Jim,
Actually in his most recent book Putnam devotes
some time to responding to some of the original critics
of his article called "Bowling Alone" that came out in
1995 and caused a stir and led to him blathering with
the Clintons at Camp David before he started blathering
with the Bush speechwriters and fbi'ers more recently.
One of their criticisms (he lamented and laments declining
membership in orgs, e.g. we bowl more, but bowl alone,
not in leagues) was that he was not allowing for the growth
of new groups such as environmental lobbying groups and
the rise of internet discussion lists, chat rooms, etc.
He allows as how there might be some social capital
in such activities, but nevertheless downplays it. For him,
if it is not face to face, it is not worth much. Thus, the enviro
lobbyists have an office in Washington, but nobody knows
anybody. We are all sitting here talking to each other but
not going to lunch (or bowling) with our immediate colleagues.
Of course the flip side is that many of us might not have
met or gotten to know each other if it were not for these lists.
So there, Bob Putnam!
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thursday, February 15, 2001 1:54 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:8139] Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Social Capital
>At 01:30 PM 2/15/01 -0500, you wrote:
>>With regard to Putnam, who likes bowling leagues,
>>bridge clubs, choral societies, and the like, I once heard him
>>give a talk in which he declared that there is a better than 90%
>>correlation between the level of memberships in choral societies
>>in the 1870s in Italian provinces and the economic growth rates
>>of those provinces in the 1980s. Whoop-de-doo!
>
>so this means that by participating in pen-l, we're contributing to
>economic growth (perhaps in a small way)?
>
>Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
>
>
