The Long Arc of Social Capital: Revisiting the Vision of Robert Putnam, Part II
Good Friday afternoon, everyone:
Let me pick up on yesterday’s note about Robert Putnam and the construct of social capital.
Putnam called me in 2018-’19 to discuss an idea that he wanted to explore: that during the course of the 20th century, America had moved from an “I” – or self-referential, self-centered – culture in the early 1900’s to a “We” – or more community-engaged and communitarian – culture and then back again. He hoped to test that thesis and propose ways that we could return once again to the “We” construct. I agreed that it was an important, compelling question, particularly given the state of national division. We provided the funding for Putnam and his collaborator, Romney Garrett, to do the foundational research.
The research bore out Putnam’s hunch. We subsequently provided additional grant support and the book The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We can Do It Again was published in 2020. Because it was published during COVID, however, it was somewhat neglected. That is changing, and the work is now having a moment.
Here, for example, is the recent headline from the Chronicle of Philanthropy: “Why My Nonprofit Relies on the Ideas of an 83-Year-Old Scholar” by Eboo Patel, founder of Interfaith America:

Patel writes:
I think of Robert Putnam as the poet of America’s great genius — our civil society: He makes the unseen seen, invests it with significance, and calls upon us to cherish and strengthen it. [H]e illuminates the hidden facts of our everyday lives and demonstrates how they are part of national patterns with dramatic stakes. The importance of both bonded social capital (the benefit that specific identity communities generate) and bridged social capital (the benefit that relationships across identity generate).
Patel concludes:
One of the great conundrums of our era is that the particular set of social problems we face — loneliness, toxic polarization, identity-based bias, the fraying of social bonds, the erosion of civic institutions, the separation of social classes, the absence of national solidarity — are precisely the issues that Putnam has been writing about for decades, and yet it seems like no one in social change circles is talking about Putnam these days.
Time to get our act together, people.
Similarly, Drew Lindsey of the Chronicle recently brought together Putnam and Eric Liu, the CEO of Citizen University, to discuss Putnam’s views on how to rebuild a sense of mutual civic support. Here are some of the most intriguing excerpts from that conversation:
Liu: In The Upswing, you describe how during the Progressive Era, we did change the direction of the country. It swung from “I” to “we,” and associational life rebounded and bloomed. You suggest it could happen again.
Putnam: America in the late 1800s was in a predicament very much like the one we are in now — very high inequality, very high political polarization, very high social isolation, and very high self-centeredness. Then, in a short period of time, roughly speaking from 1900 to 1920, we turned it around. I don’t mean America became a marvelous place overnight; we ignored — then and now — issues of race. But we changed the direction, which is what we want to do now.
What happened was called the “social gospel.” It was initially a religious movement. [T]he social gospel advocates said, “Look at the Sermon on the Mount: Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount said worry about the least [of us].” That social gospel changed the attention of some evangelical Protestants towards focusing on society and not just salvation, and it spread very rapidly. [There] was the sense that we are all in this together, and we all have a stake in everybody’s success — a very simple, moral principle.
Liu: What would you counsel the world of philanthropy?
Putnam: First, young people. Young people are better at leading revolutions. Old people are better at knowing that we need revolutions.
Kids have never lived in a period in which things were getting better. Old people have the advantage of knowing that it doesn’t have to be this way, but they are not the people who know what to do next.
Speaking to the philanthropists: It means taking young people seriously, not as wallpaper. All their answers are not right, but they are more likely to have the right answers than older people. Listen to them. In the last five years or so, you can see sparks of increasing engagement by young people. For example, the rate of election participation in recent national elections was higher than the youth engagement had ever been since — wait for it — 1910, the last time we were coming out of this thing. That’s what it looks like.
Second, local. The last time we did this and turned it around, it was not people at Harvard or people, frankly, in the elite places of America. The innovations of the Progressive Era that were really important happened in fly-over counties and in small towns. It was not a top-down movement. It was a bottom-up movement. It was not mainly a political movement.
Young people. Local. That is what it will look like when we turn things around. It will look like young people who have developed close personal relationships with people who live differently from them, in different places from them, who worship different gods or don’t even worship at all in a formal religious sense.
I’m optimistic.
I agree with Patel. Maybe it would be a good thing to listen with greater care to an elder who has dedicated his public service to seeking greater social cohesion.
Rip