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The most populous states all ranked pretty low. New York, Florida, Texas and California did terrible in this assessment. There really isn't a strong link to being progressive and doing better social capital wise, the most conservative region in the US is the mountain west(Utah, Wyoming, Montana,Idaho) not the south. I am not even conservative but I don't think being conservative or liberal has anything do with social capital. Culture and community play a biger role.
Those states are so large and "diverse" in population that they are difficult to classify.
Florida, for example, is new....and contains a lot of older folks who already had their work lives elsewhere - hence they don't have as much family and social capital.
Texas is too big to classify by itself, but it has always been a place of inequality....think "Dallas"....and of Oil Barons, Industry, etc. - You will find places like Austin do have social capital.
California suffers also from "newness" - and from small family size (average family size in Bay Area is 1.5 people!) - it's for young and single people (in general). Then you have highly "class conscious" SoCal. Again, you do have a lot of social capital in certain places, but the size of the place dilutes it.
New York has always been about ME ME ME and Money Money Money, from the day it was founded until and including today. The differences are so vast between NYC and upstate....no relationship to each other.
But, again, that's not the case in many of those dark states you see along the bottom. That definitely points to something (I'm a "chart" guy so I tend to be able to pick out such things fairly well).....
Utah, effectively a church-state, is always an outlier. Community and social capital are somewhat forced "in the faith"....MT, ID, etc. don't have enough population to say much...
NY aside, the chart seems to show social capital along the more northern tier of the whole country - which includes the very liberal places like MA. NH, VT - the upper midwest (MN is big time progressive) and the Pacific Northwest. When I look at the chart I immediately have population density as well as other things in mind.
That brings up another point which seems to be somewhat true of history. Northern Cultures have seemed to advance (in general) much further and faster than hotter climes. This is a subject in itself...but, for example, northern Italy has 50% greater GDP than southern. The same is somewhat true in the USA (with some exceptions)...
Probably a lot of reasons for this....a study in itself.
Long ago I read Bowling Alone. I don't recall Putnam giving much, if any, attention, to "balkanization" of information and entertainment sources. When people have shared experiences - whether watching individually, watching in groups, or even watching while in social media gathering spots - they feel closer together. Unfortunately, except for events like the Super Bowl, people usually are watching programs/events (or browsing websites) alone that many of their peers don't, giving them not enough conversation topics to bond over and developing interests and beliefs in different directions. We only hear much about that re allegiances to politicized news sources.
I just got done reading Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert Putman, in the book Mr Putman makes the argument that social capital in the United States has declined significantly since the 1950s. This decline has lead to a reduction in community life in America which means social intercourse that helped people form friendships, educate and participate in civic life are dying. Here are some statistics Putman uses to illustrate his point:
In the last quarter of the twentieth century, for example, American attendance at club meetings went down by 58 percent. Family dinners declined by 33 percent. Inviting friends to one’s home decreased by 45 percent. The sidebar supplements those findings by posting two other claims: A ten-minute commute slashes social capital (“features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit”) by 10 percent, but joining a group reduces by half the odds that one will die next year
My theory is that hyper individualism which birthed during the late sixties has something to do with this. Although technology has probably made things worse, Putman started writing his book in the mid nineties before iPhones were made available, which have undoubtedly made things worse.
However I am curious as to what all of you guys think. Why has social capital along with social trust, civic life and community life declined in America since the 1950s?
I wish I had seen this thread sooner. Thanks for starting it!
I haven't read the book you're referring to, so I may make some assumptions that the author does not make. But first of all I hope he doesn't attribute it to basically one thing...and that's a problem Americans have nowadays. They search for a simple one-answer to any question that arises. They see life as either/or, good/bad...when in reality almost everything in life is more complex and exists on some kind of continuum.
Another thing that I thought about was Mr. Putnam starting with the 1950s. The good old days weren't so good. You didn't socialize with people on the other side of the tracks (or in my home town, the other side of the canal. You didn't socialize with people who went to certain churches...or who had brown skin...or who were Italian or German...or ____________. I think we were even more tribal then than we are now.
Maybe part of the blame belongs to Milton Berle. I'm not kidding. My grandparents (with whom I lived) told me many times that they got tired of having to go down to the Hance's house to watch Milton Berle, so my grandparents became only the second family in our neighborhood to buy a television set. But at least back then, even if friends didn't get together to watch television, families still tended to because there were only 3 networks and little choice of what to watch. Now everyone in the family wants to watch something different, so instead of sitting together in front of one television set, there are multiple sets in each household, and some people are watching "live" television, others are watching streaming television, others are watching a Blu-Ray DVD, and others are playing games on their X-Box or computer. Everybody gets what they want...in solitary, not together. Yesterday I drove up to Denver to Park Meadows Mall. I can't tell you how many groups of friends or families I saw walking together, but not "being" together...everyone was on their own smart phone and no one was talking. I think this applies to your hyper-individualism concept.
I'm not so sure about the club thing you mentioned. Until I retired I was a middle school principal, and we had so many clubs and sports teams, not to mention the Boys Club, the Girls Club, sports teams not associated with the school (but often renting our field), that kids are almost over-clubbed (so to speak), while parents are tasked with driving their kids from one activity to another. And the reduction in family dinners...probably true...but back in the 1950s, people didn't go out to dinner anywhere near as much as they do now, and when they do go out to dinner now, it's often with friends.
I'll be interested in reading further into this thread...and probably adding to or modifying what I've written here.
Why do you have to politicize it? The main drivers of the phenom the OP discusses, are increased atomization and isolation due to technology: mainly--the internet. This has nothing to do with politics.
However, I would open the discussion up to looking at how social engagement has changed since the 50's, not disappeared. For example, for better or for worse, what was the "99%" movement, the Occupy movement, and similar protests about growing economic inequality and the shrinking of the middle class, if not a type of social engagement? What about the boom in various dance groups (salsa, swing) that didn't exist in the 50's or 60's, the creation of the MeetUp phenom, and the explosion of all manner of volunteer groups since the 50's, if not new venues for social engagement, that replaced the old community clubs like the Elks and Shriners? Also, we still have Rotary and the Lions, which serve some of the function of those old lodges.
While an argument can be made that social capital has declined since the last mid-century, I'd be more inclined to look at how it has morphed.
And interestingly, the poster you are responding to is a perfect example of "intentional division created by Identity Politics"...exactly what he's complaining about.
It's interesting that you mention meetup.com. I have been involved in it for about three years now, but I was just talking to my therapist about one phenomenon involved in it -- superficiality. I know one very nice woman who has something to do with one meetup.com group or another every night of the week (and others who are similar)...and all I could think was that way of utilizing meetup.com actually discourages relationships since you have a different artificially created social group every night of the week. The question I had -- but of course didn't ask -- was [i]don't you ever just plan some social activity with a handful of actual friends?
What you're suggesting is that Meetup offers too many options, resulting in people not seeing the same faces often enough to form real connections? I could see that being true in big cities. Also, how frequently did men hang out in clubs back when a significant percentage of them did so?
I could also see the explosion in diversity in dining options decreasing social capital, by making it harder for people to agree on where to meet to eat. Although I've heard that lately visits to restaurants have declined, maybe reflecting that social capital continues to dwindle.
Re the post above that, to any adults out there with minors in the household, I like the idea of a family and friends TV/movie event at least weekly.
1) Racial diversity: It has led to the decline of civic-mindedness, social capital. Humans are still a tribal species. Look at any racially diverse middle school cafeteria where all children are American-born fluent speakers of English. They cluster together at their tables by race. There is no overt or covert racial agenda by some powers that be, but it is a consequence of human nature. You lose trust with diversity. Without trust it is hard to work toward a common good. Civic society goes out the window.
2) Innovation in IT: people used to gather together in shared physical spaces. With IT, people have become ironically more isolated... and dependent on their smart-IT things.
Diversity doesn't ruin trust. Colonialism, war, genocide, oppression, and racism ruins trust. Initial reports indicate European were welcomed to Africa, South America, and America. Then things went wrong.
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
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The joke is that most innovators of computers and such are on the autistic spectrum and they are making the entire world have spectrum tendencies such as sending an electronic message rather than communicating face to face. As someone with social anxiety myself I like the move away from person to person interaction but I recognize it makes most people feel more isolated.
I also wonder if living at a time when the global population is much higher than at any time in history as something to do with it. Basically that we now view other people as threats rather than as potential friends. Dealing with overcrowded roads, barely being able to get a job interview due to competition with so many other job seekers, etc. Also more people like in cities where human competition is compounded.
I would like to throw this thought out there.
There is a lot more awareness of introverts. In my day we were called shy.
But, for the sake of this discussion, is the “introvert explosion” really more introverts or is it a mask for poor social skills and the rise in social media making communications more impersonal?
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