CONNECTICUT LIBRARIES
December 2000, Vol. 42, No. 11
In his presentation at the 2000 CLA conference, computer guru Walt Crawford said that a public library should not describe itself as "the information place." He maintained that such a claim had not been accurate in the past, and was less valid today. I caught up with Crawford in the hallway, and I asked him how we public librarians might instead characterize our institutions. He replied that we should tell people what ALA was saying, "Libraries build communities." Anyone who doubts the nobility of that task must read Bowling Alone.Putnam's thesis is that, over the last third of the twentieth century, citizen participation in community activities has declined. He sees this decline in the decimation of team bowling, in low voter turnout, and in the membership woes of organizations like the Rotary and Elks. He believes that this bodes ill for the future, unless we take the initiative to reverse that trend.
Putnam meticulously documents the collapse of community spirit in America. His statistics on the membership crisis faced by traditional civic and professional organizations is staggering, especially when the reader sees this information graphed, organization by organization, in one of the book's appendices. Organizations that report rising memberships generally turn out to be those that require only "mailing list membership," not face-to-face, active participation. Putnam looks in vain at everything that might disprove his thesis. Instead, he finds that fewer people vote in elections than in the past. Fewer run for public office. Fewer register with either major political party. Church attendance is down. Community projects and organizations attract fewer volunteers. There is a slump in charitable giving. Polls reveal that people trust each other less now than they did 40 years ago. Once, community participation rose with educational level, but no longer. The lion's share of volunteering and community service done today is being performed by the aging World War II generation, not by the baby boomers.
Putnam educates us about "generalized reciprocity" and "social capital." The former connects all of us via the "golden rule." We assist someone who needs help, but not with the promise that this very same individual will aid us in the future. Rather, we do it to build a society in which we may hope that someone (anyone) will help us when we most need it. Social capital refers to all of the various social networks of which we are members, networks that carry certain responsibilities for reciprocity. "Bonding" social capital strengthens the relationships within a network. "Bridging" social capital helps society get things done by linking one network to another, expanding our circle of reciprocity, and disseminating useful information.
Does community matter? Yes! Putnam uses a variety of measurements to create a state by state index of social capital. He discovers that in states that rank high in social capital: children watch less television, schools do a better job of educating students, there is less crime, people enjoy better health, and they are less likely to cheat on their income taxes! They are more tolerant of racial differences and they find themselves sharing more equally in the distribution of the economic pie.
Seeking causes for the decline in community, Putnam identifies "generational change" as the biggest culprit. Community spirit peaked with the WWII generation. Perhaps the horrors of the Depression and the War stimulated individuals to new heights of sacrifice for the common good. Maybe those survivors felt especially responsible for handing down to posterity a better world than they had inherited. The baby boomers who succeeded them grew up in that better world, perhaps taking it for granted. So, a generation with little enthusiasm for community supplanted one of unprecedented community spirit. Television and urban/suburban sprawl potentiated the effect of generational change. TV viewing "privatized" leisure time, tearing us from social entertainments. Sprawl settled us in homogeneous suburbs that lacked distinctive identities. Sprawl transformed us from community members to commuters, with little time or energy for participation in neighborhood events.
All is not lost. Community suffered a similar fate one century ago. In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, America faced rapid population growth and staggering technological change. The railroad and telegraph linked traditional, isolated small towns into a vast, unfamiliar nation. Businesses and industries grew to sizes never dreamed of before. Urban centers tore citizens from intimate small town settings. Social critics fretted about the decline of human relationships.
However, between 1870 and 1920, America responded to social upheaval with its greatest period of "civic inventiveness." At that time, most of our major civic, fraternal, professional, and social organizations were founded, e.g., Shriners-1872, Salvation Army-1880, Connecticut Library Association-1891, PTA-1897, Rotary-1905, NAACP-1909, League of Women Voters-1920. Putnam believes that Americans will similarly find a twenty-first century reply to the collapse of community, once we recognize the problem and become convinced of its importance.
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