Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

The publication of this work and a scholarly article of the same title in 1995 triggered academic literature on the topic of social capital. Already, others, such as Robert Bellah et al. (Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. California UP, 1985), had sparked a discussion about Americans’ withdrawal from community. Putnam offered statistical evidence to support these concerns. Many scholars lauded Putnam’s work for its insightfulness and continued to evaluate the state of social capital 20 years after its publication. Others have offered critical analysis (D. Stolle and M. Hooghe. “Review Article: Inaccurate, Exceptional, One-Sided or Irrelevant? The Debate about the Alleged Decline of Social Capital in Western Societies,” B.J.pol.S. 35, 2004, 149-67). A common critique concerns the conceptual vagueness surrounding the central concept of the book, social capital. Putnam’s definition is inconsistent, referring at times to social networks and at other times to levels of civic engagement. Scholars have additionally criticized his conflation of causality with correlation. Putnam assigns factors to blame for the decline of social capital with numeric specificity, and critics argue that such causality and specificity are not justified by his analysis.