Bowling Alone By Putman Summary

Bowling Alone focuses on the decrease in civic engagement of American society and provides detailed examples and data as to why civic engagement such as voter turnout and “secondary association” involvement is decreasing. Putman attributes this decrease to demographic transformations by means of changing from “the corner grocery store” to the supermarket and even to electronic shopping. With a change like this there is less interaction while buying goods at the supermarket to almost no interaction when making purchases online. It is also stated that “the technological transformation of leisure” has caused social capital to decrease because more leisure time is devoted to watching television, thus further separating the individual from group interaction. Putman refutes the possibility that new forms of engagement such as AARP are replacing traditional forms of civic engagement by distinctly identifying what mode of engagement is taking place. He illustrates that there is minimal interaction between members and organizations like AARP, which does not aid civic engagement by simply paying dues as a member. Putman concludes by stating that more research needs to be done …show more content…
Sanders and Putman described how Facebook and Twitter were able to join youth with civic engagement during the 2008 Obama campaign even though going door to door campaigning was their primary method. They also point out that first year students and high school seniors do not show evidence of civic engagement, but begin to participate later. Sanders and Putman come back to stating the adult participation in civic engagement would restore what social capital was lost between the 1960’s and the