US group life collapsed in the 1970s even as issue variety grew

Evidence

By the 1970s, this landscape had started to desiccate. The democratic promise Alexis de Tocqueville once saw in the United States—and that generations of European travelers had reported on—was supplanted by the reality described by Putnam, in which people bowled, worked, and voted alone. … On the one hand, the menu of political issues visibly broadened. Theda Skocpol points to the proliferation of “environmental groups, antipoverty groups, pro-choice and pro-life groups, family values groups, and associations dealing with the rights of women, racial and ethnic minorities, and other vulnerable categories of Americans.” — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 132

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Putnam’s Bowling Alone thesis and Skocpol’s Diminished Democracy — reader studying ‘Putnam from the Left’ will want both. — connects to: Environmental groups grew to millions of members during the 1970s — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 385; Civic organizations across America faded dramatically in the late twentieth century. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 22