Interest Groups and “Bowling Alone”

Interest Groups and “Bowling Alone”

Read the following article.

Is Putnam correct about the decline in social capital? What are the ramifications for American political society? Could similar arguments be made about the university campus? (That is, students do not join organizations like they used to and thus are more isolated, get worse grades, drop out more, and retreat into their own “self-enclosed horizons.”) Has the growth in “social media” improved social capital? How would you show whether it had or not? Write an 800-1000 word essay arguing that social capital is or is not a problem in American society.

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Solution Preview

Social capital according to Putnam is the social life that networks, norms, and trust that enables various participants to be able to pursue all the shared objectives that they engage. This is even though one considers their goals to be praiseworthy or not. To him, he goes ahead to state that various factors usually influence social capital. These issues are residential immobility, busyness and time pressure. The economic hard times, suburbanization, the growth of the welfare state, the civil rights revolution, the movement of women into the paid labour force, the changes in the structure of the American economy,

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