Bowling Alone

When playing in the league, it usually after work - it will not end. This seemingly unimportant phenomenon symbolizes the serious social change Robert Putnam discovered in this wonderful book. This is what "economists" call "big achievements".

Putnam explains how we are separated from each other, using social structure (PTA, church, political parties, etc.), using rich new data to clarify changes in behavior of Americans It shows how it collapses. Before this innovative research was announced, never successfully diagnosed the damage given to these organizations and citizens by these destructive bonds, to build a happy, healthy and safe society It has enhanced their basic power for.

As in past works such as lonely people and wealthy societies, and works by C. Wright Mills and Betty Friedan, Putnam's Bowling Alone has identified the serious crisis of our social center and suggested what we can do doing.

In the later book "Bowling Alone" (2000), Putnam followed the change in the American community group and social capital in recent years - mainly declined. Bowling Alone describes a comprehensive overview of the recent trends of various social life indicators in modern America. This book provides a list of benefits claimed by expanded social capital and presents a wide range of remedies to treat Putnam's current social discomfort. Advantages of claims are related below.

In 1995, Robert Putnam wrote a famous article entitled "Solo Bowling" to study the decline of social capital in the American community. Social capital is the value embedded in the network and is usually represented by a powerful community organization such as church, labor union, brotherhood association, community group, PTA. Putnam used the bowling league as an example. He discovered that there are more bowling balls in the US than ever, but discovered that the classic bowling league composed of locals is almost the past. People are still eating, but instead of joining a community group, they occasionally meet with some close friends. Declining social capital is closely related to other social negative trends, such as an increase in poor children raised by a single parent family.

The central argument of Robert Putnam alone with bowling is that citizen participation and social capital have been declining over the past few decades. The idea of ​​"only bowling" comes from the fact that the bowling in the league from 1980 to 1993 decreased by 40% and the individual pitcher increased by 10% (Putnam 112). Putnam uses this metaphor for all forms of citizenship. That means that people prefer to focus on individuals rather than groups and do little they do as much as they can. The book in Putnam deals with several themes of citizen participation such as the decline of citizen participation and social isolation. Putnam is concerned about the increasing viewing rate of television and careful about the decline of growth of this technology like the Internet.