A Book Review by Cheryl Hammond
Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam (Simon and Schuster, 2000) has explained to Sierra Club activists and to activists of all stripes why it is so hard to recruit volunteers. Putnam demonstrates with page after page of examples how our general participation in public life has decreased dramatically in all arenas.
Loss of interest in civic organizations is a trend
Until recently, civic organizations in the United States had flourished, with garden clubs, parent teacher groups, bowling leagues, and groups of all kinds finding increasing membership. However, today’s significantly growing organizations are no longer organizations which provide meetings and fellowship, but organizations providing services and remote lobbying, such as the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). These organizations grow not from an invitation from your co-worker, friend, or neighbor, but from solicitations from national mass mailings. You become a “member” of these organizations only in the most broad terms. As a member, you most likely could not name another person who is also a member.
Unfortunately, we see this same trend with environmental groups. Greenpeace, The National Wildlife Federation, the Wilderness Society, and on and on are mostly checkbook organizations with paid lobbyists, but no local chapters and no meetings of members. Granting “memberships” is just a device for fundraising. By writing checks to these organizations, we are making important contributions to protecting the environment, but we are doing this by proxy. On the other hand, “grassroots” organizations, such as the Sierra Club, encourage hands–on, personally active environmentalism.
Interestingly, Putnam finds that the older generations is not dropping out of garden clubs, Kiwanis, veteran associations, and all the other community building groups. Instead, the younger generation is not dropping in. At some point, the concept of being a “joiner” lost ground.
What is killing civic engagement
What pulls us from the community
Putnam ranks factors which separate us from community.
- Pressures of time and money – 10%. Two career families especially contribute to this.
- Sprawl, commuting – 10%.
- Electronic Entertainment – 25%. Especially television.
- Generational change – 50%.
How sprawl affects us
The effects of sprawl are especially compelling to the Sierra Club. We see sprawl as destroying open space, forests, and farmland. We also see the negative effects on our air quality from the increase in commuting. However, Putnam has displayed for us another negative of sprawl. Putnam points out that as more of us have moved into suburbs, our lives can increasingly be traced by a large triangle – home – work - shopping – home. Americans average seventy-two minutes every day behind the wheel. This is more time than we spend cooking or eating, and more than twice the amount of time the average American spends with their kids.
This car culture is bad for community life. Putnam finds that for each additional ten minutes of daily commuting time, involvement in community affairs is cut 10 percent. This is 10 percent fewer meetings attended, 10 percent fewer church services attended, 10 percent less volunteering, etc. This is 10 percent less involvement with the local Sierra Club. Also, the spatial configuration of our suburban lives works against us. After a long commute home from work, we don’t feel inclined to make another long trip to the city or another suburban location to attend a Sierra Club committee or general meeting.
Generational change
We can understand and deplore time pressures and over-dependence on at-home electronic entertainment. However, generational change may surprise us. The generational change is more than just the usual split of interest of the younger and older populations. For example, sports clubs usually attract younger people. But this is not the generational change that Putnam finds.
Putnam tracks cohorts through various life stages and concludes that in all measures of civic engagement, there is a striking loss in civic engagement as the youngest cohorts pass through each life stage. Members of cohorts were tracked on such items as frequency of voting, club meetings attended in a year, whether the person had worked on a community project in the last year, whether the person wrote to a congressperson in the last year, etc. Putnam finds the World War II generation is the most civic minded generation and raises the possibility that the internal cohesion introduced by World War II was the factor which created those attitudes.
Need for renewed civic life
Putnam’s message is that we desperately need to create renewed channels for reinvigorating public life. As we make personal decisions on where to live, where to work, and all our other life decisions, we need to consider not only the affect on our financial capital, but the equally important effect on our stock of social capital.
Sierra Club membership provides us opportunities to protect and restore our environment while working in a community of friends and neighbors. The need for political involvement, for civic involvement, for understanding the forces and events shaping the environment which supports us had never been greater.