Tuesday, November 22, 2011

American social capital rapidly declining?

A place that I consider to be my community, is my church. When I was younger I lived in Summerfield, where I regularly attended church. I have been going to the same church since I was born and I still attend almost every Sunday. I couldn't think of a better example for why American social capital is NOT rapidly declining, than my church.

After interviewing and surveying some of the members of my church, I came to the conclusion that social capital is definitely not declining in my community. Only a few members scored below an eight and none of them fell below "civically engaged." Although, some may consider Summerfield to be a small community, it is actually growing and becoming the complete opposite. When given the survey, the two main things that people did not get a point for were having less than a 15 minute commute and attending a political rally. Mostly everyone was able to name half the people on their block and attend a public meeting weekly.

Although many people may feel like American social capital is declining rapidly, I do not feel like it is. I think that there are things that may be leading to a decline (cell phones, internet, etc.) but for the most part many people are still very involved in their community and would disagree with the conclusion in Bowling Alone.