Traditional community bonds bring corruption and intolerance as well as civic benefit.
Evidence
We must not romanticize smalltown, middle-class civic life in the America of the 1950s. In addition to the deleterious trends emphasized in this essay, recent decades have witnessed a substantial decline in intolerance and probably also in overt discrimination, and those beneficent trends may be related in complex ways to the erosion of traditional social capital. Moreover, a balanced accounting of the social-capital books would need to reconcile the insights of this approach with the undoubted insights offered by Mancur Olson and others who stress that closely knit social, economic, and political organizations are prone to inefficient cartelization and to what political economists term “rent seeking” and ordinary men and women call corruption. — Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone, 77
Categorization
- XREF: Complicates the hopeful thesis of ‘Bowling Alone’ itself; echoes critiques in reading on the downsides of dense social capital, such as closed networks enabling rent-seeking. — connects to: Corruption can be mutualistic cooperation among partners. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 564; Institutions for collective action emerge from community incentives, reciprocity, and trust that curb free-riding. — Laura Albareda and Alejo Jose G. Sison, Commons Organizing: Embedding Common…, 63; Communities organize around common resources motivated by virtues and cooperation. — Laura Albareda and Alejo Jose G. Sison, Commons Organizing: Embedding Common…, 201
- corroborated: 5 independent passages support this claim — Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: America’s Declining…, 77
Related
- Dense civic networks enable trust, reciprocity and collective action. (similarity 0.81)
- Social capital divides into bonding and bridging forms that aid cooperation. (similarity 0.79)
- Institutions for collective action emerge from community incentives, reciprocity, and trust that curb free-riding. (similarity 0.79)
- Robert Putnam — Bowling Alone America’s Declining Social Capital (similarity 0.79)
- Civic engagement vulnerable to free riding declines fastest (similarity 0.78)
- Social capital serves harmful as well as beneficial ends (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Institutions for collective action emerge from community incentives, reciprocity, and trust that curb free-riding.
#qualifies(0.78) — Laura Albareda and Alejo Jose G. Sison, Commons Organizing, 63 - Corruption can be mutualistic cooperation among partners.
#expands(0.75) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 564 - Communities organize around common resources motivated by virtues and cooperation.
#qualifies(0.70) — Laura Albareda and Alejo Jose G. Sison, Commons Organizing, 201