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Putnam’s study will tell you more than you may wish to know about how Americans spend their time in an effort to answer the question of where has the civic soul gone. As he notes: “Community has warred incessantly with individualism for preeminence in our political hagiology…. The dominant theme is simple: For the first two-thirds of the twentieth century a powerful tide bore Americans into ever deeper engagement in the life of their communities, but a few decades ago— silently, without warning— that tide reversed and we were overtaken by a treacherous rip current. Without at first noticing, we have been pulled apart from one another and from our communities over the last third of the century.” (p.27)
Bowling Along describes this shift and makes efforts to offer the reasons why, one of the heaviest being the arrival and dispersion of Television. He states: “I need to make clear at the outset that I have not entirely solved the mystery, so I invite your help in sifting clues.”
Putnam does not delve into the politics of the era only that the citizen has become detached from the sense of participation. This review offers another explanation, following the wisdom and publications of Sheldon S. Wolin a political philosopher who describes the same process in a very different manner.
Part of the change is in style of presentation. Putnam’s approach is under the sway of the behavioralist revolution, which emphasized the quantitative analysis of data rather than political ideas as a way to explain political behavior, in his case “SOCIAL CAPITAL”.
Wolin sees the same shifting from communal involvement to individualism and a following drop in the role of active government beginning in the 1970’s, but this was an engineered change with its roots in the formation of a small group, the Mont Pelerin Society (named after the Swiss spa where they first met) in 1947, with Friedrich von Hayek, Ludvig von Mises, and the economist Milton Friedman as recognized contributors. They felt the world was headed toward a centralized highly managed regulated existence threading Freedom and Individual Rights as they saw it.
In America this was the Post-Depression, Post-War, FDR creation with Keynesian anti-cyclical intervention, anti-trust and social overhead dimensions, characterized today as our period of ‘Welfare Liberalism,’ all features they hoped to destroy. (Putnam handles this period as one of extensive interpersonal relationships.)
Those believes had been sold by individuals like Lewis F. Powell Jr. who in 1971 issued a call to the US Chamber of Commerce, and other conservative organizations and think-tanks such as
The Business Roundtable, The Heritage Foundation, The Cato Institution, Accuracy in Academia and the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research to counter criticism of the free enterprise system.
At the University of Chicago Milton Freedom was spreading the word. Powell was to be appointed to the Supreme Court by President Nixon. A formidable array of power and influence.
David Harvey in A Brief History of Neoliberalism details their impacts and views it as ‘Class Action’ a dangerous tack for an academic but now in 2018 when “1%ters” has entered the common vocabulary likely raises few eyebrows.
It is a long shot from Reagan’s ‘Government is not the solution but the problem’ to the neoliberal existence prevalent today, the point is just that Putnam’s Bowling Alone concerns may have very different causes and therefore very different solutions.
The book is very complete but tedious and Wolin’s thesis of “Democracy Incorporated” definitely seems more relevant. Sheldon S. Wolin was professor Political Science Berkeley and Princeton, Robert D. Putnam was Dena of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Perhaps the Millianians generation can put us back together someday, that would please both.
3 star
- Paperback: 544 pages
- Publisher: Touchstone Books by Simon & Schuster; 1st edition (August 7, 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0743203046
- ISBN-13: 978-0743203043
- Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.3 x 8.4 inches
- Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
- Customer Reviews: 247 customer reviews
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#9,055 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #49 in Cultural Anthropology (Books)
- #86 in Historical Study (Books)
- #31 in Sociology of Class
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