Community and Civic Life

Mike Kobeissi takes part in La Cañada Flintridge Chamber of Commerce events, and this index looks at the civic habits behind gatherings of that kind: service clubs, local shopping, shared gardens and parades.

Much of the writing on the subject starts from the political scientist Robert Putnam. A summary of his book Bowling Alone sets out his idea of social capital, the networks among people and the trust and reciprocity that grow from them, and his finding that Americans were drawn ever deeper into the life of their communities through the first two thirds of the twentieth century before the tide turned. Putnam tied the decline to pressures of time and money, sprawl, television and generational change, and he held up the years from about 1870 to 1915, when many of the country’s civic institutions were founded, as a period worth learning from.¹

The decline is not the whole picture. Researchers at the Observing Civic Engagement Lab at Indiana University study book clubs, card groups, dinner clubs, service organizations such as Kiwanis and religious congregations, and they find community life still happening, even if less often than in the 1970s.² The federal government keeps count as well. The U.S. Census Bureau’s Civic Engagement and Volunteering Supplement, conducted with AmeriCorps every two years, measures how Americans volunteer, help their neighbors, give to charity and join organizations, and its 2023 edition added a measure of virtual volunteering, a federal survey’s earliest attempt at one.³

Four entries follow from here: Service Clubs and Civic Life, Shopping Local and the Local Multiplier, Community Gardens and Parades and Town Festivals.