Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprot Organizations, Vol. 12, No.

2, 2001

Book Reviews
Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Simon and Shuster, New York, 2000.

It must be difcult to write a book that is already famousindeed a worldwide phenomenonbefore it is even nished. In Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community Robert Putnam builds on his rich and insightful book comparing civic participation in northern and southern Italy, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (1993) as well as his suggestive and enormously popular 1995 article in the Journal of Democracy, Bowling Alone: Americas Declining Social Capital to take a more comprehensive look at the state of health and future prospects of Americas social capital. Putnams focus in this book, following Tocqueville, is on associational groups, and in particular their anemic role and waning membership. This focus puts third sector organizations on center stage, and may be of particular interest to practitioners and scholars in the eld. He is refreshingly clear that he is describing (only) the United States, and not a universal model or phenomenon. But for many readers both outside and inside the United States there will remain the very important question of whether in different cultural contexts it will be different structures and mechanismsextended family, religious organizations, and, yes, government programs and policiesthat will provide the necessary means for the creation of such capital. Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the rst chapter, where Putnam lays down theoretical and historical groundwork and introduces three quite intriguing and important ideas. First, he suggests that because social capital often carries dual benet, both to the participant and to the community as a whole, it can be considered to be simultaneously a private good and a public good. While this formulation of the distinctively American concept of enlightened self-interest may not seem intuitively obvious to many, it does raise important theoretical questions about more standard economic assessments of social involvement. Then in what has the potential to open up avenues for further research and analysis, Putnam draws a critical and much needed distinction between bonding and bridging forms of social capital. Bonding forms are those in which the
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2001 International Society for Third-Sector Research and The Johns Hopkins University

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density of ties reinforces reciprocity, inclusion, and trust. These are the forms that he has in the past emphasized, and they have a long theoretical history. Aristotle described the importance of concord, a form of communal friendship that required that citizens be able to recognize each others faces. But just as important and many would argue more importantare bridging forms, which connect people across often disparate groups. Those familiar with network theory may nd some interesting parallels with theories of strong and weak ties. Further, it could be especially illuminating to examine the extent to which the balance and social emphasis between bonding and bridging forms might also vary by culture. Both of these ideas are real advances in the conceptualization of social capital. And yet they are almost passing references, introduced casually without the sustained analysis and argument that their signicance requires. Also of interest, especially from an international perspective, is Putnams acknowledgement of the dark side of social capital tight groups that are exclusionary, even dangerous. He suggests, for example, that it was the norms, networks, and trust among antigovernment paramilitary groups in the United States that made possible the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Social capital, in short, can be directed towards malevolent, antisocial purposes, just like any form of capital. The task he sees is to discover how the positive consequences of social capital can be maximized, and the negative manifestationssectarianism, ethnocentrism, corruptioncan be minimized (Putnam, 2000, p. 22). The rst major section goes on to document extensively (and some might say exhaustively) declining American participation in politics, civic groups, religious organizations, trade unions, and professional organizations as well as informal socializing everything from visiting friends, playing cards, to family dinners. Putnams discussion of volunteering and charitable giving highlights declining overall levels of volunteering anddespite recent declarations of record giving levelssteadily shrinking percentages of personal income being devoted to contributions. Largely absent is his previous explicit dismissal of philanthropy as insufcient to produce social capital because it does not require face-to-face interaction. In addition to grouping philanthropy with (presumably face-to-face) volunteering, he also uses extensive evidence on levels of private giving to further support his argument about declining social capital. This also points to an issue of widespread conceptual confusion. Do (for example) volunteering and giving create social capital, or are they components of social capital, or do they reect the presence of social capital? Different parts of the book seem to imply different roles. With both giving and volunteering he does make the point that they are indicators of social capital, not predictors or components of it. But again this crucial point is simply stated in passing, and the chapter does little to clarify the common conation of the structures and practices that create social capital with those that result from it.

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But does all this evidence simply point to changing patternsnot decreasing patternsof engagement? While Putnam argues that membership in Greenpeace is not the same as membership in a local recycling group, and electronic communication cannot replace personal interaction, he does allow that there are new forms and factors that to some degree mitigate the overall trend toward declining participation. These new forms include telecommunications, particularly the Internet, rising youth volunteerism, the increase in (U.S.-style) self-help groups (i.e., Alcoholics Anonymous and its many spin-offs) and, interestingly, the dramatic and politically effective growth of grassroots activity among religious conservatives (Putnam 2000, p. 180). Putnam then asks why this is happening, and proposes four broadand to my mind plausibleexplanatory factors: the pressures of time and money, including the changing roles of women; mobility and sprawl, which reduce local ties and the ability of people with increasingly busy lives to come together for various purposes; technology and mass media, which compete for scarce time and foster habits of social isolation; and generational changes in values and behavior related to civic engagement. He might have also added the economic pressure for continuous productivity increases in order to maintain competitiveness in a globalized economy. All this might be true and one could still ask So what? Putnam replies with a barrage of statistical charts and diagrams linking the variation among U.S. states in their social capital index scores with their rates of educational performance, violent crime, health, tax evasion, tolerance, economic equality, civic equality, and (inversely) pugnacity the belief that one would do better than average in a st ght. The scatter plot graphs do seem to show a pattern in which those states with high levels of social capital have better educational performance, less crime, better health, etc. However, when looking at those states with particularly high levels of social capitalNorth and South Dakota, Minnesota, Vermont, etc.another less optimistic common characteristic jumps out. They have some of the most homogenous and whitepopulations in the United States. For them, ethnic and cultural diversity has been largely a theoretical issue; the hard and divisive histories of race relations in America have largely been played out elsewhere. While Putnam does address the undermining effect of racial inequality, the question of whether racial and cultural similarity is a de facto component underlying the creation of high levels of social capital needs further attentionnot only in America, but in order to assess the applicability of the concept on a more global basis. Probably the least satisfying chapter is the last one, Toward an Agenda for Social Capitalists, a typically American moral exhortation to get everyone more involved in the community. Compared to the comprehensive force of the arguments of the preceding 400 pages, the suggestions that pedestrian-friendly areas, spiritual engagement in a community of meaning, more group dancing, and songfests can

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turn back widespread decline in social capital seems quite painfully inadequate. Perhaps it just might be that America is facing some of the implications of growing up into a more complex and cosmopolitan country. While there are interesting theoretical advances in this book, they are unlike Making Democracy Workrather woefully underdeveloped and buried in an avalanche of statistical information. The empirical evidence, gathered by a platoon of research assistants, is not easily dismissed, and forms the core of the book and the center of public discussion. The section on What is to Be Done would benet from the attentions of a well-read third-sector strategist. And there is the danger that despite Putnams disclaimers that this is a book about America and only America, there will be considerable pressure to apply his analysis worldwide. But his task was not an easy oneto write a book for academics, practitioners, and the general public on a topic that already was the center of academic and public debate, and that has wide-ranging implications for the nature of public life. Many academics would shy away from such a project, one presenting challenges that may be familiar to many third-sector researchers. In Robert Putnams words:
Academics always want to know whether its really true that we are disengaging . . . They almost never have any comments about what could be done about it, if it were true. Public audiences almost never ask whether it is true, because it rings so true to their own experience. They are always deeply concerned about how to x the problem. Their questions are tougher. (Putnam, 2000, p. 509)

Karen Wright Centre for Civil Society London School of Economics

John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff (eds.), Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1999. The momentous struggle against state repression in Eastern Europe in the 1970s and 1980s triggered the remarkable resurrection of an old political concept: civil society. The giddy days of optimism surrounding the potential of civil society, most commonly taken to include a variety of NGOs with transformative power, are now waning. It is a good time to reassess our understandings of civil society, their analytic power, and the emancipatory projects claimed for this concept in its various forms. Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa is a timely intervention. A rich collection of critical perspectives informed by case studies laden with wonderfully thick descriptions, this book takes us away from the familiar focus on civil society as urban, western-looking NGOs. One contributor (Garland) presents

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the case that a western NGO working in the Kalahari was profoundly hierarchical and patronizing, far from the idealized image of a civil society actor, while another (Masquelier) sees civil society where most conventional views do not in an Islamic reform movement in Niger. The authors analyze a variety of interwoven struggles over material resources, cultural representation, and public space in which moral debate is articulated and displays and strategies of power are performed. The case studies are varied: from the cautionary historical explorations of the paradoxes of the universalist discourses of colonial civil society, which coexisted with deep racialized exclusions (Wilder, Bissell), to culturally sensitive examinations of modern politics. Chapters cover a range of debates including the nature of leadership in Botswana (Durham), the politics behind debates around hair-dying in Tanzania (Stambach), a close-up view of the 1986 election in rural Sierra Leone where local history and cultural meanings came centrally into play (Ferme), a fresh perspective on the constructive potential of ethnic-based associations in Ugandas current politics (Karlstr m), and a brilliant piece on the impact of Nigerias oil economy on the o cultural construction of value, the relation of this to the countrys notorious cases of fraud and dissimulation and how this culminated in Babangidas theatrical construction and performance of the 1989 elections as a parody of liberal democracy (Apter). A common thread to these works is a critique of the standard liberal notion of civil society. This critique is clearly directed at political scientists, well-known for their tendency to evaluate existing institutions of governance against idealtypical universals (p. 16). The emphasis instead is on the importance of culture in the analysis of African civil society and as a corollary, the need for research informed by ethnography and locally specic histories. In this political scientists view, this is a well-deserved chastisement. In their insightful introduction, the Comaroffs present a critical discussion of civil society as rst and foremost, a product of the rise of a newly globalized, neoliberal form of capitalism (p. 13). At the same time, they argue that the concept of civil society itself refers to an empty abstraction that contains no theory to account for itself, and cannot yield one of itself (p. 7). The contributors then tend to pick up one strand of the multiplicity of western civil society concepts by drawing primarily on Gramsci or Marx. This is a welcome relief from the simplistic and dominant models of liberal democracy that are generally applied to Africa and the equally nave faith in Western-funded NGOs as primary agents of change. Nevertheless, at the end of the book, one is left wondering whether this close-up observation (p. 2) leaves out part of the big picture, part of the profound drama of the struggle for political change on the continent. What about the dangerous work of African journalists and human rights activists, many of whom populate NGOs? Some of these actors do indeed appropriate the universalist discourse of human rights, part of liberal conceptualizations, in their day-to-day struggle against what in most cases remain highly despotic states on the continent. In these contestations

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modes of resistance that draw on liberal principles may, in fact, depending on the specicities of the struggle, be good strategy; it seems, well, a bit arrogant to assume, as Garland does, that Africans who do so are the unwitting victims of liberal hegemony. While this book makes us gaze in new and important directions, it would be inappropriate to minimize the signicance of what the contributors take to be conventional forms of civil society. As this wonderful book makes vividly clear, in our explorations of transformative politics we need to go much wider and deeper with our political imagination. Jacqueline M. Klopp Columbia University New York City

Patricia Beattie Jung, Mary E. Hunt, and Radhika Balakrishnan (eds.), Good Sex: Feminist Perspectives From the Worlds Religions, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 2001. Good Sex: Feminist Perspectives from the Worlds Religions is the product of an international, interreligious and cross-cultural conversation among feminist scholars seeking to understand in global terms the relationship between religion and womens sexuality. This book is the product of discussions that took place over two years and were facilitated by Religious Consultation on Population, Reproductive Health, and Ethics, a nongovernmental organization that promotes interfaith dialogue on the afore-mentioned topics. The scholars from Brazil, China, India, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States met several times to explore Buddhist, traditional Chinese, Christian (Catholic and Protestant), Hindu, Islamic, Jewish, and capitalistic perspectives on sexuality. One of the major contributions of Good Sex is the insight into how sexuality is dened in non-Christian religious settings. Indeed, the editors acknowledge the need to get beyond the the U.S., English-language and Christian dominance of discourse on sexuality. While not the rst example of feminist reinterpretation of religious tradition, Good Sex is a pioneering effort to create an interreligious dialogue specically on sexuality. The most provocative assertion of the volume is contained in Radhika Balakrishnans chapter Capitalism and Sexuality: Free to Choose. She asserts that the worlds fastest growing religion is transnational capitalism and explores how it affects womens agency, autonomy, and sense of self. Sex is used to sell; capitalism and sexuality are intimately connected through market forces. The scholars agree that sexuality, religion, and capitalism must be discussed together by those seeking to promote social justice.

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Good Sex provides numerous examples of these connections. Ayesha Imam, a Nigerian scholar of African women and Muslim societies, explains how constructions of sexuality shape gender divisions of labor in agrarian societies, and occupational sex segregation and the womens wage virtually worldwide. Judith Plaskow notes that compulsory heterosexuality is proscribed in the halakha (Jewish law) in terms of property rights, [womens] work roles and religious obligations and exemptions. Brazilian Wanda Deifelt links sexuality, social status and class. She writes: For many teenagers, pregnancy is ofcial entry into the adult world, and motherhood a position that will guarantee respectability and status. There is a correlation between the desire for such assurance of continuity, less access to education, and low income. Patricia Beattie Jung reveals that Contemporary accounts portray female sexual pleasure as if it were a purely private or individual matter; this legitimizes performance anxiety and the American tendency to turn sex into work. For a woman exhausted by the work associated with her double shift (on the job and at home), enjoying sex becomes just one more damn thing to do. In addition, there is an internal dialogue among the chapters. The Balakrishnan piece connecting sexuality, production and the ultimate aim of maximizing consumption contrasts sharply with Suwanna Satha-Anands description of the ultimate aim of the Buddhist enlightenment to renounce desire and the body altogether. In contrast, Jungs chapter on Sanctifying Womens Pleasure calls for the Roman Catholic Church to recognize the central role that sexual pleasure plays in womens spirituality. In response, Grace Jantzen posits that the xation on Good Sex as pleasurable sex has generated a new variety of consumption, this time for achieving pleasure. One of the problems of Good Sex is its structure that makes it hard to connect the dialogue among the authors. The chapter on capitalism and sexuality is located in the middle of the book making it difcult to see how the various religious perspectives speak to the books most unique assertion. In some cases, the section headings also serve to obscure what is contained in the chapters. For example, the relationship between the price of sex and Satha-Anands piece on Buddhist enlightenment is unclear. In addition, despite the expressed intention to escape from the dominant U.S., English-language and Christian discourse on sexuality, Good Sex is bookended with chapters written by Christian women with other perspectives sandwiched in between. The reader gets the feeling of having been on a journey and then safely returning to the place of origin. This is by no means to underplay what Good Sex has achieved. Religious institutions shape civil society and by extension sexuality. This piece of scholarship ies in the face of those who characterize womens sexuality as a luxury item and demonstrates that in many instances, control over a womens sexuality has life and death implications for women, thereby communities, thereby nations, and by extension the world. One need only to look at recent developments in Afghanistan to see these dynamics dramatically played out.

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Good Sex is the realization of efforts by concerned feminists to talk across national and religious borders in the name of social justice. That the scholars could not come to one common understanding of self, religion, tradition, or sexuality is not a failure but rather a triumph in the face of the homogenizing forces of economic globalization. Mehlika Hoodbhoy Independent Consultant New York City

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.