On Robert D. Putnam’s Prescriptions for Rebuilding Social Capital

Bowling Alone, published in 2000, is a highly influential sociological work presenting a study on the decline of American social capital. The first section of the book explains what social capital is and how it’s measured and proves that it has been in decline since the Boomers entered adulthood. The next section explores possible causes for this decline, arguing that some are more explanatory than others. Then, there is a section addressing why this change matters and the sort of downsides we should expect to see (and do see) from living in a world with less social capital, and the last provides some suggestions of a way forward. Here, I’ll argue that these suggestions are unlikely to work, not because of material constraints, with which Putnam is concerned, but because the current ruling ideology will undermine attempts to bond over natural affinities. 

What he means by social capital is what many in my circles would describe as living in a “high trust society”. It has to do with things like knowing people who can give you leads on jobs, knowing your neighbors’ names, going to block parties and barbecues with acquaintances, holding the belief that most people are good and trustworthy, and having other close contacts that can be called on in a financial or other emergency. Putnam argues quite convincingly that these connections come out of voluntary associations, like churches, participation in neighborhood governance, and, historically, involvement in things like Rotary or the Elks. He also argues that social capital, in addition to its positive effects on the people it touches, like providing a layer of financial security outside of the home that isn’t a government safety net, and increasing feelings of psychological well-being, also has positive spillover effects for things we may care about for our culture overall, like democratic participation, tolerance, and the type of mutual aid often associated with leftist organizing, like the formation of community centers that also provide charity and outreach functions.

In this review, I am not going to address in detail his arguments that social capital exists, is in decline, or his view of the reasons why this is occurring, for a few reasons. First, I am not equipped to address sociological arguments based in statistics. I will instead largely take his word for it. Second, I find the overall story he tells very plausible: it does seem like clubs used to be more common, anyone can tell you the churches are emptier than they were, and these changes have had material negative impacts on people, especially those in the younger generations, economically, socially, and romantically. I have no reason to doubt the overall picture.

The one point I will make about his assessment of causes is that he possibly understates the impact that the massive increase of women in the workforce has had on the decline of social capital. He says in several places throughout the book that people who work part-time have the highest rates of participation in social capital-building voluntary associations, higher than those who do not work at all and those who work full time. It seems like a large number of people moving from working in, e.g., a home laundry business for around twenty hours a week to working full time should have had an impact. Even if this accounts for, as he argues, less than 10% of the decline in social capital overall, this could still be meaningful when thinking about a complex phenomenon with multiple synergistic causes. I think Putnam is somewhat uncomfortable when discussing this issue, much more so than when he discusses television. He offers many disclaimers on the benefits of women in the workforce even as he mentions studies indicating that most of the change in the percentage of women in the workforce since 1960 has been comprised of women who say they work primarily because they “have to” not because they “want to.”

My main goal with the essay is to discuss Putnam’s prescriptions for building social capital going forward. The book is somewhat outdated by this point, and it has become clear not only that we haven’t succeeded in raising social capital, but we are even lower in it than before. But even starting from now, I think many of his ideas on how to ameliorate our situation would be difficult if not impossible to implement because of something Putnam barely mentions: ideological changes.

It’s important to understand that social capital, at least in part, relies on similarity. The organizations that are highest in what Putnam calls “bonding” social capital are families and churches—organizations composed of people who are alike in many ways and that have clearly defined boundaries (e.g., religious organizations have a clear division based on beliefs or declared creeds and organizations like Rotary and Elks had formal processes for joining). There is an explicit in-group and an explicit out-group. Of course, not all social capital-producing organizations have such a clear delineation between “us” and “not us,” and many organizations see service to the so-called outgroup as an important part of their mission. Consider members of organizations built around a particular, apolitical goal, like the local elementary school’s PTA, who probably don’t experience non-PTA members as an outgroup. For that reason, they also probably do not feel as bonded or loyal to the other members, at least on the basis of their shared PTA membership. 

Membership in this goal-oriented, apolitical type of organization is associated with increased tolerance of many kinds, including racial, religious, and of LGBT people. Working in a PTA with people different from you builds familiarity and therefore affection, crossing divides based on prejudice or ignorance. On the other hand, there is a tension between these features of social capital and what is required to have a group of people that is closely bound and intensely loyal. The “dark side” of bonding social capital is that groups formed around a shared characteristic exclude those without it. And this might not be an incidental part of successful organizations. One striking example is that of the Jaycess. In 1984, the Supreme Court required them to admit women, and many similar organizations were forced to by lower courts in the years following that decision. Have you ever even met someone who was a member of the Jaycees? 

On the other hand, many gender-mixed groups survive and thrive, so whatever amount of similarity between members is required, it is not total similarity. We can imagine taking the specific steps prescribed by Putnam to build organizations, setting aside questions of discrimination that would run afoul of legal protections. One proposal is a renewal of civics education. Could we do this? I think it would be met with massive resistance if proposed. We are now at the phase of polarization and disagreement where a large portion of our country is asking if anything is worth saving at all. This group will not accept “civics;” they want the 1619 project. They do not want to hear that we have a great country, a shared cultural and intellectual inheritance, and that if we all work together, we can make it even better. They want to hear “here are your enemies, and here is why we should go get them as soon as possible.”

Putnam makes the interesting claim that ideological homogeneity within-group is not a necessary component for the success of a voluntary association. Instead, in-organization diversity is important, because it decreases polarization. The collapse of social capital is one cause of the increasing polarization we see. I think that it’s true that successful social groups do not require total ideological homogeneity, but they do require some baseline of shared beliefs that the members know every good and decent person holds. Imagine you’re a woman who in general thinks that women are not well-suited to working in traditional employment. You understand that there are exceptions, but you overall believe in some ingrained sex differences and think that such differences make men more suited to bread-winning and women to staying home with the kids. Maybe you don’t discuss this much in mixed company, but it’s what you believe. Now imagine that at nearly every PTA meeting, some well-meaning, very polite fellow-mom says something like “oh . . . you don’t work?” Will you feel that this reflects a simple disagreement or that your form of life is unacceptable in these circles? Will you maintain motivation to keep coming to the meetings? (If you would prefer to imagine a different scenario, this example also works with a woman with an opposing ideology who finds herself repeatedly asked at her church volunteer group why she doesn’t have kids yet.)

The point is that many of Putnam’s proposed solutions (but not all; for example, his suggestion that labor laws be changed so as to be friendlier to families will probably not be subject to this exact problem I’m describing) are going to be hampered by our obsession with institutional critique and reform, a purely ideological function. Any organization is going to face social (and even legal) pressure to be more “inclusive,” to engage in “self-reflection,” to “not be neutral in the face of oppression.” That we now “Bowl Alone” isn’t only the result of material lack of availability of time or of our unwillingness to try because more passive entertainment is available, it’s also because we are in a double-bind. While we are polarized enough that we will constantly find ourselves outraged by the viewpoints we are exposed to in the so-called “neutral” organizations, the option to only interact within our in-groups is not available or wouldn’t last long if attempted. Our ideological soup is completely toxic to the idea of “joining” something with people “like you,” or hanging out somewhere you feel you belong. 

Perhaps I only believe this because I grew up in a world with little social capital. But we can all think of examples, either famous or from our own lives, of organizations that lost members or failed altogether because they became too politicized, overburdened themselves trying to make everyone feel included, or were too tolerant to maintain themselves. So while on a personal level, I do what I can to participate in social networks and take social capital seriously, and I have seen some very promising attempts at building social-capital-producing organizations, I am very aware of the difficulty involved and not particularly optimistic about the fate of any of the organizations of which I am currently a part. I would quickly leave them if the ideological tide shifted too much or if the infighting became too politicized or frustrating. Perhaps this is exactly what Putnam would suggest we learn not to do.