Community bonds have thinned from dense local ties into weak single-purpose ones

Evidence

Not all social networks have atrophied. Thin, single-stranded, surf-by interactions are gradually replacing dense, multistranded, well-exercised bonds. More of our social connectedness is one shot, special purpose, and self oriented. As sociologist Morris Janowitz foresaw several decades ago, we have developed “communities of limited liability,” or what sociologists Claude Fischer, Robert Jackson, and their colleagues describe more hopefully as “personal communities.” Large groups with local chapters, long histories, multiple objectives, and diverse constituencies are being replaced by more evanescent, single-purpose organizations, smaller groups that “reflect the fluidity of our lives by allowing us to bond easily but to break our attachments with equivalent ease.” Grassroots groups that once brought us face-to-face with our neighbors, the agreeable and disagreeable alike, are overshadowed by the vertiginous rise of staff-led interest groups purpose built to represent our narrower selves. Place-based social capital is being supplanted by function-based social capital. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 605

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines “communities of limited liability” and “personal communities” as replacements for place-based membership.
• XREF: connects to: Support groups only weakly bind members and do not replace genuine community attachments. — Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: America’s Declining…, 48; Individualization loosens ties with the near to enable ties with the distant — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 603; Local place-based relations gave pre-modern communities solidity — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 247 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Individualization loosens ties with the near to enable ties with the distant #corroborates (0.92) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 603
• Younger generations retain strong ties but lost bridging ties to wider community #corroborates (0.85) — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 952
• Local place-based relations gave pre-modern communities solidity #exemplifies (0.75) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 247
• Social bonds now form around shared volatility and precarity #qualifies (0.72) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 11