Amitai Etzioni's book The Spirit of Community addresses related issues.

A review Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert Putnam Simon & Schuster, 544 pages, $26

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

In the past year, several social scientists have argued that people who use the Internet, especially a cursed breed known as "heavy users," are glued to their screens and hence are missing out on social life. These lost souls are said to have less time than "normal" folks for their families, friends and communities.

In contrast, other social scientists have noted that people keep in touch with their families and friends through e-mail, join thousands of clubs on Yahoo and e-Circles, and are notified about community events on screen. The debate Robert Putnam feeds into with his new book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community is along the same lines: Are we losing our social bonds, why does it matter, and what is to be done?

Buttressing a bowling thesis

Putnam, a political science professor at Harvard, exploded onto the national and international news scene with an article he published in a scholarly journal in 1995 called "Bowling Alone." (A different version of it appeared in The Responsive Community, a quarterly I edit.) The title of the article turned out to be worth millions.

True, practically nobody bowls alone, nor does Putnam claim they do. What he does show is that people who used to join bowling leagues have, in recent years, dropped out and instead simply bowl with friends. And the same holds for our membership in practically all other voluntary associations, from PTAs to the Lions Club, from the Red Cross to the Boy Scouts.

The article grabbed the media's attention. An avalanche of articles appeared, bemoaning the decline of the nation's social bonds and community. Social scientists, however, were less convinced. Soon a small cottage industry bent on disproving Putnam's main thesis emerged.

It mainly argued that while people had dropped some old-fashioned organizations, they had joined new ones, such as the Sierra Club and the AARP. And while people had reduced their memberships in associations such as the PTA, they had formed new associations with similar goals, such as PTOs.

Putnam, a hard-working colleague, convinced foundations to grant him a few million dollars, hired a sizable staff and went to work. Now five years after the publication of the original article, he presents the results of his gigantic research project in his new book with the golden title Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. (He received a million dollars from the publisher for the rights to the book.)

For the book, he collected a vast array of data to support his two points: Our participation has dwindled in almost every activity, and our fraying social fabric imposes heavy costs.

The fewer our social bonds, the more likely we will suffer from depression, nervous breakdowns, ulcers or even heart attacks. We also will be more likely not to vote, not to trust our neighbors, to sue and so on -- quite a list. (Putnam did not acknowledge that a long list of communitarian scholars, from Emile Durkheim and Robert Bellah to Ferdinand Tonnies and me who make similar arguments, but he has much more evidence to support his observations than all of us put together.)

The downside of community-building

One would think that roughly 400 pages of data that line up in practically the same way would convince social scientists and end the debate. The fact, though, is that while the quibbling has subsided since the recent publication of the book, it has far from died down. I wonder that if such a mountain of findings cannot settle a question, what can? It is time to build on Putnam's findings rather than further questioning his main thesis.

More problematic than the thesis are the treatments Putnam proposes to cure our rising community deficit. (He uses an ugly term, "social capital," when he refers to diminishing social bonds. That catchphrase conceals the fact that people do not relate to one another quite the way assets -- the original "capital" -- do.) Putnam's difficulty is a common one: Diagnosis is so much easier than finding a cure. Pointing to the social and human costs exacted by poverty, racism, crime and other social problems is easier than showing what might be done about them.

Putnam favors increasing participation in religious activities but faces a problem flagged by Francis Fukuyama: How does one prevent such groups from fostering values of which many, including perhaps Putnam, disapprove?

For instance, joining the Southern Baptists may well provide one with more social bonds but also may lead people to expect wives to "graciously submit to their husbands." And some religious groups are stridently anti-gay, racist or promote other values incompatible with a free democratic society.

In short, there is a danger that as one builds communities, one also can build discrimination and societal divisiveness. Putnam hedges against that potential problem by introducing the important concept of "bridging" -- developing social bonds that develop among members of different communities. It remains to be seen to what extent such bridges actually will develop and how much weight they can carry.

Putnam passionately argues for introducing new laws that would make corporations more family-, and hence community-, friendly. He argues that just as we now find it hard to believe that children used to work 12 hours a day in mines, so people in the future will be stunned to learn that we accepted that both parents work long hours. This idea may well fit into the new, less anti-government mood (shared by both major political parties) and a somewhat greater willingness to invest in, well, social capital.

More to come?

My main problem, which I hope to see Putnam address in his next book or article, lies elsewhere. What truly remains to be documented is what people talk about when they bowl, play bridge or chess, or go bird watching together. I grant that all are occasions in which people reinforce their friendships.

However, I am less confident that they also are the places where people shore up their moral commitments, talk about basic moral questions, such as what is right and wrong, or encourage each other to be better than they would be otherwise -- things that are essential prerequisites of a good society.

When I asked Putnam about this during a presentation at the Brookings Institution, he responded that people who bowl together discuss such topics and come to shared understandings about priorities and what we owe our children, our aging parents and our community. I am looking forward to Putnam's sharing the evidence with us that supports this crucial point, as he has so adeptly done for his other observations.