Critics have focused on the question of whether voluntarism and civic spirit
have actually declined in America and on the unacknowledged class bias in
Putnams thesis. Lay reviewers such as Lemann in The Atlantic Monthly and
Pollitt in The Nation questioned whether American civic virtue is on the wane
or has simply taken new forms different from the old-style organizations cited
in Putnams article. They also note the elitist stance of the argument, where responsibility
for the alleged decline of social capital is put squarely on the leisure
behavior of the masses, rather than on the economic and political changes
wrought by the corporate and governmental establishment. In her trenchant review
of Putnams thesis, Skocpol (1996, p. 25) also stresses this point:
How ironic it would be if, after pulling out of locally rooted associations, the
very business and professional elites who blazed the path toward local civic
disengagement were now to turn around and successfully argue that the less
privileged Americans they left behind are the ones who must repair the nation
s social connectedness
.
These critiques are valid but do not address a more fundamental problem
with Putnams argument, namely its logical circularity. As a property of communities
and nations rather than individuals, social capital is simultaneously a
cause and an effect. It leads to positive outcomes, such as economic development
and less crime, and its existence is inferred from the same outcomes. Cities
that are well governed and moving ahead economically do so because they
have high social capital; poorer cities lack in this civic virtue. This circularity
is well illustrated in passages like the following:
Critics have focused on the question of whether voluntarism and civic spirit
have actually declined in America and on the unacknowledged class bias in
Putnams thesis. Lay reviewers such as Lemann in The Atlantic Monthly and
Pollitt in The Nation questioned whether American civic virtue is on the wane
or has simply taken new forms different from the old-style organizations cited
in Putnams article. They also note the elitist stance of the argument, where responsibility
for the alleged decline of social capital is put squarely on the leisure
behavior of the masses, rather than on the economic and political changes
wrought by the corporate and governmental establishment. In her trenchant review
of Putnams thesis, Skocpol (1996, p. 25) also stresses this point:
How ironic it would be if, after pulling out of locally rooted associations, the
very business and professional elites who blazed the path toward local civic
disengagement were now to turn around and successfully argue that the less
privileged Americans they left behind are the ones who must repair the nation
s social connectedness
.
These critiques are valid but do not address a more fundamental problem
with Putnams argument, namely its logical circularity. As a property of communities
and nations rather than individuals, social capital is simultaneously a
cause and an effect. It leads to positive outcomes, such as economic development
and less crime, and its existence is inferred from the same outcomes. Cities
that are well governed and moving ahead economically do so because they
have high social capital; poorer cities lack in this civic virtue. This circularity
is well illustrated in passages like the following:
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