Two Possible Explanations Why Bowling Alone Was So Wrong

I am reading a new book by Arthur C. Brooks, who is a professor at the Maxwell School at Syracuse. Maxwell is always ranked among the best schools of public policy in the country. About six years ago Robert Putnam wrote a book called Bowling Alone which argued that all of the hustle and bustle of our daily lives was a contributor to our decline in civic participation. I've always thought it was an odd book because when the book came out there were so many indicators of upticks in civic participation in the country that I found it hard to believe his assertions. True, civic clubs and other twentieth century manifestations of civic activity were declining but there were all sorts of new activities taking their place - kids soccer leagues, various electronic communities and all kinds of other indicators that seemed to have disproved his ideas.

Brooks book Who Really Cares: America's Charity Divide- Who Gives, Who Doesn't and Why it Matters) is an interesting study of the state of charity in the country. Among the findings Brooks argues that secular liberals (those with a liberal philosophy and no significant religious convictions are
"less likely than religious conservatives to belong to college or professional fraternities (in spite of having a higher level of college attendance), and less likely to participate in sports,cultivate a hobby,or join a book club. However, they are more likely to belong to an association for which they only pay a fee (such as the Sierra Club or the National Organization for Women)."

The Putnam thesis was in part conditioned on survey research but a lot of it was based on observation. In this case he could simply have observed too narrow a group. It could also have been written in much that same way (because a lot of the tone is similar) to Malthus' Second Treatise - which was also a book of gloom. You will remember that Malthus argued that our propensity as human beings to procreate will always (or at least in Malthus' vision) trump our ability to innovate - thus leading to the potential for starvation in the world. In Malthus' case he used lousy data (actually according to one author the data set upon which he based his projections had tons of immigrants and thus an abnormally high rate of population growth) and failed to anticipate things like the steel plow. (Which revolutionized agricultural production.) It could be argued that in Putnam's case had he written it a few years later he might have been cognizant of the community building of blogs and blackberries and Match.com.