Putnam - Social Capital

Before reading the article I had realized that my current generation was more distant and less community based than the generation of my grandparents, but I had always blamed it on technology without looking at other factors as well. As a society we have almost lost what makes us a society because of less personal connections and more technological connections. In order to understand what that means you have to put a term to the social intangibles and that is called "social capital." Putnam uses this word to describe the different factors of social communication and growth. These factors are social connections, societal norms, and trust. This new term social capital is important because it provides a way to measure growth or decline, and because you can measure something like this it proves that social capital has value. The core idea is social connections and this is very important to the human world because it provides productivity. This productivity is not just individual but it is also communal, the benefits of a society being on the "same page," allows business and personal relationships to grow. Social capital affects individual growth because of the fact that you learn from experience, and experiencing other people and other cultures and norms allows you to have a much more open and educated mind. From a business Stand point you want to know what is socially "in", like what is popular at the time because a company selling portable radios in the 2000's is selling an out of date product that was popular in the 1990's. In the article Putnam is able to demonstrate recent social decline by providing evidence from many recent surveys. He mentioned surveys that were conducted on people's participation in groups such as the PTA, Elks clubs, and the Red Cross. He also shows that people are less involved in communal affairs such as attending a rally or a meeting for school affairs. This decline has many different factors