Evaluate of documentary on Robert D. Putnam (opinion)

After making the rounds of movie festivals for greater than a 12 months, the documentary Be a part of or Die begins streaming on Netflix as we speak. It provides a layperson’s introduction to the life and work of Robert D. Putnam, a political scientist and professor emeritus of public coverage at Harvard College. The administrators, Rebecca Davis and Pete Davis, are nearly sufficiently old to have matriculated from kindergarten when Putnam printed “Bowling Alone,” a landmark paper on the fraying social material of the U.S., in 1995.

A best-selling guide of the identical title appeared 5 years later, and Putnam’s subsequent work has largely adopted up its implications. Whereas the idea of “social capital” has been proposed in quite a few kinds by completely different theorists, Putnam’s definition of it as consisting of “social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that come up from them” is distinguished, partially, by a reasonably unabashed normativity: A way that the abundance of sturdy voluntary associations amongst people is perfect for human flourishing.

Attracting eyeballs to a documentary about social science analysis is a steep problem, except intercourse or violence is one way or the other concerned. Despite its ominous title (faintly suggestive of a true-crime program, presumably involving a cult of serial killers) Be a part of or Die is just not sensationalistic within the least. However the documentary is making its home-screen debut two and a half weeks earlier than Election Day, and Putnam’s work touches some uncooked nerves. Nothing in it strikes me as incendiary, however you by no means know.

One of many administrators was an undergraduate scholar of Putnam’s at Harvard and saved in contact with him over the dozen years or so between graduating and making the documentary. The non-public connection is tangible: the movie is an affectionate portrait of the general public mental as energetic senior citizen.

And citizenship is clearly a defining curiosity for Putnam. His catchphrase concerning the decline of bowling leagues pursues the implications of one thing Alexis de Tocqueville famous concerning the democratic mores of the US after touring it within the 1830s.

“People of all ages,” he wrote, “continuously unite. Not solely have they got business and industrial associations through which all participate, however additionally they have a thousand other forms: spiritual, ethical, grave, futile, very common and really explicit, immense and really small … I typically admired the infinite artwork with which the inhabitants of the US managed to repair a typical objective to the efforts of many males and to get them to advance to it freely.”

The documentary sketches how Putnam’s position in a decades-long examine of variations in regional-level governmental functioning in Italy led, by the mid-Nineteen Nineties, to a speculation concerning the American scene, the place a decline of public confidence in political establishments had been evident for a few generations. Putnam’s analysis prompt that development was associated to shrinking membership within the kinds of voluntary, nonpolitical associations that had been sprouting up all over the place Tocqueville regarded within the 1830s.

They had been areas the place, in Putnam’s phrases, “familiarity, tolerance, solidarity, belief, habits of cooperation, and mutual respect” had been generated—imperfectly, to make certain, however sufficient to compensate considerably for the atomizing tendencies of a rustic characterised by excessive social and geographic mobility.

Correlation and causation have a fraught relationship, but it surely was not all that worrying to the pundits who in a short time made “Bowling Alone” (the article model) the speak of 1995. However different social scientists challenged Putnam’s knowledge, or how he interpreted it. Whereas the documentary strikes shortly previous the criticisms, it additionally reveals him recalling the expertise as troublesome and painful however a spur to a lot extra analysis.

This was to his profit. When Bowling Alone (the guide) was printed by Simon & Schuster, the assessments in scholarly journals had been prolonged and respectful. (Not one of the evaluations I’ve situated had been dismissive of the amount of its knowledge or the standard of its statistical evaluation.)

The main points of Putnam’s work curiosity the documentarians lower than its worldly impression, to which quite a few speaking heads attest on display screen. They embrace the Clintons (Hillary in an interview with the administrators, Invoice in a video from his presidency) and Pete Buttigieg in addition to the conservative economist Glenn Loury and Senator Mike Lee (Republican of Utah). President Obama conferred the Nationwide Humanities Medal on Putnam in 2013.

Be a part of or Die reveals Putnam and Obama collectively in a gaggle picture from the 2000s, once they labored collectively on a challenge wanting into methods social capital may be generated. However the particulars of that effort—what they got here up with, and whether or not it had any impression—will not be mentioned.

Or not for lengthy, anyway: The intermittently legible notes I scribbled whereas watching the movie a few weeks in the past embrace the phrases “looking for the redemptive narrative,” with nothing to point who mentioned them. The very chance seems solely as a blip.

Towards the top, the administrators interview the creator of Meetup, an app enabling folks with shared pursuits to get collectively. Putnam is just not requested to remark. However to me it feels like attempting to swim your means out of quicksand.