This reads more like a university sociology text than a non-fiction book for pleasure. It also felt remarkably out of date, since it was written before the advent of social media or the smartphone. Which helps you realize how dramatically our lives have shifted in a short period of time.

I came back to this book because I've been thinking lately about how to get our citizens more engaged again; self-governance requires participation. What the book chronicles is the lessening of social capital over the last half-ish of the 20th century--and how to get some of it back. What I came away with instead is whether that Greatest Generation, with such high social capital, was the aberration, and we are now merely reverting to the mean of a less engaged citizenry.

My takeaway is that our BONDING social capital, or our connection to those within a group (think church, team allegiance, or political party) is probably as high now as it's ever been. Our BRIDGING social capital, where we interact with people across a broader spectrum--like a bowling league or a citizens advisory board--has probably reached an all-time low.

The challenge feels both individual and collective. Each of us, me included, needs to make a commitment to spend time getting engaged in our community. Just imagine if we all committed to redirecting one hour per month away from our screens and spent it on a community-based activity, from a book club to a high school football game to attending a school board meeting. And, collectively, we need to work to bolster our schools, increase access to voting, and end gerrymandering (so any individual citizen feels like their voice has meaning to their elected representatives).

God this book is painstaking. (Read: painful.) It's good, it's thorough, and I read all five hundred pages or whatever. But the writing style induces anguish. It's so full of qualifications like: "But this correlation doesn't imply causality" or "Even when we hold race, class, gender, education, and imcome constant..."

I'll save you hours of your life and give you the summary: Throughout the twentieth century, more and more Americans were participating in clubs, having dinner parties, going to church, volunteering, working on political campaigns--until the 1970s. Then, this steady increase in partipation became a sharp drop, and civic life continues to decline.

Various things could have caused the decline: women entering the work force, racial integration, the internet, longer commutes, busier work schedules. Really, though, the evidence points to two main things that caused this decline: television and generational differences (the baby boomers were less likely to volunteer, Gen X even moreso, and so on).

This is a shame, because people who are involved in civic life (even something as small as playing cards or hosting dinner parties) are more likely to vote, to volunteer, to have friends, to create safe neighborhoods, to make more money, etc, etc.

This book might just finally get my ass in gear to do the volunteering I've been talking about.

Very hard not to be discouraged after reading this. If you've ever wondered what's the state of "community", it's doing pretty awful and there's seemingly no end to the fall of our civil institutions. Today, people often talk about 'atomization', a somewhat fitting description, but this phenomenon is wider in scope.

He first discusses the data itself, but I doubt anyone needs convincing on the decay of civil engagement. The best part of the book is his analysis of the possible causes. It's incissive, clear and very objective. I personally come away with the conclusion that TV was the main culprit, surprisingly.

What makes this read particularly depressive is the fact that TV has been entirely replaced with its worse offspring: 'social' media. If TV began the destruction of community life, phones and generally the Internet was the catalyst for its obliteration. The role of materialism and individualism is also to be recognized, the usual "I owe nobody anything" type charade.

This was written in 2000, before the Internet took off. The tone in the end part is seemingly optimistic, although maybe a bit facetious, as if he knew it wasn't a likely outcome. He lavishes the Internet with praise about "possibilities for connecting people", we now know it did the exact opposite.

Great read! Would've loved an updated Version!

But ngl, saying that there is less activity due a new generation replacing the active one is rly funny (the other ones were 'TV' or similar)

Everything people claimed, a classic. Quotes I am still thinking about:

“Membership [such as writing a check] is emblematic of affiliation based on symbolic affiliation rather than on personal networks. As sociologist Deborah Minkoff correctly observes in the absence of the opportunity or resources to establish face-to-face interactions, such symbolic affiliations maybe the only available mobilizing structure that can link isolated individuals. However, we should not mistake symbolic ties for personal ones. Neither of these approaches—what political consultants sometimes label the ”ground war” strategy and the “air war” strategy—is politically or morally superior. Rather, they are adapted to different resource endowments. The pro-life ground war (like the civil rights ground war before it) is adapted for a “social capital rich” environment with dense pre-existing social networks of reciprocity, while the pro-choice air war is adapted to a “social capital poor” environment (LB: compare to Tonnies – Gemeinschaft v Gesellschaft). In the latter case, the existence of a well-developed national social movement organization using “air war” techniques is a sign not of the presence of grassroots engagement, but of its absence” (154).

“…the risk that emphasizing community exacerbates division and exclusion. Since social capital is inevitably easier to foster within homogenous communities’ emphasis on its creation may inadvertently shift the balance in society away from bridging social capital and toward bonding social capital” (Chap 23).

One one hand, this is more than twenty (2 0 !!!) years old, so a lot of the information about technology is outdate (hence the 3 stars and not 4), and not to mention filled with optimism. The poor, sweet summer child.

On the other hand, if you're looking to see where we were in socializing and relying on one another and where we're headed, this is for you. Putnam goes through the different areas of socializing and examines each one with where we were and where we're going. I personally didn't like how his "what do we do?" is basically 'go outside and touch grass somewhere different than your neighborhood' because any 10 year old knows this now, but I do appreciate what was written and how it can help to make you mindful.

Recommended 13+ because statistics are hard.


Many thanks to my coworker who handed me his copy, almost on the spot, after I asked more information on the book after he, another coworker, and myself were talking about it. (You ruined my reading plans for the week but it was worth it).

"Let us act to ensure that by 2010, Americans will spend less time traveling and more time connecting with our neighbors than we do today, that we will live in more integrated and pedestrian-friendly areas, and that the design of our communities and the availability of public space will encourage more socializing with friends and neighbors."

"Thoughtful social critics have long feared that capitalism would undermine the preconditions for its own success by eroding interpersonal ties and social trust."

"The evidence makes quite clear that newspaper reading and good citizenship go together...Newspaper reading is highly correlated with education."

This (somewhat out of date but still largely relevant) book is stuffed full of quantitative data. It becomes repetitive as some of the statistics are quoted and discussed multiple times. This is an audio book that I did not rewind when I found my mind had explored a topic rather than following the reader's every word. Instead, I tuned in and out as it ran.

I found this book fascinating, and couldn't stop talking about it while I was reading it and for several months afterward. While I found the approach to "social capital" somewhat akin to commoditizing friendships and civic interaction, I found so much richness in Putnam's thoughtful analysis of multiple diverse data sources, with plenty of charts and graphs to enjoy!

Putnam's premise is that our stores of social capital in the U.S. have been making a drastic plummeting curve (in visual terms) since the 60s. As I understand it, by social capital he is referring to the social connections that make a cohesive community, or on a larger scale, a nation. These can include informal measures such as playing cards, bowling leagues or having friends over for dinner, or formal measures such as PTA enrollment, church attendance, and voting. He presents chapters and chapters of evidence to support his observation, and attempts to explore a few possible explanations for this phenomenon. I appreciate that he doesn't pretend to have the answer, and doesn't present one possibility as the culprit. I also appreciate that he takes a look at the "dark side" of social capital--homogeneity and exclusivity. This book was published in 200, so I would love to read an updated look at this topic.

Here are a few examples from the book:
"During the fist two-thirds of the century Americans took a more and more active role in the social and political life of their communities--in churches and union halls, in bowling alleys and clubrooms, around committee tables and card tables and dinner tables. Year by year we gave more generously to charity, we pitched in more often on community projects, and (insofar as we can still find reliable evidence) we behaved in an increasingly trustworthy way toward one another. Then, mysteriously and more or less simultaneously, we began to do all those things less often.
We are still more civically engaged than citizens in many other countries, but compared with our own recent past, we are less connected. We remain interested and critical spectators of the public scene. We kibitz, but we don't play, We maintain a facade of formal affiliation, but we rarely show up. We have invented new ways of expressing our demands that demand less of us. We are less likely to turn out for collective deliberation--whether in the voting booth or the meeting hall--and when we do, we find that discouragingly few of our friends and neighbors have shown up. We are less generous with our money and (with the important exception of senior citizens) with our time, and we are less likely to give strangers the benefit of the doubt. They, of course, return the favor."(183)

"Compared with the citizens of most other countries, Americans have always lived a nomadic existence. Nearly one in five of us move each year and, having done so, are likely to pick up and move again. More than two in five of us expect to move in the next five years. As a result, compared with other peoples, Americans have become accustomed to pitching camp quickly and making friends easily. From our frontier and immigrant past we have learned to plunge into new community institutions when we move.
Nevertheless, for people as for plants, frequent repotting disrupts root systems."(204)

"The car and the commute...are demonstrably bad for community life. In round numbers the evidence suggests that each additional ten minutes in daily commuting time cuts involvement in community affairs by 10 percent...Strikingly, increased commuting time among the residents of a community lowers average levels of civic involvement even among noncommuters...In other words, this appears to be a classic "synergistic effect," in which the consequences of individual actions spill beyond the individuals in question. In the language of economists, commuting has negative externalities."(213)

"Electronic technology allows us to consume this hand-tailored entertainment in private, even utterly alone...As the poet T.S. Eliot observed early in the television age, "It is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome." The artifice of canned laughter reflected both the enduring fact that mirth is enhanced by companionship and the novel fact that companionship could now be simulated electronically."(217)

"Child psychologists speak of a fairly primitive stage of social development called "parallel play"--two kids in a sandbox, each playing with a toy but not really interacting with each other. In healthy development children outgrow parallel play. But the public spectacles of television leave us at that arrested stage of development, rarely moving beyond parallel attentiveness to the same external stimulus."(244)

"With evidence from a single point in time, we cannot distinguish between life cycle and generational effects, but if we follow a given cohort over the years, we can more readily distinguish the two. And the two effects have dramatically different social consequences. Life cycle effects mean that individuals change, but society as a whole does not. Generational effects mean that society changes, even though individuals do not.
So before we can tell whether the ubiquitous age-related differences in civic engagement are truly generational, and thus producing social change, we need to determine whether these differences are attributable to the normal life cycle. With comparable evidence across several decades, we can follow each cohort as its members move through various stages of life. If successive cohorts generally retrace the same ups and downs as they age, we can be reasonably sure that we are observing a life cycle pattern. If not, it is more likely that age-related differences are generational in origin."(248)

"Social scientists have long been concerned about "dilemmas" of collective action. Such dilemmas are ubiquitous, and their dynamics are straightforward. People often might all be better off if they cooperate, with each doing her share. But each individual benefits more by shirking her responsibility, hoping that others will do the work for her. Moreover, even if she is wrong and the others shirk, too, she is still better off than if she had been the only sucker. Obviously if every individual thinks that the others will do the work, nobody will end up taking part, and all will be left worse off than if all had contributed."(288)

"It turns out that in states where citizens view other people as basically honest, tax compliance is higher than in low-social-capital states...Similarly, surveys have found that individual taxpayers who believe that others are dishonest or are distrustful of government are more likely themselves to cheat. My willingness to pay my share depends crucially on my perception that others are doing the same. In effect, in a community rich in social capital, government is 'we,' not 'they.'"(347)

This is one of those books that I suspect of being cited (and argued against) far more often than it's read. In my head, I had it classed vaguely as pop social science. Turns out, I was very wrong. Bowling Alone may be the most academic book I've read since leaving college, and at times I felt like I was being beaten to the ground by statistical clubs coming at me from every direction. But despite the leaden density and occasional painful-in-retrospect predictions about our technological future, this is an important book, one that's challenged many of my assumptions and given me a new framework in which to consider everyday events.

And no, I don't just like it because it, like me, is critical of cars, critical of televisions, and willing to blame the Baby Boomers for planting the seeds of so many of our current social ills. But I admit those things don't hurt.

http://thisweekatthelibrary.blogspot....

Every so often I read a book that strikes my brain as lightening, forever altering my thinking and earning a permanent place both on my bedside bookcase and on the tip of my tongue, for I will be thinking, talking, and writing about it from that point on. Bowling Alone is such a book. In it, Robert Putnam makes the case that America has experienced over a half-century of social decline -- decline that is universal, across all demographics and throughout the nation. He uses a concept called social capital, a representation of the strength of social ties between individuals and their networks; the more social capital a society has, the more cohesive it is and the better it functions as a human community in matters of health, safety, and problem solving.

He first charts a steady decline in social capital by using falling rates in civic organizations (like the Rotary Club), locally-organized political activity, religious participation, communal leisure activities, and other markers. Putnam then attempts to ascertain the causes of this steep decline, which seems inexplicable given that the baby boomer generation has reached the age where civic participation is at its greatest. He finds a variety of society-wide forces (increasing job and security pressure; suburbanization; the rise of television), but also notes a major generational influence. The most active civic generation in American history is dying off, but much of their strength comes (Putnam believes) from the unifying force of WWII. That war called upon the resources of the entire nation -- women in the workforce and children gathering scrap metal were just as important as the soldiers in the field. People didn't simply work together; they believed they were working together, and for a common goal. Putnam believes that this extended period of national solidarity cast a shadow over that generation's lives -- but the baby boomers and generation-Xers have had no such struggle. No one would think of the Vietnam War as bringing people together; indeed, it must stand out as one of the most divisive wars in American history.

In making his argument, Putnam is both exhaustive and conservative -- anticipating objections to his conclusions and answering them as a matter of course. He's also not quick to overestimate the influence of any one factor, when sometimes I thought such emphasis might be appropriate. Putnam then asks the question, "So what?" and examines the ways in which social capital is a boon to society and then the consequences of losing it. He then ends by offering several goals for American society to work forward to as a way of strengthening itself. My interest in this book stems from my interest in the 'human habitat' in general, and community is an essential part of that.

Bowling Alone is imminently worthy of consideration -- not just for the ideas it contains, but for the thorough manner that Putnam presents them. A small caveat; the book may be marginally dated given the rise of social networking sites. While Putnam does address online communities, facebook and similar creatures are altogether different from usenet groups and static websites -- and although they're scarcely a replacement for what we've lost, certainly they're a factor that would need to be considered if this book were published today. For my own part, I am resolutely committed to doing my part to live my life in connection with other people.

I'm not sure I could give full justice to this book in a hastily written review, so I'm not going to try. Robert Putnam's seminal treatise on social capital is jam-packed with statistics and information to back up his claims that social capital has been on a serious decline since the 1960s, much to the detriment of American society. He delineates a difference between two types of social capital--bonding (strong ties to a small inner circle of people, like family) and bridging (weak ties to a diverse and sprawling array of people)--and the struggle to balance between the two, even while both are declining. He explains the history of social capital and the decline, the possible reasons contributing to the decline, reasons why the decline of social capital is bad for society and suggestions for things that can be done to slow the decline. Everything he says is extensively researched and cited. Every time I thought I had come up with a counterargument or a detail he had missed, he addressed it a few pages or chapters later. The only problem with the book is that it was written in 2000. A surprising number of things have changed in the last eight years, including but not limited to: 9/11, Katrina, George Bush, Facebook/Myspace, broader expansion of use of the internet, 2008 Democratic Primaries, Iraq War, rise of the "green" movement, cheaper air travel, etc. In the last section of the book, he challenges society to make a series of changes by 2010, changes that sound somewhat impossible to achieve in so short a time. But, after just these eight years, it seems that much of what he prescribed is on its way to coming true, and I am very curious as to what he would have to say about it. Unfortunately, I think his research has moved on to other topics (diversity...). In any case, this is a very important book about the way members of our society interact (or don't interact) with each other and what that means.

Bowling Alone originally came out in 2001, and it captured a disturbing trend better than any other book - the decline of social capital. Capital is usually thought of in terms of money. If you have money in the bank you have financial capital that can be used later on. There is also educational capital (knowledge), working capital (equipment and buildings), and human capital (skills and know-how). But the type of capital that gets forgotten many times is social capital, or the large number of relationships and connections that make a society run smoothly.

Robert Putnam is a political scientist and professor at Harvard, and this is his most famous book. The title refers to the big decline in bowling leagues in the late 20th century. Fewer people bowling in groups is just one of many examples of how social capital has declined as more people strike out on their own and walk away from clubs, families, groups, and organizations.

Putnam looks at six main areas where there used to be a robust network of social connections, now there are much smaller groups of fanatics and huge swaths of disconnected, lonely people. The book is rich with charts and graphs, and the author obviously did his homework in compiling this depressing trend. According to the book America was awash in participation and socialization up until things changed around 1960. From 1960 to 2000, when the book was published, there was a steady and undeniable decline in participation rates everywhere. The effect this can have on mental health is staggering to contemplate.

1- Putnam starts by detailing the decline in political participation. Even though registration became easier as the 20th century concluded, voting rates declined. Turnout dropped from 63% in 1960 to 49% in 1996. People across the board showed less interest in attending civic meetings, working on campaigns, signing petitions, and running for office. (2020 has proven this wrong with a 65% turnout rate, but that rate may turn out to be an aberration because of the candidates involved)

2- Participation in civic groups has plummeted since 1950, and that decline has continued through to 2020. Groups like the Rotary, Elks, League of Women Voters, Boy Scouts, Optimists, PTA, and labor unions have all seen precipitous declines in membership. The only groups that are gaining members are ones that don't require attendance at meetings like AARP, or most political groups like the NRA and Sierra Club. The effect of the loss of these groups is hard to assess, but many were forums for discussion of important local issues, places to meet others in the community, and breeding grounds for future political and economic leaders.

3- The decline of organized religion has been bemoaned for its moral and theological impacts, but in terms of social capital, churches are vital especially for small communities. Church is where many relationships are forged, and were many civic skills and norms are generated. Church attendance has declined up to 50% in many areas, and the impact here is also hard to assess. Churches had been active in volunteering to help needy populations, erect schools, and support sports leagues. According to Putnam the only churches that grew in the late 20th century were evangelical ones, and they have tended to be more internally focused and less likely to reach out to the community at large.

4- In the workplace, social capital has taken a hit as well. People stayed at the same job for less time, more of them worked part-time, and more were converted to temporary or gig workers. That, plus the huge declines in union membership have made the workplace a more "survival of the fittest, every man for himself" kind of atmosphere. Union membership is down to less than 12% of workers, from 35% at their peak, and their lack of strength gives management much more power to control the work environment, while workers struggle to keep their wages and benefits.

5- Putnam looks at how even informal social connections have been hit by this trend. Bowling leagues were once popular activities for groups, and now bowling alleys survive barely with the occasional traffic that lone or small groups of bowlers provide. The same can be said of bridge clubs, golf outings, and softball leagues to some extent. The rise of the internet and our addiction to screen time plays a big role here since 2000, with family dinners and neighborhood parties taking a big hit. We spend much less time doing sports and outdoor activities, and more time watching them. The rise of fast food restaurants has also cut down the "schmoozing" time that helped create social capital, and people get in and out of place like McDonalds much faster than they used to at the corner diner, where once the staff actually knew your name.

6- Finally, the book looks at volunteering and philanthropy. We are less likely to give to charity now than we used to be, and the ones who do give to charity are generally the wealthy who want something out of it. Volunteering has actually dropped more since the publication of the book, with rates nearing 25% after being over 30% in the 1990's. Many blame lack of time for this decline, but after reading this book I think the decline of social capital is more to blame. Not only do more people feel no responsibility for their community, many actively distrust and fear their fellow citizens. (Positive responses to the poll question "Do you think people lead as good lives- honest and moral- as they used to?" fell from 50% to 27% in the last half of the 20th century)


After presenting all of this depressing data, Putnam turns to the question of why is this happening? He comes up with many possible villains- time, economic downturns, urban sprawl, family structural changes, more working mothers, economic structural changes, and mass media. Somehow, he comes up with this formula, which is purely his opinion, though he backs it up with solid arguments.
- 10% of the decline is due to time and money pressures
- 10% is due to urban sprawl and more time commuting to work
- 25% is because of technology and mass media (primarily television because the internet was just taking off when this book was published)
- 50% of the change is caused by generational shifts. The people of the greatest generation (born 1910-1940) who built up the social capital had different life experiences than generations that followed. Different early life experiences made them value community more than other generations.

(My own take on the culprits- is that 75% of the cause of the decline of social capital is television, the internet, and other mass media. The other 25% could be a mixture of all the above, but the generational thing is way off in my opinion).

So why do we need social capital and what should we do about it? It turns out that social capital is vital to the transmission of ideas, solving of problems, and completion of projects. Part of the reason lawyers are so powerful in ages of low social capital is that no one trusts anyone else, and contracts have to account for any and all negative possibilities to keep both sides honest. Civic pride and connection has been proven to improve mental and physical health as well as community prosperity.

There is actually a social capital map of the United States, presented in this book, that shows where people like and trust each other and where they don't. States with high numbers of Scandinavian descendants like Minnesota, North Dakota, and Vermont have high levels of social connection, while states where slavery was prevalent- Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi rank low. In areas where there is an active municipal life like New England there is more social capital and cooperation, while in areas where people are more ruggedly individualistic- like Alaska- people are pretty much on their own. Looking at a political map of the US in 2020, this explains a lot of the current divisions that we see.

Putnam points to social capital as a vital resource when it comes to improving education and child welfare, and children are less likely to fall through the cracks when more adults are on the lookout for problems. Crime is also less of a problem in high social capital areas, especially in cohesive neighborhoods where people know each other and look out for their neighbors. Social bonds are shown to help with general health because there is a bigger safety net for those who get sick, there are more healthy norms (like exercise, proper diet, and mask-wearing in pandemics) that are observed by more people, and just the fact that humans are social creatures and tend to do worse in isolation than in groups.

In the world of politics, the loss of community has led to more polarization, as the most involved partisans are generally more at the extremes of any debate. Politicians cater to extremists because they can be counted on to donate and vote. Politics has become more nationalized and less local, and people join groups that tell them what to think about issues, rather than the reverse. In a true democratic system communities would have thoughtful deliberations and high participation levels. What passes for debates these days is more like yelling past each other. The "otherization" of people who disagree with us has made constructive debate almost impossible.

Putnam puts some historical context that shows how social capital rose during the first half of the 20th century, and points briefly at the Progressive Era for many reforms that helped. His latest book, The Upswing, covers this trend and its resultant downturn, with an interesting proposition that another upswing in social capital is on the horizon. He notes that for many the 1950's and 1960's were less than ideal, and many of the civic groups now in decline were once homes of the racial and sexual discrimination of their times. Women and minorities weren't even allowed as members in many of the older civic groups.

There are trade-offs with building up social capital and building relationships with others, and a big one is learning how to compromise and occasionally conform to the expectations of others. (For anybody who's ever been married or lived with another person for a point of time- you all know exactly what kind of compromises have to be made, but there are also many benefits.)

In the revised edition there is a chapter that was written in 2020, mostly about the internet and what it's done to society. Putnam says the record is mixed, but there is plenty of damage done when people relate to screens more than to fellow humans. The interesting point that the book makes is that online social capital is not enough- people have to interact in real life too. Online contact allows us to meet people we normally would never meet, but in order to make the relationship real and meaningful it needs to be what Putnam calls an alloy relationship- both online and real. Online only relationships are vulnerable to algorithms, anonymity, transience, and curated fakeness that sabotages authentic ties.

In the 2001 edition the author sets some very ambitious goals to accomplish by 2010 that didn't happen. Putnam writes:

"we need to create new structures and policies (public and private) to facilitate renewed civic engagement. Leaders and activists in every sphere of American life must seek innovative ways to respond to the eroding effectiveness of the civic institutions and practices that we inherited."

The agenda for the 21st century as he saw it when it first began included:
- designing cities to enhance interactions and communications
- improving civic education and instilling those values in youth and schools
- making democracy more of an active pursuit and getting more voter and citizen participation in decision making
- re-thinking the workplace to make it more conducive to long-lasting relationships
- re-imagining religious institutions to make them more relevant to communities
- making arts, culture, mass media, and sports more participatory and inclusive rather than passive, isolating, and depressing.

There has been some progress since 2001 in these areas, but it feels like we went backwards, especially in the political and media areas. Still, Putnam has done a masterful job identifying these trends, and his work still holds up 20 years later.

This book gave me much to think on. As a baby boomer, I've seen the erosion of community from my own perspective. My old workplace used to sponsor a softball league, and now those are long gone. The civic organization that I belong to, the Granite City Optimists, has dropped from over 30 members to just a handful. Most disturbingly, rampant individualism has taken over the political sphere to the point where we have created an everyone for themselves country where freedom to be a billionaire is valued over any community concerns like health care, climate change, and income inequality.

As a lifelong introvert, I tend to want to be an isolationist. But another part of me wants to feel a part of something meaningful that's beyond myself. As with anything else, there is a delicate balance between selfishness and selflessness, and this book portrays a pendulum that has swung way over to the selfish end. The Progressive Era of 1890-1920 was a pendulum swing that raised social capital, and this book and its sequel, The Upswing (which I will review later) gives me hope that things may be about to change again.

Is history just a bunch of pendulum swings that we all follow along with, or are we creating history with our choices? Can a society thrive when individualism overshadows social capital? Stay tuned to the 21st century and find out.