Bowling Alone — Why We Have More Connections but Less Community

This is NOT an online meeting but an in-person meeting.
Reading the book is not required.

During the book discussion the leader of the discussion presents the most interesting parts of the book. The great emphasis is placed on discussion.

Book Description

Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam is a book about the long-term decline of social capital — the networks, norms, and trust that enable people to cooperate and form communities.

Putnam shows that people increasingly do things alone rather than together: they participate less in clubs, associations, civic life, and informal social activities. Importantly, the book is not mainly about loneliness or emotions, but about the structural consequences of weakened social ties: lower trust, weaker democracy, poorer health, and reduced collective problem-solving.

Although Putnam uses mainly American data, the mechanisms he describes — individualization, time pressure, technological mediation, institutional decay, and generational change — are broadly applicable to modern societies. The book invites us to ask whether social fragmentation is an unavoidable cost of modern life, or something that can be consciously reversed.

Discussion Topics

• What exactly is “social capital”
• At what point does individual freedom start undermining community life?
• Informal vs formal social life
• Is lack of social life mainly: a personal failure or a systemic result of work patterns and commuting?
• Should societies treat time for social life as a public good?
• Does technology destroy social capital, or merely redirect it?
• Do people learn how to socialize, or is it intuitive?
• Is civic participation necessary for personal well-being?