Fifteen Minutes: Bowling with Prof. Putnam

BOWLING WITH PUTNAM

The waxed wooden floor of lane 49 shines, dividing the darkness of the otherwise empty alley. Sitting in one of three connecting plastic chairs, Professor Robert D. Putnam leans down to lace up his maroon and tan aerosol-sprayed shoes, and smiles: "The only thing that's off the record is if I bowl a gutterball."

Dillon Professor of International Affairs and Stanfield Professor of International Peace, Putnam has served as the chair of the Government Department, the director of the Center for International Affairs, and dean of the Kennedy School. Known to undergraduates as the professor of Junior Government Tutorial 90qa, "Community in America," Putnam studies social capital in relation to civic engagement. In his 1995 article and upcoming book, Bowling Alone: Civic Disengagement in America and What to Do About It, Putnam employs bowling as a metaphor for a larger phenomenon in America. He charts the movement from group-oriented civic engagement, as manifested in bowling leagues, to isolating, individual activities, like bowling alone.

On a Sunday afternoon at Lanes 'n Games near Alewife, FM makes the metaphorical literal. Beneath the fluorescent lights of the alley, we get to know Professor Putnam up close and in the lane. In the heat of the game, we capture his personal technique, find out what he thinks about candlepin, and attempt--between frames--to grasp his theories of the decline of social capital in America with a bowler's grip.

As two TV screens hang down from the ceiling overhead--one blaring a baseball game, the other showing a blank scoreboard, smoke and conversation drifts over from the bar, and Putnam speaks about his first bowling experience. "I was in a league in the old days when they had people up above the pins, who set the pins by hand," Putnam says.

Since those junior high glory days, Putnam hasn't bowled in a league. But, he says, "I get taken to go bowling surprisingly often by students. So I do get to go bowling more often than I used to. But I'm not in a league."

In the televised scoreboard above our heads, a blinking arrow points to the first empty frame, urging us to get the ball rolling. Mutual assurances of "it's been a while..." and "this is just a friendly match," cut the tension. And finally, with a rumbling, the game begins.

After the first round, the retrieving system spits out the Professor's heavy black ball. It rolls along the metal shoot until it rests next to FM's neon green, glittery-swirled ball, and the video screen above our heads plays a loud computer graphic of a stick figure getting a strike and celebrating by leaping around in the air. The figure's dance is intermittently interrupted by flashes of a red X. The sequence holds our attention for a few seconds and then fades back into the scoreboard where a smaller red x appears in Professor Putnam's first frame.

A modest Putnam doesn't gloat over his strike. He simply smiles and addresses the TV screens: "One of the things I described in the book," he says, motioning to the video screens "is that television is such a commodity in our lives, that even when we go bowling, we're supposed to sit here watching TV."

So you don't have to talk to each other.

"Precisely right," he responds with a laugh.

We all gaze up at the screen for a moment, contemplating this phenomenon. A baseball fan holds up a sign punning a player's name on one screen, and on the other, is that blinking arrow, now pointing to "FM." A few forgettable moments later, the pins are reset. And while a slightly less enthusiastic computerized stick figure performs in the background, Putnam eases us into his argument about the deficit of social capital.

"I think that in a lot of ways, not just with bowling, but in a lot of ways people nowadays are doing lots of things more alone. We're even watching TV more alone. In many different ways, we don't have friends over to the house much as we used to, we don't go to bars and hang out there."

"The reason I use examples like bars and bowling is that it's not just do-gooding things like voting or going to church. I want to convey that this is not that we've become evil and that we're no longer doing good. The evidence is just quite clear that we're doing less together."

The pins are pummeled for another round. And after gathering to watch the video figure do another dance, this time accented by a flashing red "\ ," the unfazed Putnam continues with assurances that he is not passing a moral judgment on solo bowlers.

"I just think," he says, "that in many specific ways, we don't work as well--we're not as productive--when we don't connect well with each other."

He argues that the productiveness of togetherness can be seen, for example, in the way students perform better if their parents are involved in the educational process, and in the correlation between a low crime rate and whether neighbors know each other's names. Using this latter example to make a distinction between moral judgment and practical evaluation, Putnam says, "it's not that it's a moral responsibility to know your neighbor's first name. It's that if nobody knows anybody else, crime goes up."

"Perhaps the most striking example" supporting this point, Putnam says, "is that there are very serious health defects of being alone. Here's a factoid: your chances of dying over the next 12 months are cut in half by joining one group, and a quarter by joining two groups."

Perhaps inspired by the puffing in the bar behind us, Putnam applies this research, contending that solitude can be more harmful to your health than smoking. He says, "If you smoke and belong to no groups, it's a close call as to whether it would be better for you to stop smoking or join one group."

"It has measurable physiological effects. We, as beings, get lots of endorphins from being with others."

"And when I say that it's bad that we're bowling alone, I mean that as human beings--physical and social--things don't work as well when we don't have that connection."

As the smoke continues to drift over, Putnam approaches the lane for his next bowl, staring down the white pins in the florescent light. Returning to his seat as the pins are reset again, Putnam gets on a roll, so to speak, about the historical context of our social capital problem.

Historically, Putnam says, the very notion of being entertained alone used to be impossible.

"You go back even a hundred years ago, and if you wanted to listen to music, the only way you could listen to music was if you were listening to somebody else make music, and therefore with other people. You couldn't get entertained alone, as a technical matter."

"Now it's of course very easy to be entertained alone, and therefore more of us are doing it because we get exactly what we want. I don't have to listen to anything but Beethoven or the Beatles or whatever your preferences."

"That technological possibility of us being entertained totally alone comes with the Internet, with TV and multiple cable channels. That technological capability in the short run allows us to get exactly what we want--exactly what we want alone." However, Putnam claims, in getting one thing that we want, we lose something that we need--the social interaction that used to come with a performance.

On that note, we bowl a few more rounds, continually watching the stick figure graphic interpret our skills in a celebratory or teasing way. Eventually, with half of the frames filled, the score has evened out a bit, and Putnam leads by 3 points.

Getting as comfortable as possible in the plastic chair, Putnam reduces his theory to a sound bite: "Because of TV and two career families and sprawl and so on," he says, "we no longer feel comfortable bowling in leagues."

But, Putnam assures, we are not lost. He envisions a solution based on policy changes and community initiative, constructing his hopeful argument based on historical evidence.

"America at the end of the 19th century suffered from all of the same symptoms of a social capital deficit, that we do today. They had the same problem, and they fixed it."

A hundred years ago, Putnam says, industrialization and urbanization effectively created the same phenomenon that modern technology causes today. Faced with this deficit of social capital, America at the end of the 19th century founded hundreds of community organizations.

Such action represented a move forward, not an attempt to recapture life before industrialization.

"If you'd been around then," Putnams says, "it would have been tempting to say, and some people did say: 'Life was a lot nicer back on the farm. Everybody back the farms, please, where we could leave the kids to play and they could make their own friends, and we didn't have to go through this Boy Scouts schtick.'"

"But that's not what people did. Rather than trying to go back the past, they invented new ways of connecting that fit the new ways in which they lived."

Inserting the historical example into the context of his modern argument, Putnam says, "If you're around now, some people might say, and some people thought I was saying, to my horror: 'life was much nicer back in the fifties, would all women please report to the kitchen and turn off the television on the way?'"

"That's not what I'm saying. I'm trying to say that it's not a matter of trying to go back to some old-fashioned institutions, like telling people not to watch TV and so on. It's a matter of creating new things. That will not be broccoli."

"By broccoli I mean, 'it's good for you; shut up and eat your broccoli.'"

Calling for a reconnection in our time, Putnam says we need new solutions that will fit our new reality, in a way that is enjoyable. Rejecting the formation of clubs like those formed in the late 19th-century, Putnam says what we need is "more flextime, more release time for parents."

The traditional division of labor used to delegate household tasks, and activities that fostered community-building to women, while men worked a paying job.

"My mom was doing real stuff. She wasn't getting paid for it, but she was doing real social capital building."

Now that both parents are for the most part working outside the home, Putnam says, no one is left to do the community building. "We've taken a huge hit without quite knowing it, because the people who used to do [social capital building] weren't getting paid for it--it wasn't getting recognized and so on."

Now that we recognize it as a necessity, he says, "we need to reorganize our work life." Putnam's solutions? "More flex time."

To that prescription, Putnam adds addressing urban sprawl, as it encourages living in isolation from communities, and an increased emphasis on extracurriculars in junior high and high school. "Extracurricular activities," he argues, "are a very good predictor of being civically engaged. I'm actually not worried about Harvard students -- you'll do just fine, because you're all self-selected to be extremely engaged. I am worried about people who are not Harvard kids and who are more likely to be sitting in front of a TV."

On football teams, in bands, and on prom committees, Putnam says, kids learn how to connect with one another.

Interrupting Putnam on his roll, the computerized stick figure cuts in with a merciless dramatization of a gutter ball. "I bowled a one", my fellow FMer says sheepishly as he sits back down in his plastic chair.

Putnam imparts some encouraging words like a model community builder, and then continues.

"It's easy to become a cultural grouch when you get into these studies," Putnam says reflecting on the pessimism some might perceive in his theories, "and by personality, I'm not a grouch," he says earnestly.

"But then, I don't know, maybe you think I am," he says bursting, into laughter.

We assure him that on the contrary, he seems incredibly happy. He keeps laughing.

"I don't like being a grouch, and I don't like being a grouch about TV, in telling people to stop watching TV. But the fact of the matter is: when you look at the data, it's just frightening."

Putnam glances back up at the blinking arrow, urging him to finish the game.

Knocking only seven down, he jokes self-deprecatingly: "What you see up there right now as awkwardness, is actually just an unbelievably skilled and agile person just trying to be awkward."

Told by someone with a 160 average, Putnam's sarcastic joke shouldn't be laughed at too hard.

Approaching the lane for the last bowl of the game, Putnam rubs his hands over the hand dryer and checks his shoes--habits he says he usually performs before every bowl. "It's sort of like how Nomar Garciaparra always checks his sleeves and things before he hits."

Clutching his ball up in ready position, he steps up to the lane, and we watch and learn.