Watch Your Step might be the alternate title to this essay about community formation, functions, and failures in civil society; apologies to Robert Putnam at the Kennedy School of Government (Harvard), who wrote the article, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital” (1995, Journal of Democracy) and later published a book about changes in public participation, group involvement, and “third places” (neither private, nor governmental) where the ideas are hatched and the relationships are formed to produce actions, innovations, and remedies and responses to social problems.
The image of bowling leagues that flourished until the 1960s or 1970s in some parts of the USA and other countries might seem an odd choice of subject when observing societal changes, but the phenomenon of zombie bowlers began to emerge: people whose bodies where still present at the weekly competitions of the bowling leagues, but whose minds and hearts were more isolated or even distant from the activity at hand. Perhaps this solitariness is one result of increasing wealth, greater mobility, rising personal privacy and independence from others’ advice and support, and the social shocks that contributed to fragmented lives and uprootedness.
Now two generations later there are different sources of social disruption, reasons for isolation and anxiety. There is the famous and durable observation by Alexis de Tocqueville in his 1835 travels around the USA that paraphrases as something like “this is a nation of joiners… with associations, groups, and organizations for just about any type of subject or purpose.” Despite the spread of personal mobile Internet devices like phones, watches, and tablets, there are still instances of summer recreational sports leagues, church projects, community theaters (or band, orchestra, choirs), fund-raisers, a few of the fraternal organizations and the service clubs, among other things. So while people of 2019 seem to attend electronic screens more closely, frequently, and for longer periods than they do spend engaged in the company of others, still there are lingering traces of that older instinct to band with others to socialize, solve problems, engage in purposeful or gainful work, and for cultural expression.
Robert Putnam‘s observation about the experience of bowlers of the 1980s and 1990s differing to the earlier way to spend time with others is what led to his larger consideration of Civil Society as a whole today and its roots in the urban centers of northern Italy, where merchants cultivated the idea that investments to improve the social fabric (social capital: who you know, who knows you, trust and owing/extending favors, care, cash and other forms of capital) would benefit the arena for their own individual businesses; in other words, adding to the quality of life of all residents would lead to increasing business for those merchants and craft workers, too.
A similar consciousness was born in feudal Japan among its merchants, likewise dependent on conditions of trust and social stability to grow their businesses. Adjacent to Kyoto is Japan’s largest freshwater lake in today’s Shiga prefecture, but during feudal days known as the Omi domain or province. Even today some Japanese refer to the “Omi pledge” of three-way benefit to mean that a business person has three loyalties: to the customer, to the business itself, and also to the neighborhood or community — maybe not immediately or directly one’s own concern, but indirectly the community stress or success inevitably affected the conditions for one’s business. Modern corporations around the world use the term “corporate citizenship” to refer to charitable donations, volunteer leadership of community events or organizations, and so on. This modern view resonates with these older realizations about social capital and civil society.
Thinking about the sidewalk photo at the top of the essay as a writing prompt: why do most of the numerous dog walkers of this street conscientiously collect their pet’s waste, while a few others fail to do so? Puzzling what may be going on in the minds of those occasional delinquent dog owners may be a fool’s errand, and it may be an eternal problem, not a symptom of 2019 social capital now eroding or now under stress. Back in the 1980s and 1990s the streets of Amsterdam and Paris were filled with the sight, smell, and risk of stepping in dog poop. Typical of Dutch self-deprecation, a certain postcard for sale in tourist shops pictured a pile on the brick pavement with a cocktail-sized national flag planted on top of the noisome mountain. Later the engineers came to the rescue and motorbikes equipped with long nozzles along each side of the front wheel allowed the operator to ride along sucking up the poo left and right to take responsibility for the owner’s irresponsibility. Tax-payers covered the cost of the owner’s casual attitude and absence of civil mindedness.
The advent of DNA testing and decreasing costs and speedier results has led to discussions about testing poo and matching it with registered and licensed pets so that a bill for clean-up and a fine to stimulate changed behavior could be tried. Ordinances and signage in frequently poop-favored public spots has some instructional and deterrent effect, but relying on external carrots and sticks to change the behavior and underlying attitude of owners is hard work that pays back paltry results. Sometimes an exasperated neighbor will hand paint a warning sign about the dire consequences for letting a passing pet soil the yard. A far better way to reduce unwanted piles on one’s sidewalk, driveway, street, or lawn is to affect the owner’s attitudes about community, belonging, common good, social capital, and the fight against ever more solitary and screen-mediated relationship to one’s surroundings and fellow residents, whether stranger or acquaintance. By rewarding one’s involvement in local neighborhood associations, events, and shared conditions, there is less reason for the offender to leave the poo behind, disowning any responsibility, or denying there is a problem or breach of social norms.
Although it may stretch the metaphor too far, the old idea of social capital was that it could be built up, loaned or given, and produce dividends for some of the time, care, cash, or sweat invested; maybe not right away, or not even in a 1 to 1 proportion issuing directly from the point it was originally invested. Instead the fruits coming from cultivating one’s own social capital and sharing with others could come much later and from unexpected sources. The old way of establishing a long-term relationship between business and customer was for the person to make repeated transactions and along the way engage in small talk, sometimes turning up mutual interests or common cause. The new way, thanks to Internet and abundant, ubiquitous information or evaluation is the reverse order: first get to know the business (its “story”) and then eventually spend money there. As a result of the new ways of residing in a place and the feelings of belonging or identity, perhaps the metaphor of Social Capital is shifting from cash to credit; that is, from something valuable, tangible, and ready-to-use to something that can be used digitally, through telecommunication to great distances as well as close at hand, and does not need to be redeemed or paid in full right away. As a result of loosening up the distance, the time frame to pay up, and the electronic (non-physical) medium, now the connection between buyer and seller, and also among residents of a place is looser; virtual rather than strongly sensory. So perhaps it makes sense to speak not of social capital being impoverished or bankrupted, but instead to consider the quality of relationships in a community of residents as social credit, rather than the earlier form of capital. Recent headlines from mainland China talk about facial recognition, tracking, and cross-listing with records of performing social good or harm to give a person in their national register of citizens a ‘social credit rating’.
In any case, as of two days ago, dog poop lingers where it fell, drying in the hot July sun, awaiting the offending owner’s consciousness to be pricked. Or perhaps she or he will step on this mess as a natural consequence of the matter. Even if no night creatures disturb it, and no good deed-doer cleans up the inattention or irresponsibility of the distracted owner, the laws of entropy will remove it eventually: the seasons will change, rains will fall, freeze-thaw cycles will reduce the mess to smaller bits and the wind will scatter it nearby. And so, this 2019 essay version of ‘Bowling Alone’ and the decline of social capital does nothing to move the poo, but at least the essay puts into context the play of community awareness, involvement, unevenness, or altogether lack thereof.
There will always be joiners, the people who get involved that de Tocqueville was impressed with almost 200 years ago. But these days their numbers seem to be fewer and more often the relationships are born and raised online through social media instead of showing up in person at an appointed place and time. The software “Nextdoor” is a community-centric listserv. The one for the residential zone around the spot where the dog poop sits shows 182 households signed up to share messages, announce services or things being discarded or sold, asking questions and advice, and so on. One can only guess at the condition of social capital in the next generation or two, but probably there will still be a few joiners left to weave the social fabric, threadbare though it may be.
