Remember “Bowling Alone” — the malaise of a culture with no community? Mr. Bowling Alone, the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam is back now with his retested theory.
Americans aren’t joining, volunteering, and participating in civic culture anymore, he says. They’re not girl scouts, or elks; they’re not in the rotary or the sewing circle or the PTA. They’re not having picnics, they’re not going to church and they’re not voting. They may be bowling, but they’re bowling alone.
Without the glue of networks and connections — what Robert Putnam calls social capital — societies are doomed to be less healthy, less safe and less educated. “Your chance of dying over the next year is cut in half if you join just one group,” says Robert Putnam. “Isolation is as big a factor as smoking.” Or as Yogi Berra is said to have remarked: “If you don’t go to somebody’s funeral, they won’t come to yours.”
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Robert Putnam, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University
and political scientist Sheila Tobias.