The examples of more and more people bowling and eating alone are used to highlight a more general trend involving:
civic disengagement
and a decline in social capital.
In explaining social capital trends, much research has pointed to changes across time period and/or across birth cohorts; though much scholarship about the reasons for the decline generally suggest that
a cohort shift stemming from the replacement of exceptionally trusting generations of older Americans by the far less
…
Political polarization, weakened family structures, lagging economic development, fraying societal cohesion
, and many other contemporary troubles have been said to result from a lack of such capital.
Putnam says that
social capital is declining in the United States
. This is seen in lower levels of trust in government and lower levels of civic participation. … Technological transformation of leisure (e.g., television) is another cause of declining social capital, as stated by Putnam.
Social capital is a general concept, and we should not expect that it can be captured with just one variable. Many different measures can be and have been posited as indicators of social capital.
We define the dark side of social capital as
situations in which trust, social ties and shared beliefs and norms that may be beneficial to some persons are detrimental to other individuals
, but also to sport movements as well as to the society at large.
Without social capital
humans could not work together
. This is because social capital is the shared values, norms, trust, and belonging that make social exchange possible. Our society, economy, institutions, and political system could not exist without social capital.
It is argued that when
a society gets more heterogeneous
, then, overall, there is a decline of social capital, in particular of trust, between the members. … People turn more inward. Further, it is argued that this decline occurs even within individual communities, not just across communities.
Utah
has the highest social capital score, followed by Minnesota and Wisconsin. Of the 11 states with the lowest levels of social capital, ten of them fall within a contiguous bloc of states running from Nevada, across the Southwest and South over to Georgia and Florida.
Societal level examples of social capital include
when someone opens a door for someone, returns a lost item to a stranger
, gives someone directions, loans something without a contract, and any other beneficial interaction between people, even if they don’t know each other.
Potential downsides of social capital include:
fostering behavior that worsens rather than improves economic performance
; acting as a barrier to social inclusion and social mobility; dividing rather than uniting communities or societies; facilitating rather than reducing crime, education underachievement and health- …
Social capital can be very easily destroyed. It can take a long time to build social capital through repeat positive actions and interactions, but it can be destroyed by a single action. Generally social capital is lost or
damaged by anything that reduces feelings of goodwill or disrupts networks
.
How connected do you feel at work? In other words, the more connections you have with friends, family and neighbors, the greater your social capital. …
As social capital increases
, so do community trust, participation, access to resources and quality of life.
The term social capital refers to
a positive product of human interaction
. The positive outcome may be tangible or intangible and may include useful information, innovative ideas, and future opportunities.
What is the Bowling Alone theory?
Putnam argues that civic life is collapsing – that Americans aren’t joining, as they once did
, the groups and clubs that promote trust and cooperation. This undermines democracy, he says. We are “bowling alone”; since 1980, league bowling has dropped 40 percent.
The main criticisms of social capital theory are
that it is not social, not capital, and not a theory
. This doesn’t leave the concept with much of substance, leading some authors to describe the concept as “fundamentally flawed”.
