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课程
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独自打保龄球
英文读书笔记
Bowling alone
Robert D. Putnam 2000.
Chapter 3 Civic Participation
Putnam
在《
Bowling Alone
》这本书中，力图从民情出发来考察和评价美国民
主制度的运转。他认为民主质量
的好坏或民主制度的绩效，可以从公民社会的状况
得到解释。如果一个社会的民主运转出
现了问题，从根本上说，那一定是公民社会
发生了变化——如社区生活走向了衰落。
Putnam
在对美国公民参与热情降低，投
票率下降的研究
当中，敏锐的感到，当初托克维尔描述的美国社区生活正在逐渐衰
落——那种喜好结社喜
欢过有组织的公民生活
/
关注公共话题，热心公益事业的美
国人不见了，今天的美国人似乎不愿意把闲暇时间用在于邻居一起喝咖啡聊天，一
起走
进俱乐部去从事集体行动，而是宁愿一个人在家看电视或者独自去打保龄球。
在他看来，
独自去打保龄球意味着美国社会资本的流失，造成这种现象的原因可能
是复杂而不易确定
的，但后果却是明确的，那就是公民参与的衰落。
《
Bowling Alone
》全书分为五个部分，第 一部分讲美国公民参与的状况和社
会资本之间的关系，在“思考美国社会变化”的主题之
下，指出
20
世纪后半期是
美国公民参与和社会资本逐步
衰减的时期。所谓“社会资本”，是指社会上个人之
间的相互联系——社会关系网络和有
其产生的互惠互利和互相信赖的规范。他认
为，作为社会关系的社会资本与公民美德，互
惠信任，社会合作，集体归属感和集
体行动有着密切联系
:
社会关系对个人和群体的生产力也会产生影响
;
社会资本的性
< br>质决定了社会信任的范围，社会合作的质量，公民参与的可能性，进而影响民主制
度的绩效。社会资本具有不同的类型
:
连接性社会资本，粘合性社会资本，兼容性
社会资本，排他性社会资本。
第二部分是讲
公民参与和社会资本的变化趋势。
Putnam
讨论了美国社会网络和
< p>联系在
20
世纪晚期出现的衰减，描绘了美国人政治参与，公民参与 ，宗教参与，
工作联系，社会联系，志愿活动和慈善活动，社会信任出现的变化趋势。同
时也考
察了“小团体活动，社会运动与网络”这样的新兴的社会组织形式。他认为“在<
/p>
20
世纪的前三分之二，一股强大的力量促使美国人更加深入的参与到社区 活动
里，不过就在几十年前，一股静悄悄的潮流毫无预警的逆转了这个浪头。在没有收<
/p>
到任何统治的情况下，我们在这个世纪的后三分之一渐渐疏离了亲友和社区生
活。”第三部分是在对第二部分所揭示的社会资本衰减趋势的可能解释。第四部分
是公民参与和社会资本衰减会导致怎样的后果。第五部分是
Putnam
针对 公民参与
和社会资本衰减这一问题提出的政策建议。
我选取了第二部分中的“公民参与”进行阅读。
Americans of all ages,all stations in
life,and all types of
disposition are
forever forming associations……Nothing, in my view,
is
deserves more attention than the
intellectual and moral associations in
America.
——
Tocqueville
The
significant feature of Americans’ is that they are
more likely
to be involved in voluntary
associations than are citizens of most
other nations; and they have
great
creativity in establishing
organizations
——
they create amounts of
organizations from nation to
local,from serious to interesting,and so on.
As Tocqueville said,the organizations
have infiltrated the Americans’
life
every lly speaking,this same array of
organizational
affiliations has
characterized
Americans since at least
1905s.
One . In the first glance
Official membership in formal
organizations is only one facet of
social capital,but it is usually
regarded as a useful barometer of
community involvement. So what can we
learn from organizational records
and
social surveys about Americans’ participation in
the organized life
of their
communities?
美国人自发的社团总共有三种
:
一是基于社区的社团，而是基于教会的社团，
三是基于
职业的社团。在第三章的“公民参与”一节，主要讲的是在“基于社区的社
团”中，美国人的社
团参与有何变化。
Because of the impressive increase in
the sheer number of voluntary
associations, even taking account of
the increase in population during
this
period, the number of national organizations per
capital has increased by nearly two-
thirds over the last three
decades,excited by this fact, some
observers speak that perhaps too
hastily of a participation
revolution
in American politics and society. And more groups
speaking on
behalf of ever more
categories of citizens.
Two . In
fact
——
1960~1990
,
Organizations that don’t involv
e their members directly in
community-based
activity:
1. over the quarter century
the number of voluntary associations
roughly tripled, but the average
membership seems to be roughly one-
tenth as large
——
more groups,
but most of them much
organizational eruption between the 1960s and the
1990s
represented a
proliferation of letterheads, not a
boom of grassroots participation.
2.
And revealing is the increasing geographic
concentration of
national
membership organizations with local
chapters and substantial
grassroots
activity,they are
headquartered near
important concentrations of their members;For the
nation’s largest
organizations,they are headquartered
near Washington
——
the
political concentration.
The
proliferating new organizations are professionally
staffed
advocacy organizations,not
member-centered,locally based
newer
groups focus on expressing policy views in the
national political debate, not on
providing regular connection among
individual members at the grass roots.
The newer groups mostly belong to the
mailing list
organizations,which means
moving a pen,not making a these
new
mass-membership organizations are plainly of
growing political
importance while they
demands little of its memb
ers’ energies and
contributes little to their social
example,the
national administrators of
such organizations are among the most feared
lobbyists in Washington, in large part
because of their massive mailing
ally,
group involvement with government has exploded at
the
same time that citizen involvement
with both government and groups has
diminished.
The vigor of
the new organizations,though they are large,
proliferating,and
powerful(
会员
数量等
), is an unreliable guide to the vitality of social
connectedness and civic engagement in
American communities.
, Several
illustrations may clarify:
1)
Encyclopedia of associations
Explosive
growth of organizations claiming to speak on
behalf of
veterans coincided with
declining involvement by veterans.
2)
Environment organizations
Environment
Defense Fund(EDF)
——
mail-order membership
Trends in numbers of
voluntary associations nationwide are not a
reliable guide to trends in social
capital,especially for associations
that lack a structure of local chapters
in which members can actually
participate.
对于全国范围的自愿社团来说，
其会员数量的趋势并不是反映社会资本发展趋
势的一个
可靠指标，尤其是那些缺乏地方分部体制以至于会员并不能真正参与的组织。