Bowling Alone

Summary

Robert Putnam’s basic thesis is that there is a decline in civic engagement in urban cities. He goes on to explore different probable factors that are causing the decline in civic engagement. First off, he dichotomizes civic engagement into two categories: machers and schmoozers. Machers and schmoozers are people who engage in formal kinds of civic engagement (following politics) and informal kinds of civic engagement (hanging out with friends) respectively.

Civic engagement, overall, is on the decline according to Putnam (informal activities in particular, however, are ones that Americans, on average engage in more often). This decline applies to cities because of certain urban characteristics. The city, because of our division of labour, increases our tendency to drop out of community affairs because of busyness. Also, the city’s neighbourhoods do not promote togetherness or a distinct “we” feeling because of a city’s sheer population to the point that we actually come to view it as a city of strangers (too many to bother making friends with), unlike in the country where your next neighbour will likely be someone you will feel closer to because of time spent together and having no alternative option to socialize with many other people. Also, electronic entertainment (especially TV watching) gives us less incentive to socialize with our neighbours. In sum, these are just some ways his arguments apply to a city.

What this all boils down to is a decline in social capital. Social capital is the investment put into having a social bond with other people (formally or informally), much like money. A decline in social capital means a lack of civic engagement (and even increases the crime rate). Theoretically, we would end up “Bowling Alone” in our urban cities.

Evaluation

Putnam claims that formal civic participation can deceivably be on the rise by the number of sheer organizations, but this does not take into account the number of actual active members. As for informal connections, he gives this vivid illustration, “Thus, the practice of entertaining friends has not simply moved outside the home, but seems to be vanishing entirely,” (Putnam, pg. 100). Certain course materials illustrate how these arguments apply to the city.

Too low or too high a density for a city were shown to lower the functioning level of city people in terms of civic engagement. Finding a balance was key to keeping an optimal amount of civic engagement in the city, as illustrated by “Cities and Social Pathology” by AR Gillis. Therefore, civic engagement should consider the absolute density of a city before jumping to conclusions on the sociological causes of social capital decline. Also, too low or too high a density for a city already implies social disorganization. Too low and your neighbours are spread too far apart, too much and it gives one an impersonal feelings toward their fellow neighbour because of strangers. Putnam does deal with the theory of social disorganization, but only in very superficial terms, therefore, more thought should be put as to how a city is structured, and not only to anything befitting a definition of a city (in terms of population) to blame for a decline in social capital.

“Immigration and the City” by Eric Fong was a personal choice for me, being an immigrant myself. With that said, his point about residential segregation is that immigrants are liable to feel residential segregation and feel they belong to a place even if they have the means to move otherwise. I can personally relate to this because I know how it feels to be amongst your brethren even if moving means you could be better off financially or what have you. This relates to Putnam because he theorizes that mobility and sprawl of people can contribute to social capital’s decline. However, people that are a minority (not stereotypically middle-class and white) may choose to stay within where they feel they belong. In fact, civic disengagement is liable to happen not only by moving too much, but by its exact opposite, by staying at a place way too long. It seems that any extreme of mobility or remaining can have both detrimental effects to social capital. Also, there was mention of two people of two different races, where a white person donated a kidney to a black person in Putnam’s book. Residential segregation could conceivably have not made such an intimate connection between two races possible and so Putnam may need to consider the various reasons people stay with their own kind aside from a patriotic feeling so that he can come up with solutions to our waning civic engagement.

Evidence Assessment

Is there social capital present from an urban life? In some instances, it is present and absent in others, so what is the so-called