I’ve just started reading Bowling Alone for class, so this isn’t a full review but rather some initial thoughts.

Bowling Alone popularized the concept of social capital, one of the four main factors of production:

natural capital

land

physical capital

stuff

human capital

knowledge

social capital

who you know and who knows you

You can’t measure social capital directly, so Bowling Alone is an attempt to measure it indirectly. It’s based on the thesis that society’s stock of social capital has been dropping in the last few decades. Putnam believes that community organization membership (civic engagement) is the strongest generator of social capital. The title refers to the statistic that the demand for bowling went up while membership in bowling leagues went down.

Notes and thoughts about social capital:

• Civic engagement peaks in middle age, does that mean middle-age people have the most social capital?
• Social capital is a private good with public externalities: people accumulate social capital for their private interest, but society benefits as a side-effect. Has the private value of social capital decreased? Should society subsidize civic activities?
• Social capital, like other forms of capital, has no moral value. Putnam gives examples of the KKK and terrorist cells as community organizations.