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stormdogI'm still reading Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone.
One of the points he makes about endemic civic disengagement and the collapse of mechanisms to create social capital is that there are a couple points of exception to this. One of those exceptions is in the form of evangelical religious movements. While less radical religious movements and secular groups in general are seeing across the board drops in participation, evangelical religious groups are maintaining and growing membership.
There seems to be an increasing dominance of mainstream conservative politics, as embodied in the Republican party, by this kind of religious fundamentalism and evangelicalism. Thinking about that in light of Putnam's causal analysis of nation wide disruption of social capital makes me wonder if there's something that more secular people like me who like the idea of fostering relationships among members of the general public that lead to mutual investment in society and government can do. Is there something we can learn from the success of religiously based conservative social organizations?
I look forward to getting to the last part of Putnam's book, where he says he's going to talk about some possible solutions to the problems he's been outlining and analyzing. I can also see myself using this book in a lot of potential future work of my own. I'm reading a library copy, but I'm going to pick it up used on Amazon for future reference.
Bowling Alone also makes me think about Peter Lovenheim's In the Neighborhood. It's about about how a group of physically proximate people, the inhabitants of a given neighborhood, lack connections between each other. The lack of community within the community. I see it as a small-scale, individual example of what Putnam is examining on the scale of the nation. Lovenheim wonders some of the same things that Putnam does: where has the sense of community that we associate with the past gone? How could it be restored?
This is a body of literature that is personally meaningful to me; I've conjectured that one of the reasons I'm drawn to anthropology is a sense that I haven't ever understood other people. In the same way, I think I'm drawn to the idea of community (to use the term loosely) because I've never felt very much a part of one. Putnam and Lovenheim make me wonder how many more people feel the same way? When I've talked before about my academic interests, I've talked about investigating community. Seeing how it changes through time in a given city, or seeing whether technology like the internet causes it to become unfixed in place. Putnam's argument, though it's over ten years old at this point, would seem to be that it's not just unfixed; it's dissolving.
Once I'm through the book, I'm going to see if Putnam has written any updates since his book's publication in 2001. And I think I'll look around for other components of this body of literature on community. As I noted, I've had interests in this direction for a while, and I want to explore more.
---
I made the trip to Walgreens for crackers and stuff. And my mother happened to be going out to the store a little bit ago, so I asked her to pick up some yogurt and bananas for me. Hopefully that will help. Walgreens has Cadbury Creme Eggs out for Easter already. I still have two more of the Halloween "Screme Eggs" left in my fridge, so I think that's a win. I'm not quite sure what I've won, but I do love Cadbury Creme Eggs....
One of the points he makes about endemic civic disengagement and the collapse of mechanisms to create social capital is that there are a couple points of exception to this. One of those exceptions is in the form of evangelical religious movements. While less radical religious movements and secular groups in general are seeing across the board drops in participation, evangelical religious groups are maintaining and growing membership.
There seems to be an increasing dominance of mainstream conservative politics, as embodied in the Republican party, by this kind of religious fundamentalism and evangelicalism. Thinking about that in light of Putnam's causal analysis of nation wide disruption of social capital makes me wonder if there's something that more secular people like me who like the idea of fostering relationships among members of the general public that lead to mutual investment in society and government can do. Is there something we can learn from the success of religiously based conservative social organizations?
I look forward to getting to the last part of Putnam's book, where he says he's going to talk about some possible solutions to the problems he's been outlining and analyzing. I can also see myself using this book in a lot of potential future work of my own. I'm reading a library copy, but I'm going to pick it up used on Amazon for future reference.
Bowling Alone also makes me think about Peter Lovenheim's In the Neighborhood. It's about about how a group of physically proximate people, the inhabitants of a given neighborhood, lack connections between each other. The lack of community within the community. I see it as a small-scale, individual example of what Putnam is examining on the scale of the nation. Lovenheim wonders some of the same things that Putnam does: where has the sense of community that we associate with the past gone? How could it be restored?
This is a body of literature that is personally meaningful to me; I've conjectured that one of the reasons I'm drawn to anthropology is a sense that I haven't ever understood other people. In the same way, I think I'm drawn to the idea of community (to use the term loosely) because I've never felt very much a part of one. Putnam and Lovenheim make me wonder how many more people feel the same way? When I've talked before about my academic interests, I've talked about investigating community. Seeing how it changes through time in a given city, or seeing whether technology like the internet causes it to become unfixed in place. Putnam's argument, though it's over ten years old at this point, would seem to be that it's not just unfixed; it's dissolving.
Once I'm through the book, I'm going to see if Putnam has written any updates since his book's publication in 2001. And I think I'll look around for other components of this body of literature on community. As I noted, I've had interests in this direction for a while, and I want to explore more.
---
I made the trip to Walgreens for crackers and stuff. And my mother happened to be going out to the store a little bit ago, so I asked her to pick up some yogurt and bananas for me. Hopefully that will help. Walgreens has Cadbury Creme Eggs out for Easter already. I still have two more of the Halloween "Screme Eggs" left in my fridge, so I think that's a win. I'm not quite sure what I've won, but I do love Cadbury Creme Eggs....
