with friends and relatives are fraying: we're 35 percent less likely to visit our neighbours or have dinner with our families than we were thirty years ago. We watch sport alone instead of with our friends. A century ago, American citizens' means of connecting were at a low point after decades of urbanisation, industrialisation and immigration uprooted them from families and friends. That generation demonstrated a capacity for renewal by creating the organisations that pulled Americans together. Putnam shows how we can learn from them and reinvent common enterprises that will make us secure, productive, happy and hopeful.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6109 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Few people outside certain scholarly circles had heard the name Robert D Putnam before 1995. But then this self-described "obscure academic" hit a nerve with a journal article called "Bowling Alone". Suddenly he found himself invited to Camp David, his picture was in People magazine, and his thesis at the centre of a raging debate. In a nutshell, he argued that civil society was breaking down as Americans became more disconnected from their families, neighbours, communities, and the republic itself. The organisations that gave life to democracy were fraying. Bowling became his driving metaphor. Years ago, he wrote, thousands of people belonged to bowling leagues. Today, however, they're more likely to bowl alone:

Television, two-career families, suburban sprawl, generational changes in values--these and other changes in American society have meant that fewer and fewer of us find that the League of Women Voters, or the United Way, or the Shriners, or the monthly bridge club, or even a Sunday picnic with friends fits the way we have come to live. Our growing social-capital deficit threatens educational performance, safe neighbourhoods, equitable tax collection, democratic responsiveness, everyday honesty, and even our health and happiness.

The conclusions reached in Bowling Alone rest on a mountain of data gathered by Putnam and a team of researchers since his original essay appeared. Its breadth of information is astounding--yes, he really has statistics showing people are less likely to take Sunday picnics nowadays. Dozens of charts and graphs track everything from trends in PTA participation to the number of times Americans say they give "the finger" to other drivers each year. If nothing else, Bowling Alone is a fascinating collection of factoids. Yet it does seem to provide an explanation for why "we tell pollsters that we wish we lived in a more civil, more trustworthy, more collectively caring community". What's more, writes Putnam, "Americans are right that the bonds of our communities have withered, and we are right to fear that this transformation has very real costs". Putnam takes a stab at suggesting how things might change, but the book's real strength is in its diagnosis rather than its proposed solutions. Bowling Alone won't make Putnam any less controversial, but it may come to be known as a path-breaking work of scholarship, one whose influence has a long reach into the 21st century. --John J Miller

About the Author
Robert D. Putnam is the Professor of International Peace at Harvard University. He is the authour of six previous books, and his articles have appeared in THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE AMERICAN PROSPECT as well as many other publications.

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Customer Reviews

A wake up call
This book brilliantly identifies something that most of us were aware of at some level - the fact that the level of social awareness and engagement is dropping in contemporary societies. Where the book is important is in detailed analysis and interpretation of seemingly rock-solid data. The conclusions are difficult to argue with. Television, generational attitudes, urban sprawl and the pressures of work have combined to fragment communities and contribute to an unhealthy level of social isolation.
Don't be put off however by the detailed references to statistical analysis. Putnam is like everybody's favourite lecturer - somebody with the skill to make a potentially dry area of research into hot news that has to be heard and discussed.

This book refers to American societies. Why then should anybody outside of the U.S. read it? Well, try these reasons:
- Certain causes have certain effects no matter where you are. Extra commuting time, for example, will always lead to less community time.
- Many Western societies are either evolving towards an American model or at least have the potential to do so. Those of us outside of the U.S have a chance to make things different.
- Reading Putnam's discussions of the ill effects of lack of community would lead one to suppose that this too could be at the root of some problems worldwide. These surveys need to be conducted anywhere that concern exists for the preservation of community structures.

Compelling reading for a wide audience
This latest book from political scientist Robert Putnam brings together a vast amount of factual information and data charting the decline in what has come to be known as "social capital" in the United States. Although the book is entirely focussed on the United States, the description of how civic engagement as revealed in community involvement, volunteering, voting behaviour and even informal socialising, has declined since the mid-1960s raises questions for non-American readers about whether this may be happening elsewhere and if so whether it matters. In a very clearcut and easy style, Professor Putnam reviews a growing amount of research in the US and beyond which shows that the degree to which individuals and communities are connected to each other makes a significant difference to a range of outcomes including school achievement, health, political democracy and levels of trustworthiness to mention only some - even when other factors such as income, wealth and ethnic conditions are taken into account. Some of the possible reasons for a recent decline in "social capital" are discussed and many of these will sound familiar to readers outside the US - increasing hours at work, TV watching etc. However, the most intriguing aspect is that differences between generations is what counts most. In other words, for the US at least, people born since the 1950s are less inclined to volunteer, vote, join associations and play an active role in networks. Some challenges and possible avenues for "rebuilding civic society" are discussed which will be of vital interest to a wide audience in the US and beyond. For the serious analyst or pundit of data sources and related topics, there is an extensive list of references and data sources.

Near canonical work of applied social theory
Review the literature on Social Capital, and one name comes to the forefront again and again: Robert Putnam. It is this book which not only established him in the field, but more or less defined the future course of international study. But, although social capital is the central theme of this book, Putnam is less concerned with defining it (he gives at least three differing definitions, that I counted) as with demonstrating that it is not what it used to be.

Pages and pages of graphs all show a similar curve - gently rising from the 1900s, dipping for the Great Depression before rising again, dipping again for the second World War, rising sharply to peak in the sixties, before tumbling to a short plateau in the eighties, and then tumbling relentlessly from then on. This 'Putnam curve' (my words, not his) applies to Parent Teacher Associations, Card playing, civic activity, and, of course, to the rise and fall of league bowling, which is what gives this book its title. The graphs are supported by much reasoning, and by careful exclusion of other factors which might paint a false picture. The result is as compelling as it is far reaching.

Putnam's four factors which he believes contribute to the decline in social capital, or generalised reciprocity, as he at one point puts it, are perhaps less clearly demonstrated than the problem itself. They are: pressures of time and money, suburbanisation (with its commute to work), electronic entertainment (especially the television), and generational change, as more civic generations are replaced by less civic ones.

Likewise, his solutions, increasing civic engagement, community friendly workspaces, less time travelling, engaging faith groups, reducing TV time, and participatory cultural activities, are more supported by the extensive anecdotes than by the huge amounts of data.

Putnam's underlying thesis, that social capital is basically a 'good thing', and we should have more of it, had already been challenged by neo-marxist Pierre Bourdieu. A more substantial challenge has been put since, in that the US picture is very difficult to apply to the international community. UK society, for example, with the same four factors at work, does not remotely show a similar pattern of rising and falling social capital.

Nonetheless, the strength of Putnam's argument has been enough to set in motion major projects by the World Bank, the OECD, the EU and our own Office of National Statistics, to firm up the data gathering, and to find how it might apply to public policy.

It is very, very unusual to find a single work of such eminence in any modern field of enquiry. Most commentators have been content to build on Putnam's work, or take issue with the technicalities, rather than to challenge his overall thesis. This puts us at risk of discovering that it is the Emperor's new clothes, when someone comes along with a radically critical perspective.

Nonetheless, whatever flaws may be found in the theory at a later date, this is a seminal work, and well deserves the maximum rating.