BOWLING ALONE: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.

• Author: Gans, Curtis
• Position: Review

BOWLING ALONE: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam Simon & Schuster; $26.00

IN THIS ERA OF AMERICAN SELF-congratulation--for winning the Cold War, establishing American pre-eminence as the world's foremost military and economic power, the "longest peacetime economic expansion" in American history, record levels of employment unaccompanied by high inflation, budget surpluses, reduced crime rates, decreased air and water pollution, the ability of an ever-increasing percentage of Americans to spend an ever-increasing percentage of their savings on an endless variety of non-essential consumer goods, and their pursuit of the bitch-goddess of wealth with abandon and without shame or apology--there is an underlying dirty little secret:

The underpinnings of American democracy that helped produce all this are coming apart.

For nearly the past 25 years, I have been looking at one aspect of this problem--the growing disinclination of Americans to vote and otherwise participate in the political life of their nation. Every biennium American politics seems to produce new modern records for citizen political disengagement. And every year, the nation seems further and further from the political comity, cohesion, and consensus that makes possible the constructive address of citizen needs. In the 1998 election, only 11 percent of the 18-19 year olds eligible to vote for the first time bothered to go to the polls. The United States now stands 139th out of 163 democracies in the rate of voter participation. And the nation that prides itself on being the best example of government of, for, and by the people is rapidly becoming a nation whose participation is limited to the interested or zealous few.

Five years ago, in an article entitled "Bowling Alone" in an obscure publication, Robert D. Putnam expanded this discussion beyond the boundaries of political engagement by arguing that the entire spectrum of social connectedness in interpersonal, civic, and social life in America was eroding. His title was drawn from his finding that while bowling as an activity had not diminished in popularity, what had diminished substantially was league bowling, as emblematic of many more important activities that Americans were doing in isolation rather than in conjunction with others.

Prior to that article, Putnam was a respected, if not widely known, Harvard professor who had published a minimally read but highly honored book on Italian social connectedness. "Bowling Alone" took certain elites by storm. Putnam was invited to...