Tocqueville quote:
Americans of all
ages,
all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming
associations. There are not only commercial and industrial
associations
in which all take part, but othersof a thousand different types –
religious,
moral serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large
and
very minute…Nothing in my view, deserves more attention than the
intellectual
and moral associations in America.
1960-1990s
Organizational
explosion
10,299 in 1969
22,901 in 1997
Example 1: AARP
grew from 400,000 members
in 1960 to 33 mln in 1990s
<10% belong to local
chapters
Example 2:
Environmental
Defense Fund
100,000 members in 1988
to 300,000 in 1995
growth attributed to
“front-end
prospecting”
i.e., send you something
soliciting donations
Putnam says we should
call
groups like these should be called “tertiary organizations”
Who demand little
of their members’ energies and contribute little to their social
capital
(51-2)
Thus, while we have more associations most have fewer members
Compared to earlier
generations
of organizations
More are large mass
mailing
based organizations
Headquartered in
Washington,
DC or single city
Fewer branches,
chapters
Few, if any,
face-to-face
contact, meetings, etc.
Note the pattern in
Figure
8 (54) showing what has happened to the membership in traditional,
social
capital building associations such as:
League of Women
Voters,
Haddasah, PTAs
Rotary, Optimists
The Elks, the Moose,
the Knights of Columbus
The Masons, 4-H, Boy
Scouts, Girl Scouts
Decline in membership matched by decline in organizational activity, participation
See Figures 10 and 11
Declines are surprising given that educational attainment has increased
The drop among the more
educated
more pronounced in relative terms
Why are Americans
participating
less in organizations??
What does Putnam
say?
Why do you think?