Book review: Bowling Alone

When it comes to social capital, the one book that almost everyone refers to is Robert Putnam's 2000 book Bowling Alone, which I finally read this month. I read the first edition, which had been sitting on my bookshelf for some time, but now I notice that there is an updated second edition from 2020 - I might have to follow up this review later.

Anyway, the book's reputation as the go-to source for details on American social capital over the years is well deserved. The introductory chapter provides a good summary of many of the key concepts in social capital, which:

...refers to connections among individuals - social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them.

There are good explanations of bridging social capital (inclusive, between groups) and bonding social capital (exclusive, within groups), as well as a lot of background on the key literature on social capital. Given the datedness of the book now (and my not knowing there was a newer edition), I expect this would be among the most valuable parts of the book to readers new to the concept.

Putnam then goes into great detail on the trends in civic engagement and social capital over time. He draws on a variety of survey-based evidence, as well as organisational records. Clearly, a monumental effort has gone into collating the data, and this is confirmed by the large number of collaborators and research assistants noted in the acknowledgements section. Putnam documents declines in or important changes in the nature of political participation ("Participation in politics is increasingly based on the checkbook, as money replaces time..."), civic participation ("...active involvement in face-to-face organizations has plummeted, whether we consider organizational records, survey reports, time diaries, or consumer expenditures..."), and religious participation ("...over the last three to four decades Americans have become about 10 percent less likely to claim church memberships, while our actual attendance and involvement in religious activities has fallen by roughly 25 to 50 percent..."), as well as connections in the workplace, and more informal social connections. Clearly, something important changed over the course of the second half of the 20th Century.

The third section of the book was both the most interesting to me, and the most frustrating. It explores the potential causes of the decline in social capital over time, looking at pressures of time and money, mobility and urban sprawl, technology and mass media (mostly the spread of television), and generational change. There is again a good range of evidence in this section, and a rough conclusion on the relative contributions of these to the changes is presented at the end of the section:

First, pressures of time and money, including the special pressures on two-career families, contributed measurably to the diminution of our social and community involvement during these years. My best guess is that no more than 10 percent of the total decline is attributable to that set of factors.

Second, suburbanization, commuting, and sprawl also played a supporting role. Again, a reasonable estimate is that these factors together might account for perhaps an additional 10 percent of the problem.

Third, the effect of electronic entertainment - above all, television - in privatizing out leisure time has been substantial. My rough estimate is that this factor might account for perhaps 25 percent of the decline.

Fourth and most important, generational change - the slow, steady, and ineluctable replacement of the long civic generation by their less involved children and grandchildren - has been a very powerful factor... this factor might account for perhaps half of the overall decline.

The analysis in this section is supported by evidence, as I noted above, but the evidence is all correlational. That points to the difficulty of establishing causation in the absence of natural or other experiments, and Putnam is suitably modest. His rough estimates of the contributions of the various factors to the changes in social capital may well be true, but they are impossible to test in a robust and credible way. However, my biggest gripe with this section (and the book overall) is that the analyses in this section use an inconsistent set of control variables. Different analyses control for different factors, but the choice of controls isn't justified. That is somewhat mitigated by the data having been made available at the Bowling Alone website, so interested readers can explore the robustness to a varied set of control variables. However, most readers would be unlikely to do so.

The last two sections of the book look at why we should care (i.e. what are the negative consequences of low social capital, such as its effects on education, health, crime, democracy, and so on), and what society should do to arrest the change. These were the least interesting sections to me, as I am familiar with more of the recent literature on the consequences of social capital. However, the connection between social capital and people's belief that they would win a fistfight is both surprising, and an example of the breadth of evidence that Putnam applies in the book. As for the final section, the dated nature of the first edition of the book makes the solutions interesting, but the world has moved on (and I look forward to reading the newer edition to see what Putnam thinks now).

This is a book that could easily degenerate into a boring progression of tables of statistics. However, Putnam does a good job of keeping it lively. For example, in discussing social capital as a collection of different forms of capital, Putnam starts with a quirky example of different forms of physical capital:

Physical capital is not a single "thing", and different forms of physical capital are not interchangeable. An eggbeater and an aircraft carrier both appear as physical capital in our national accounts, but the eggbeater is not much use for national defense, and the carrier would not be much help with your morning omelet.

Overall, and in spite of my few gripes on the analysis, I really enjoyed this book, which is an in-depth treatment of an important topic. While I suspect that many people who cite the book have never read it, they really should. And, so should you.