Bowling Alone: a review essay

Abstract

This paper is a critical review of Robert Putnam's influential analysis of social capital in America: Bowling Alone. The review argues that Bowling Alone reflects many of the strengths and weaknesses of the social capital literature. Like this literature, Bowling Alone describes a remarkable number of facts concerning community life in America. At the same time, the book suffers from many of the conceptual problems and empirical weaknesses that have plagued the social capital literature. I conclude that Bowling Alone does not succeed in establishing the importance of social capital in understanding various socioeconomic phenomena it purports to explain.