Transcripts For CSPAN2 Booknotes 20140301

And talk to the owner of the winemaker where i dont think you get that personal touch outside of the state. They are not small like small in production, just small in the feel that they are. They take it very personal and serious and its very familyoriented. Honeywood winery is a family owned and run business. I think its a very personal more intimate feel when you come into an oregon winery. Next on booktv booknotes from 2000. Robert putnam spoke about his book bowling alone the collapse and revival of american community. The book examines the ways in which americans gather in social groups and suggests social interaction is less prevalent than ever before. This is about an hour. Cspan robert d. Putnam, author of bowling alone, whats the theory of your book . Guest well, my theory is that connecting with other people has great value for us personally and for our communities. I use the term social capital in the book to refer to the fact that social networks have value they have value for the people who are in them. Most people in america, for example, get their jobs through them. You know, i didi did and most people do. I dont mean that in a nepotistic sense. I just mean wewe learn about jobs throughthrough social connections. And there are many other values to us personally from our social connections. There are positive effects on health from connecting with other people. But social connections also have value for people who are not directly in the networks. If you live in a neighborhood where people know one another, for example, as i do, that holds down the crime rate in the neighborhood, even for people who dont themselves go to the barbecues in the neighborhood; that is, the general effects of social capital, of social connections spread across the community. They lower crime rates, they improve performance in schools, they have many positive effects and so the theory of the book is that social capital, social connections, Community Connections have value for people. America has historically been blessed with very high levels of social capital compared to most other countries. We do connect with one another and thats been an important part of our advantage historically as a country. And for most of the last century or so that was more and more true of americans. We were year by year connecting more with one another. We were going to meetings more, belonging to pta, belong to civic groups, having friends over to the house, giving more. Our generosity was rising year by year in terms of the fraction of our income that we gave to other people. And then somehow mysteriously about, oh, 25 or 30 years ago all of those trends turned downward and bewe began doing all of those things less, connecting less with other people, and so this book is about, first of all, the fact, demonstrating that thats a quite pervasive trend across American Society and then trying to explore why it happened andand what difference it makes andand what we might do about it. Cspan bowling alone. Where did you get the title . Guest well, i was doing some work on the question of membership in various organizations, the fact that people were no longer belonging to the, you know, elks club or the rotary club or the league of women voters. And i happened to run into a friend who owned a bowling alley. And he said, gosh, bob, you dont know it but youve stumbled on to the Major Economic problems facing my industry, because although more americans are bowling than ever beforebowling is up in americabowling leagues, bowling in teams is off by about 60 percent. and the money it turns out, in bowling, is in the beer and pretzels. Because when you buywhen you drwhen youwhen you bowl in a league, you drink four times as mermuch beer and you eat four times as many pretzels. And the money in bowling is in the beer and pretzels, not in the balls and shoes, so they were in this funny situation in which he was aware of the fact that people were bowling more but not bowling in leagues. And so i thought that captured the fact that we werewe were not connecting with our friends and neighbors as much as weas we once did. And i wanted to get across the idea that it wasnt just in kind of dogooding ways that we were not connecting. It wasnt that we were just no longer voting, although voting is down, as everybody knows. It wasnt just that we were, you know, no longer belonging to some kind of organization that does good. But itit was also that we were not even connecting in informal ways with our friends and neighbors. Thats why i used the title. Cspan there was a time where you panicked. Guest yeah. Cspan . Because you had a data problem. What was that . Guest yeah. Well, asin writing this book, asas in writing other books that ive done, i followed a plan of writing an article in which you sort of lay out where you think youre going and trying to listen to what people have to say about it. Usually in the past, since im an academic, most of the books that ive written i got responses from two or three people in response to that initial article. This time thethe article bowling alone happened to get a lot more attention and so i got letters and comments and so on from thousands of people and. Cspan what year was that . The article . Guest 1995. 1995. Cspan in what magazine . Guest a little journal called the journal of democracy, which i think had a total paid circulation of about five people. It was really very obscure. But thebut the journalbut the article happened to catch peoples attention. I dont know quite why. I have some suspicions about that, but at any rate itit caught a lot of attention and got a lot of positive attention andand a lot of people said, gee, but, wait a minute, if you just took a broader view, maybe things wouldnt look so bleak. Maybemaybe the things you looked at are declining but other things are not declining. and so i spent some time trying to figure out whether that was true, whether there actuallywhether maybe i overstated the case in that initial article. And early in that process, i discovered that one of the data sets that i had been using had a flawa technical flaw in it, not actually one that i had put in it, but it meant that there had been an undercounting of group memberships. And so alwhen you made a correction for that, although the trends were still down, they werent down nearly as much. And so that was a point at which i thought, well, maybe, i really did get carried away with this original argument inand maybe the trends really arent down as much as i thought. cspan so how was that dhow did you correct it . Guest well, we wereeasy to correct that particular data. But the mainthe largerjust byby, you know, doing thedoing the numbers in thein the proper way, they had forgotten to count pta memberships or something in theirin their total count. Whatthe more important thing that happened was that we discovered after the original articleand remember, itit wasit was intended to be a kind of preliminary thingwe discovered two massive new archives of survey evidence whose existence i hadnt even known of before. Indeed, nobody had known of thethese two massive archives based on surveys with large numbers of americans every month in one case, every year in the other case, since 1975; year after year asking people about how often they went to meetings and how often they went to Club Meetings and how often they volunteered and how often they had friends over to the house and went on picnics and so on. And until that point we had no idea that anybody was even gathering data on picnics. Who knew whether picnics were up or down. Butbut once we had this really amazingly rich evidence, it provides a deep, kind of like a moving picture of how americans social habits have changed over the course of theof the last quarter century. And i was shocked when i discovered that evidence, because what it turned out was when you took into accountpeople had said, you know, if youif you take into account a broader range of things, itll turn out things are not so bleak. and i took into account aa broader range of things which notturned out things were even bleaker. Then i thought it was not just that we were stopping going to meetings. We still claimed to be members of groups, but we stopped going to meetings. So we werewe were not showing up. We were notand we werent going towe werent involved in other sorts of Community Activities. We werent signing petitions as much as we used to. But also we werent having friends over to the house, we werent going on picnics, we werent having dinner parties, we werent going to bargoing to bars was down by about 35 to 40 percent. We were not even having dinner with our own families, this fuller evidence suggested. So it turned out once we had the full range of evidenceand thats whats reported in this bookthat the original article was mistaken only in that it understated the full range in depth and dreadandand breadth of thesethese kinds of declines in our connectedness. Cspan where is your neighborhood . Guest i livewell, actually, im fortunate. Iwe live in two places. I live in lexington, massachusetts. I teach at harvard and i live in lexington, massachusetts, a suburb of boston. Its aits a nice little neighborhood where people do actually have barbecues and so on. And then we have aa hlittle house up in New Hampshire where i go when i want to write, and so iwe have friends andand local connections there, too. Cspan so whats the difference between frost pond, New Hampshire, and lexington . Guest well, thats a very, very good question, brian. Inin the boston metropolitan area, there aregenerally speaking, people are less connected with one another, with their neighbors, than they are in a small town. Thats true andspecifically ofof jaffrey, New Hampshire, where frost pond is located. People inin jaffrey all the time know each other by going in to, you know, the Grocery Store to get potato salad. They know what kind of potato salad i want. If iif i go into the Grocery Store inin lexington, you know, no one would ever remember who i am. So there are big differences in the level of social connection. People are more likely to vote inin the small town in New Hampshire than they are ininin the boston area. Theyretheyre more likely to volunteer. Theyre more likely to shovel one anothers snyou know, walks or whatever. So there are differences that mirror, in fact, differences nationwide between smaller places andandand bigger urban areas. But the striking thing is if you compare jaffrey, New Hampshire, 2000well, if you compare jaffrey, New Hampshire, in the year 2000 with boston in the year 2000, jaffrey has a lot more social connections. But if you compare jaffrey, New Hampshire, 2000 of jaffrey 1960, which i can dowhich you can do just by talking to oldtimers oror looking at the newspapers or whatever, theres been a big decline there, too. In other words, what im trying to say is thesethese trends downward in social connections, whether were talking about clubs or just having friends over, are true everywhere across america. This is really an equal opportunity affliction thatsthats struck our society. Cspan harvard, you teach what . Guest i teach Public Policy at the Kennedy School of government. Cspan how long have you done that . Guest ive been about 20 years. Before that i was at the university of michigan for a little more than 10 years. Andand there, too, ive gotive taught International Relations andand now american politics. Cspan where did you grow up . Guest i grew up in a little town in ohioa little town called port clinton, ohio. Population then and now 5,000. Cspan what was the family like . Guest my family . Cspan mmhmm. Guest my dad was aa building contractor. My mom was a schoolteacher. Wed come there after the war. My dad had been injured during the war and he was recovering. And i had aa younger sisterstill do. And it was ait was a Pleasant Place to grow up and a pleasant time to grow up. And, i mean, iit was a much less, you know, cosmopolitan place than harvard oror the east coast in general. But i was really blessed in growing up in a place that had a lot of social capital. And, frankly, iveive spent some time learning in writing this book about the degree to which what im indulging in here is simple nostalgia for kind of aof aof a past that one wouldnt necessarily today want to recreate. I havent been back to port clinton for a long timeuntil iuntil just recently i went back there. And it turns out it still is, in fact, unusually civic. People dodo connect with one another. Cspan you do mention that, in spite of the fact that you find that people are bowling alone in your own environment, youve got a tremendous amount of support for this book. Guest yeah. Sure did. Cspan and your own daughters worked with you for 10 years. Guest yeah. Cspan tell us about laura and whatwhat role she played in this. Guest well, its interesting that you ask that question. Laura is a professional woman. Shed just gotten her phd at the university of michigan in latin american history. Shes married to a costa rican and now lives in costa rica and shes got three kids. Im extremely proud of her cause shes, you know, one of these kind of super moms whos raising a family and taking care of her motherinlaw there in costa rica and also writing. And we are very close, personally; have been for a long time. Shes been the person whos been my most severe critic, cause we know each other well enough that she feels free to say things that people might not say, about, gee, thats a dumb way of phrasing that idea oror i think i would toss out that chapter entirely. and weat the time i was writing this book, she was also doing her dissertation and we both happen to be night people. We workwrite late at night, so lots of the time wedwed spend, in the middle of the night, me at frost pond and she inin costa rica and exchanging emails about howhow we were makinghow well we were making out that evening. Cspan does she feel the same way you do about thethe bowling alone concept . Guest yeah. She does, actually. Absolutely. Shes been very helpful, very helpful, in fact, in getting me to see the trend as well through the eyes of someone of a different generation. Because there are such big generational differences in the degree to which americans are connected with their communities, and in the ways thatthat they connect with their communities, theres a risk that someone in, you know, late middle age, my age, may just be blind to new forms of social connection that werethat are emerging among younger folks. And i dont want to hold her responsible for any remaining blind spots, but we did talk a lot, actually as i was writing it, about, well, how would this problem look if itif it wereif the book were being writtenbeing written by aa 20something or a 30something rather than a 50something . cspan you spent a lot of time onnot a lot of time, you spent a chapter on television. Guest right. Cspan . And media and the water cooler effect. Whats that . Guest well, the water cooler effect. People say that ifyou know, we all watched survivor, we can get together around the water cooler and thatsthats almost as good connections asas if we, you know, werewere connecting over the back fence. But i dont find any evidence that thats true, actually. I think that enter Entertainment Television, especially commercial Entertainment Television, is really lethal for civic connection. I always have to phrase the point carefully when im talking about television to say commercial Entertainment Television, because i know from news statistics, the watchers of cspan andandand some of the other news programs are among thethe most civic people in the america. Theyre also on average older than the rest of americans. And therethatstherethey represent really civic america. But, unfortunately, thats not themost people in america dont watch those sorts of programs. Most of them watch, you know, survivor or friends oror any one of a number of other television shows. And thosewatching those shows is very negatively correlated with all forms of social connection, not just theyou know, going to meetings but even just spending time with your family. Cspan theres one statistici may not be perfectly accurate on this, but sixth graders with Television Sets in their bedroom went from Something Like 6 percent in 1977 up to 70 percent in 1997 or whatever. Guest correct. Yup. Cspan what does that say . Guest well, ii thiwhat it says is absolutely that were watching television, especially our kids, are watching more television alone. I actually had not any idea that that trend had occurred because ourmy kids are a littlea little older than that and so wethatthat happened after we had young kids. Andand i dontdont know that we would have been immune to it if our kids had been that young. I dont want to claim status here as somehow a saint with respect to television watching. But what itwhat the trend means is that more and more of the time of our kids is spent alone watching Television Without anybody else present or certainly without any adult present. Ii think thatthat study thatthatthat i cite in the book comes from thea Kaiser Family Foundation Study which also, i think, shows that 95 percent of the time that kids are watching television, their nottheir parents are not present. And that kiand, by the way, its just not kiits not just kids. Its adults, too, who are mostly watching television alone. But with respect to our kids, that cant be a goodthat cant be good actually. And theres another interesting finding recently actually. Just this spring, the ymca released a survey in which they had asked kids, adadolescents, would you like to spend more time with your parents or the same amount of time you do spend with your parents or less time with your parents . adolescents, remember. These are kids, brian, who dontyou know, adolescents in general are not wanting to spend a lot of time hanging out withwith mom and dad. But, in fact, twothirds of american adolescents say theyd like to spend more time with their parents. What that says to me is that, for a variety of reasons, weve disengaged from our kids. Were using televisions asincreasingly a kind of cheap day care. Andand thats, im afraid, laying the groundwork for yet more civic disengagement down the road. Cspan how much did vietnam and or watergate have to do with this change over the last 25 years . Guest thatsthats a good question. Itsits not an easy question to answer because it certainly is clear that the generation of people whowho were exposed to that and only to thatthat is, who came of age during the midst of vietnam and watergate and so onare less civically engaged. And i can believe that people, say, have stopped voting because theyre upset about, you know, watergate or vietnam or monica or whatever. But remember, the picture thats being described here is much broader than that. Its not just that were dropping out of politics. Were dropping out of connections of all sort. And its harder for me to believe that people have stopped going on picnics because theyre upset about monica or theyretheyve stopped, you know, having friends over to the house cause theyre still mad at dick nixon. I justthatthat kind of connection doesnt seem to me very plausible. And thats why i think that probably in the big patterns of social disconnection that im talking about here, these purely political causes, the political alienaalienation that did certainly arise out of vietnam and watergate probably isnt the main explanation for the broader trend, i think. Cspan are we happier or unmore unhappy than we used to be, in your opinion . Guest well, generally speaking, werewere lessa little less happy than we used to be, despite the fact that our income has doubled or tripled over the last 30 years. Were lessa little less happy. Cspan how do we know that . Guest well, because inthere are several different reasways. One is weve been ayou know, pollsters have been asking people about the state of their happiness forwell, for the last 50 years actually. Theres a moreandand there are other ways, too. For example, depression, clinically measured depression. I dont mean just feeling a little blue in the morning or i dont mean going to the shrink more but clinically measured depression hashas increased tenfold over this period. I dont know how many of your viewers will know that were in the midst of aof a depression epidemic nationwide. And, as i say, this is not just that weve become more sensitive to that problem. Its that the real symptoms havehave increased a lot. But theres another subtlety here which is even more telling it used to be that as you got older, you got less happy. Therethere was athere was a negative correlation between age and happiness; that youyoung people were happier and, you know, they had moretheir whole life in fronts of them and so on. And gradually over the course of the last 30 or 40 years that correlation between age and happiness has reversed beso that now young people are much less happy than older people. And the reason is, i think, tied up to what were talking about here. The same thing is true with the depression, by the way. The depression epidemic has hit distinctively younger generations, not older generations, and its the younger generations also who bowling alone shows have been disengaging. So i dont want to be practicing psychiatry here without a license, but i do think that the circumstantial evidence is that a whole generation of people, beginning with the boomers and then increasing with the xers, have become less connected with one another and less connected with their communities. And they at the same time have become less happy. Theres been a substantial increase in depression, and i have to say also a substantial increase ininin suicide rates in that generation where suicide rates among thethe connected generation, the oldthe long, civic generation have beenbeen quite low. So i think we are less happy is the short answer to the question. Cspan go back to something you said earlier about how this all got started. You wrote the original article again in what magazine . Guest the journal of democracy. Cspan whose is that . Guest its an academic articleacademic journal published by the National Endowment for democracy. Itsits a journal namely for academics aboutabout, you know, how democracy works. Cspan and you said you had a theory about how that moved on from there. Guest well, yeah. Ive written a lot of books and a lot of articles in my life as an academic. And some of them, i think, were maybe even better than the bowling alone article, but that got about a million tons more publicity. I mean, i got, you know, invited on peyou know, shown on People Magazine and bill clinton invited me to camp david. And there was just a lot of hubbub aboutabout the article bowling alone, much more than, as i say, for things that were, i think, equally valuable intellectually. And i think the reason was that i purely, blindly stumbled into articulating a trend in our lives that lots of ordinary americans knew is true in their life, that they werentyou know, their mom had belonged to hadassah and they didnt or that their dad hadhad gone to the moose club or the rotary club and they didnt do anything equivalent or that they, you know, remember that they used totheir parents used to play bridge every week andwith friends and have friends over to the house and they didnt. And everybody kind of knew in a personal way that they were less connected with their community than their parents had been and felt a little uneasy about it, you know, felt they knew probably why, because they were busier or whatever, but theythey felt a little uneasy about it. And theybut theyit was defined not as a public issue but as a private issue. And then along comes this harvard professor who says, actually, no, its not just you, its all of us. and i think that the reason that thethethe original article got so much attention was that it seemed to put a label to something that all of us felt in our lives but didnt realize that everybody else was feeling and thats the only reason i can make of the fact that it got soso much more attention than ithan i had ever dreamed of. Cspan when were you called to camp david . Guest essentially right after thatthat article came out. The president had a number ofof academics to come to camp david to talk with him aboutthis was thethis was january of 1995. And it was shortly after the article had appeared. And he was thinking about what hewhat he would say in the state of the Union Message that year. And so he was talking with me and some other people about. Cspan what did you learn from that experience . Guest well, ii learnedof course, it was a treat to beto be invited. And iand i very much enjoyed meeting the president andandand the vice president. And theyre smart people. Theyrei learned that theytheyd do just fine in a harvard seminar. And i also learned that its complicated to think aboutthat the movement from describing these issues in a purely academic waywhich is frankly what i had done before; i washad entirely been an academicis different from the problem of figuring out what would you do to fix it. And what i was increasingly confronted withnoti dont just mean at camp david, but that was an example of it. As there came to be more discussion about the socalled bowling alone phenomenon andwas, ok, if youre so smart to descrto diagnose this problem, how do we fix it . and so i spent actually much of the last five years in what is a somewhat Different Task than the priprithan the problem of diagnosis, which is towhat can we do to change our lives or our community or our Public Policies or whatever to enable us to reweave the fabric . Cspan let me go back to the water cooler thing for a moment because this network is about 21 years old. And for 20 years weve had callin programs where people every day for three hours communicate among the group that watches. You can go from this network to any otherdr. Laura or. Guest sure. Cspan . Rush limbaugh or any number of national callin programs which werent there, havent been there but 22 years or Something Like that. Guest right. Cspan larry king started it all in 1978 on a National Basis thats not discussed in your book and i wonderthats a community. We allwe have all formed communities where people are involved, albeit inin many cases, alone. Guest sure. Cspan but theyre talking to a community. What imwhwhat impact has that had on this, you knowand is the water cooler thing better for us as a country or worse for us, that we all watch the same thing and talk about it the next day . Guest well, if we actually did talk about it with people wewein ain a facetoface setting in which we really know one another, it would be fine. I dont see anythingtheres anytyou know, nothing bad about talking about survivor anymore than talking about theyou know, the local bond issue or whatever else you talk about with friends. I do think the facetoface connections are really important; that is, i dont doubt for a second thati know this from my own experience that your viewers feel that they have a kind of a personal connection with you and i think the same thing is true for any of the hosts of theseof these programs. And in a certain sense, they feel part of a larger community, aa community of people who identify themselves with, you know, watching larry king or Rush Limbaugh or whatever. But thethe horizontal ties among the member of that audamong the members of those audience are much weaker than thethan the horizontal ties that would be true among people over a back fence. And iso i do actually look at thei did look, in the course of doing this work, at thethe question ofof talk radio andand talk television. Andand i do think that, for some people, those sorts ofof being an audience of that sort does give them a sense of belonging to something wider than themselves. But the other watchers arethe other peoplethe other viewers are not going to bring you chicken soup if you getif you get sick; that is, there are certain kinds of things that only real facetoface connections can do. Being in a community of identitythat is, a community thatthat shares basically only the fact that they think of themselves in the same waythe community of adidaadidas shoes wearers, for example. Peoplei mean, now communitiesthe Term Community is used in marketing all the timetheyou know, the buick community or something, beingis very different from a community of interaction, in which you actually do connect with other people in it. And so i dont want to be dismissive of communities of identity, purepure identity. But i dont think it solves the sameserves the same kind of functions, either the functions for our own physical health or theor the social functions in our community. Youryou know, thei dont know of any evidence at all thatwhere people are more likely to watch Rush Limbaugh, their schools work better. I know of a lot of evidence that where people are involved in community organizations, the schools work better. So the kind of social capital that im talking about i think does require more than you merelymore than you merely be in an audience. It requires really connecting. Cspan would the country be better off with a strong, active federal government or strong local governments in the environment that you think is the best for us as citizens . Guest i try to avoid, in the book, and in my own thinking about this, any simple dichotomy, would we want a topdown solution or a bottomup solution, because i think we want both topdown and bottomup solutions. I do think that the evidence is that smaller is better for connecting. Smaller towns or smaller schools, for example, smallbecause you feel a greater sense of efficacy if youreif youre close up toifif you can actually, you know, connect with other real people, and itand thatsthats an argument, i think, forfor a more decentralized form ofofof connection. On the other hand, there are people examples in our history in which a crucial role has been played by the federal government in building community. Let me give aa couple of specific examples. Many people in america dont know that the 4h club, which, for a certain generation of us, the 4h club was, you know, the place where you learnedlearned to connect with other people, especially in Rural Communities the 4h club is a Government Program run out of aa government bureaucracy, run out of the department of agriculture. And it was created by people in thearound thein the progressive era by people who thought that if the governmentit was the governments responsibility to help people connect with other people in their communities. And thethethe wholemany of the forms of social connection in our rural areas arethe grange and so on, are the creation of county agents. County agentsi mean, you know, always thought that county agents were people who told my mom how to can goods oror taught farmers how towhat kind ofwhat kind of plants to grow, but county agents were paid Community Organizers, paid by the government, bureaucrats. To phraseim trying to phrase it that way not to castigate them, but to say, look, deep in our own history, as a country, are many examples in which the government played an Important Role in building the preconditions forfor a community. and thattake another example. The gi bill after world war ii, i think it was an important factor in giving that generationbasically, the gis out of world war iia sense of civic involvement, a sense of reciprocity. The governmentyou know, they had given a lot to the country, inin terms of their service in war. The country gave back to them in terms of thethis opportunity that most of them had never imagined they would have to go toto go to college. And they, in turn, over the rest of their lives, gave back. That longitit appears very clearly in the book this long civic generation, that world war ii civic generation, all their lives had been more involved in the Community Giving more, trusting more, schmoozing more, joining more. And i think you cant get around the fact that that must have been in part because of policies of the federal government. So i want to say, both and. both small, local, grassroots initiatives are important, but also there are important federal policies that i think we need toto recognize in the past and toand perhaps to push for in the future. Cspan if you had to put everybody that worked on your book on the statistical side andand all the research in a room, how many people would be in there . Guest over the years, probably nearly 100 people. I mean, they didnt all work at the same time, because i was mostly using graduate students, and it happened over aover a five or sixyear period that i was working with people. So sometimes we hadsometimes a team got up to, oh, eight or 10 people. Andand sometimes it was less than that. But there are a lot of them. Cspan what were they doing . Guest part of it was gathering statistics. I mean, we looked really hard to try to find data on membership in organizations and trends ininall sorts of connect connectforms of, you know, connection. We wanted to try to find out what werewhat were the trends in restaurant eating and so on. And it turns out that was hard to track down a lot of those things. And partly they were reviewing for me, helping me look at the very wide range ofof research, of other peoples research, that we were drawing on. Because much of that book is really based on summarizing a lot of other peoples research. For example, to take the issue that you talked about before, talk radio, we hadwe hadi had oneone of my graduate students who spent the better part of a semester looking at all the research thats been done on talk radio, who watches, who talks, who calls in, has it changed over time, are people who call in to talk radio more likely to be involved in their community . Apart from talk radio, are they less likely to be involved . Soand doing the same thing inin, you know, dozens of other areas. We wanted towe wanted to look in some detail, for example, at the medical literature on the health of exosocialsocial connections. And we looked a lotspent a lot of time looking at history. So i had researchers who went back andandand explored the patrends inin social connection over the last 200200 years inin syracuse and poughkeepsie and so on. Cspan how do you get students to do this . Guest partlyyou pay them. I mean, itsits aemployment, andand a way that theyre working their way through school. Andbut mapartly because they enjoyed working on a project which was actually exciting. It really isthis is areally neat stuff. We had the feeling that we were kind of exploring a big problem most of the time academics, including me, work on, you know, pretty small problems, narrowly defined so we can get theget the facts quite straight in a really narrow little area. And i had all my life done that kind of work. And i will in the pain the future do that kind of work. But this was a big, expansive problem, and it was one that you couldwhen kids went home over thanksgiving they could tell theirtheir aunts and uncles what they were working on and theyd recognize it astheir aunts and uncles would recognize it as aas a serious problem. So there was a certain amount of excitement in being involved and doing hard, careful research on a big topic. Cspan in the back you go into great explanation of how you put this all together. But the thing that was interesting, and i wanted to ask you about, was the number of wellknown endowments and institutes that participated in this in one form or another. I guess helped underwrite it . Guest yeah, itmostly the foundations that are listed there in the backthey were very, very helpfulwere not actually underwriting the research for this book. They were underwriting a set of other activities that weve been doing at the same time. Because at the same time that wed been carrying on this research, at the encouragement ofof many of these foundations, i had been working with a group of leaders across the countrythat is not just academics, but preachers and businessmen, businessmen and women andand Community Organizers and union people and so on. We had been meeting in ain a group called the saguaro seminar to try to figure out what are some possible solutions to this problem. And that group has met roughly every three or four months over the last three or four years. Weve looked at issues like the workplacewhat do we need to do in the workplace . Oror religionhowhow can religion help to reinvigorate american democracy . Or schoolswhat can the schoolwhat role can schools play inin trying to fix this problem . Cspan what is the status of religion . Guest religion isas a whole, religious participation is down, as Everything Else is, in terms of social connections. Down about, oh, 25 percent over the lastthat is, take going to church, for example, is down by about 25 percent over the last 25, 3030 years. But, obviously, there are some parts of the religious spectrum that have had enaenormous growth during this period. And there are others that have had substantial falls. I mean, the mainline protestant churches, for example, andandandand attendance at mass among catholics, has dropped off a lot. But thats tpartially offset by the growth and participation in evangelical communities. And what we were talking about in the saguaro seminar was, well, ok, susuppose we were to have aanother one of these what people call great awakenings, which weve had periodically in american history, where people beganbegan to be more engaged and interested in religion. How would thathow could that contribute to a broader sense ofof civic revitalization . Cspan i just want to name some of these organizations aspen institute, Rockefeller Brothers fund, lilly endowment, Trilateral Commission, Pew Charitable trusts, the norman foundation, the catherine t. Macarthur foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation these aresupport theis it calledis it pronounced saguaro . Guest yeah. Cspan whats that mean, by the way . Guest saguaro is a cactus out inout in the west. We use it as a metaphor for social capital. Because the saguaroits one of these big cactuses with the big arms, you know. Saguaro cactus, as it turns out, grow invisibly, almost underground, for the first 20 or 30 years before they shoot up these big stalks, which then turn out to be hosts for many different kinds of communities for birds and insects andand people. So we thought that was a kind of a metaphor for social capitalit takes a long time to develop, and then it serves lots of unexpected purposes. Cspan carnegie, the lithe lilais that the way you pronounce it . Wallace Readers Digest foundation. Guest yeah, lila. Yeah. Cspan why are all of these groupsand, by the way, a lot of our viewersi dont know what the number is, but some of our viewers, when they hear Trilateral Commission, immediately think conspiracy. Guest yeah. Cspan why would the Trilateral Commission be involved . Guest well, the Trilateral Commission, frankly, was involved only because im a member of the Trilateral Commission. Andandand part of this work on democracy wasi was doing isoonlooking at how these same problems occur elsewhere. Yeah, i know that theres atheres a view out thereafrankly, its a quite silly view, thatthat the Trilateral Commission somehow runs everything. But it was ait played a very minor role, frankly, in this. Cspan wellwell, let me stop and ask you, what is the Trilateral Commission and why is it people are afraid of it . Guest the Trilateral Commission is just a group ofof businessmen andand Public Officials and academics fromits called trilateral because it has the threeit comes from the three devancedadvanced developing partsdeveloped parts of the world, north america and europe andand japan. Its beeni mean, im a member of it. But im not, by no means, aaaa spokesman for it or anything. And. Cspan whats the goal . Guest andwell, you should talk to them about it, brian. Actually, im just aii mean, itsdoesnt makeanything to do with the book, frankly. But its. Cspan no, but whatthe reason i ask this is is whatwhat are the goal of all thesewhatwhat do they want to learn out of this . Whatswhat do you sense thatwhen you meet with all of these people from these different foundations, what do they want . Guest well, i think they want the same thing that otherof ordinary americans. Theyre a very Diverse Group out there, i mean, as youas you may know, butfrom looking at theat the list, as you read it off. Theres some conservative groups there, and some liberal groups, and someyou know, all sorts of different groups are in that list. And the. Cspan so what is your sense of why somebody, i mean, begins to underwrite Something Like this . Guest ii mbecause theythey havein different ways each of those organizations has an interest in trying to fix some social problem in america that they think would be improved, whether thats child care oror education or economicsthat they think would be improved, correctly, if we could connect more. And i think theyyou know, there are lots of folks on that list who dont agree with one another, but they do all share the view that america would be a better place to live in if we connected a little bitbit more, that we would have lower infant mortality rates. Some of the groups in that list, for example, are interested inin teen pregnancy, and infant mortality, andand the way kids are. That weand some of the groups in there are interested inin education. And i think test scores would be higher, which they would be, if American Parents were more connected with their kids. And some groups in there are worried about american competitiveness. They think the American Economy would be stronger. And some groups in there are worried about american health, publicthe health and the psychological health. And they think americans wouldamericans would be healthier if we connected a little bit more. So i think people have a veryjust as ordinary citizens, ordinary folks have a very different set of interests in this. Cspan ininnear the end of the book, chapter 24, toward an agenda for social capitalists, im going to read your points and then thehave you expand on them. Guest sure. Cspan let us find ways to ensure that by 2010 the level of Civic Engagement among americans then coming of age in all parts of our society will match that of ourof their grandparents when they were that same age and at the same time bridging social capital will substantiallywill be substantially greater than it was in their grandparents era. how do you do that . Guest gosh, i think theres not any single solution. And, as i say, in thein the chapter that youre reading, i think the purpose of my efforts in that last chapter to try to provoke people to suggestions that may come from others. But let me be more specific about my own ideas. I think, with respect to schooling, we know some things that would work. We want to increase ourthe next generations interest in public involvement, inin public affairs. We know things that would work. We know that smaller is better. We know schoolin Small Schools people arehave an opportunity to take part in Community Activities and theyand they develop civic habits. We know thatwe know that Extracurricular Activities work we know that band and football and chorus and debate and so on, all those extracurricularcurricular activities give people skills that they carry with them their whole lives. And we know that what predicts in adulthood whos going to be involved as an adult ininin Community Life is whos beenyou know, played left tackle or played trombone orororor played king lear or something. So we know that that works. And we know it was, therefore, really dumb, as americanas Many American School Districts did, to cut funding for extracurriculars as a frill during theduring the 1970s and 80s and 90s because it was not a civic frill. We know that Public Service and community lecommunity Service Works in the sense that kids who get involved as young people in school in Community Service develop habits of mind and values that stick with them. So we know some things that would work in the currentin the area of schools, that would make it likely that now another generation would be more involved and we can reverse this decline. Cspan second, you say, let us find ways to ensure that by 2010 americas workplace would be substantially more family friendly, and community congenial so that American Workers would be enabled to replenish our stocks of social capital both within and outside the workplace. guest let me gogo back for just a second to give a little historical context. America, between 1865 and 1900, underwent the industrial revolution. Basically, a third of americans moved from fields to factories, is where theyisin terms of their place of employment. Then we spent some time adjusting our labor law to the fact that we were mostly working in factories now and no longer working in fields. Take child labor, for example. Women mostly worked in fields. Child labor meant, you know, sarah picking beans in the back 40 with mom. And that didnt seem like such a bad idea. But when we were mostly working in factories, after that transformation, child labor meant sarah working inyou know, sewing shirts in a sweatshop. And that wasnt so good. And so we had a series of kind of clicks in which we saw the world differently as a result of that change in the structure of the workplace. Now fast forward. In our adult lifetime, over the course of the last generation, we have all been through a bigger change in the character of work in america as more than a third of the American Work force has moved from the kitchen to the office. And yet with respect to the consequences of that transformation, the movement of women into the paid labor force, were stillwith respect to the consequences of that for the rest of our lives, were still preclick in the sense that we havent yet seen that now that most adults are working outside the home, and most of us dont have a housewife at home to take care of, you know, kids and so on. And im notfor a moment would i want to return to thatthose days in whichmy daughter, as we talked about before, is ais a professional woman. And im very proud of her. So i dont wanti dont want her to stop her professional career. But the workplace has not yet adjusted to the fact that most of us have twotwo adults working outside the home. So that means withwhat we need over the course of the next decade or so are some quite radical changes in the structure of the workplace to enable us. Wewe talk about this as if it were your problem or my problemwhos going to pick up the kids at schtonight . but its not. Its how ishow are americahow are ameris america going to educate its kkids when most adults are working outside the home . Thats a collective problem. We need to have a collective discussion about it. It may or may not, but probably will, require some Government Action. Just as it required Government Action to outlaw child labor. So i think it means radically increaseradical increases in, for example, the family medical leave act, which allows you to take time off for sick kids. Well, sick kids are an important obligation. But its not the only family obligation. And you shouldthe burden of proof, i think, ought to be on the employer to say why you have to work from 9 to 5 as opposed to having much morea flexibility in your work life to enable you toto fit your family and community obligations ininto the rest of your life. So thatsimim giving some general outlines here of some kinds of radical changes that i think would enable americans toto be more civically engaged. Cspan your third point 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 pedestrianfriendly areas, and that the design of our communities and the availability of public space will encourage more casual socializing with friends and neighbors. guest yeah. One of the things that i was surprised to find when we did this research is that in a measurable way, urban sprawl, metropolitan sprawl, has contributed to civic disengagement. I mean, thethethe general fact, as you know, from reading the book, is that every 10 minutes more of additional commuting time cuts all forms of social connection by 10 percent ten minutes more commuting time means 10 percent fewer dinner parties, 10 percent fewer dinners with your own family, 10 percent fewer Club Meetings, 10 percent less churchgoing, and so on. Twenty minutes more means 20 percent less of all those things. So urban, metropolitan sprawl, and the time we spend sitting inin metal boxes, has had a negative effect on our connections with our family and our community and ourour friends and so on. And, therefore, i think that there arethere are good social reasons, not just environmental reasons, for the sorts of antisprawl initiatives thatpeople in atlanta, for exampleatlanta now has a quitehas engaged inand the state of georgia has engaged in a quite systematic set of Public Policy initiatives designed to reduce sprawl. Largely, forthere, i think, for environmental reasons. But i think its also true that our family Community Life would be better if we could avoid that proliferation of long commutes. Cspan number four let us spur a new pluralistic, socially responsible great awakening so that by 2010 americans will be more deeply engaged than we are today in one or another Spiritual Community of meaning while at the same time becoming more tolerant of the faiths and practices of other americans. guest yeah. Religion is an important part of American Social capital, brian. About half ofas a rough rule of thumb, about half of all social capital in america is religious. Half of all of ourphilanthropy is religious, half of all of our volunteering is religiousin a religious context. Half of all of our social membershipgroup memberships are religious. So it matters a lot for the total stock of American Social capital how engaged we are in religious activities. And, as a citizen, i think it would be valuable if we had another one of these periods in which americansin which weve had historically, which americans have become more aware of the values of religious communities, of religious values. Of course, theres a lot of talk about thisin this years president ial election. And, by and large, i think thats a good thing, not a bad thing, that were talking about werewere aware of the role of religion and its positive contribution to our society. Theres a qualification one has to add to that which is that sometimes involvement in religion is associated with intolerance of other people. And i think any of us who talk about increasing andand having respect for the role of religion in American Society, at the same time, have to say, always, yes, im willing to do this in a way that is tolerant of other peoples faiths and other peoples ideas. and i think thats possible. I dont think thats a contradiction in terms. I think we can have greatera greater role of religion in American Life and still have tolerance. Cspan five let us find ways to ensure that by 2010 americans will spend less leisure time sitting passively alone in front of glowing screens and more time in active connection with our fellow citizens. Let us foster new forms of electronic entertainment and communication that reinforce Community Engagement rather than forestalling it. how can you do that . Guest well, you know, as i said before, i think Entertainment Television is really not so good for civic health. And, frankly, of all of the areas in which iyou can tell i have a kind of an activistreformists attitude. Of all the areas, this is the one that makes me the mostmost pessimistic. Because, obviously, were not going to abolish tv. And i dontim not campaigning to have a National Turn offturn offturn off televisions. but i do think that the internet, which is in some respects evolving and in some respects merging with televisioni dont mean immediatelyimmediately, now, but, i mean, the internet industry and theand the Telecommunications Industry and the Entertainment Industry are, to some extent, merging. It does, to somesome degree, open opportunities, for those of us who are concerned about communitybuilding, to be more creative in thinking about how we can have Electronic Communications contribute positively, not detract from or subtract from, real facetoface social connections. I think there are ways in which television itself can contribute to Community Activity by shining spotlights onon opportunities for people to get involved. But i also think that the internet opens up the possibility. It doesnt guarantee that well make use of it, but it opens up the possibility ofnot creating some fictitious cyber, you know, Virtual Community out there in space but using those techniques to reinforce real facetoface connections in our communities. Community bulletin boards, for example, in which youor neighborhoodneighborhood networks. Aa colleague of minecolleague of mine at the university of michigan, paul resnick, is acomputer science, and hes working on how to use the internet to strengthen facetoface ties within neighborhoods. Well, thats the kind of creative way in which i think Electronic Television electronic entertainment may have a positive role to play. Cspan you have two more points, number six. let us find ways to ensure that by 2010 significantly more americans will participate in, not merely consume or appreciate, cultural activities from Group Dancing to songfest to Community Theater to rap festivals. Let us discover new ways to use the arts as a vehicle for convening Diverse Groups of fellow citizens. why would you throw rap festivals in there among cultural events . Guest well, because i think it is an example of a cultural event. Ittheretherethetheres atheres a great example that i cite here right here ininin washington ofof people using rap groups and poetry slams to reach to communities, in this case, africanamerican young people, who would otherwise not be reached byby cultural activities, and using them to build community, to build connections. The reason that i think arts and culture is important is not, you know, out of reverence for shakespeare or something, but because arts, culture, participatoryparticipatory participatory arts and culture, and sports, too, provide an unusually good vehicle for making connections that cross these other barriers in our society. Its easier to make connections across lines of race or class oror gender oror generation, oftentimes, if one is doing that in the context of singing oror making cultural productions of various sorts. I happen to be ahave a soft spot in my heart for choral societies because ii, in my youth, spent a lot of time singing. And i think you canyou can make kinds of connections that are important in a sin ain an artistic and cultural contexti dont mean just watching or listening, i mean doing artthat would be harder to make if you were in a, quote, more civic context in which you were going to do eating your civic broccoli. I dont think thatsi think connecting can be fun. You know . Cspan why did you pick 2010, by the way . Guest well, 10 years out from when the book was published. I think i was trying to hahabei talk about goals, aspirations that couldnt happen overnight. But on the other hand, i didnt want to talk about something that was going to happen, you know, after my lifetime. Cspan let me get the last one in here. let us find ways to ensure that by 2010 many more americans will participate in the public life of our communities, running for office, attending public meetings, serving on committees, campaigning in elections, and even voting. guest yeah, i think in the end i return toto politics. I am a political scientist. I am interested in how americans can take part inin politics and not just in voting. I think it is athis longterm, steady decline in political participation is a very bad sign for ourthe health of our democracy. And i think theres a direct relationship between the fact that people are dropping out of politics, and dropping out of connecting with one another, as the decline of social capital, and the rise of all of this money in politics. The reasonif you ask why do we have all of this money in politics, its because politicians no longer can get their message to voters through social connections, through churches or orgor clubs or unions or whatever because those organizations have become weaker. And, therefore, theyre relying on electronic mass media which costs money. And i think the role of money in politics is really quite dangerous to American Society. So id like to see a kind of revision, reform of american politics, in which we gave social capital, that is, connections, greater weight, and less weight was given to financial capital. Cspan did National Politicians have impact on bringing us to where we are in the last 30 years, and can they have impact on the future of changing things . Guest i dont think theyi dont think that politicians specifically blamebearbear much blame for the general decline in connectedness. Its notits not because of politicians that weve stopped going on picnics or having friends over to the house. I do think that as they respond to public demand for greater opportunity for people to connect with their family and communities that, yes, politNational Politicians can play a role. I think that the president ial candidates this year in both parties are genuinely interested in trying to find ways to make it possible for people to reconnect. This is very high on the privateits a Kitchen Table issue. Its high on peoples private agenda. How can i just find more time and opportunity to connect with people that i care about . Andand i think Public Policy changes could attribute to that cspan have you gotten less or more attention when the book came out than when the article came out . Guest probably more. I certainly have talked to a lot more people, doing a lot more lecturing. Yeah, probably more. I think its not necessarily a sign of me or the book. I think its a sign that the countrythis problem is maturing in peoples consciousness. I think more people now than five years ago recognize that this is something weve got to do something about. Cspan whats your next book . Guest how to look at this problemseen from abroad. How we canhowwhat lessons we can learn from other countries about connecting. Cspan and we dont have much time, but this all started with italy and a study you did. How long did that study go on . Guest that took 25 years so im a slow writer. Cspan what was the number one that if you wanted to know where locwhere italy was governed best, where people can actuallywhere people were most likely to enjoy the benefits of good government, it was a number of choral societies and football clubs. Cspan do you have any idea who did this cover for you . Guest yeah. Its anits an artist inin new york city. Hes done a lot of othera lot of other fine work. Cspan bowling alone is the name of the book and our guest has been Professor Robert putnam. Thank you very much for joining us. Guest my pleasure, brian. Youre watching book tv on cspan2. Heres our primetime lineup for tonight