Various- Bowling Alone, Berlin Airlift.

Bowling Alone is the title of a book by Robert Puttnam an American social scientist at Harvard University. He has observed that in very many voluntary social groupings membership grew to a peak in the 60’s, then after a short plateau has fallen steadily ever since. The groups he examines are those where people meet face to face and he excludes those which are internet based and there is no interpersonal contact. He has examined a wide variety of organisation for example, scouts, churches, clubs .and he also takes a specific American example of bowling leagues.. At the rate of decline of bowling league membership he reckons that at some future date not too far away you will be “Bowling Alone”.

Published in 2000 the book aroused immense interest. It is quite unusual for such an apparently widespread phenomena to be discovered. It wasn’t just in America either as it appeared to be almost universal in the developed world. Tony Blair took it seriously enough to convene a cabinet meeting on the subject.

While Puttnam speculates on reasons there seems to be no concrete evidence. The most obvious cause is the spread of television but it seems unlikely this is the complete reason.

More recently Puttnam has investigated a more specific American issue which is the rise in mid life suicide, so called “suicides of despair”. Across the whole population life expectancy has been falling. This is not so apparent outside America. In a recent lecture Puttnam suggests this correlates with cultural changes such as income inequality, lack of political cross party collaboration, lower union membership and falling marriage rates.

Puttnam speculates that in the first half of the 20^th century with monopoly, depression and war prompted a cultural change towards group activity but has since changed to a more atomised condition.

While some social pathologies such as the turn towards nationalism, xenophobia and political popularism have spread globally there is nothing like America’s mortality crisis which suggests those cultural changes have yet to arrive. What is clear is that there are worrying early signs.

A commentary on the whole situation in the Economist points out that culture is a vague and unsatisfying answer to deaths-by-despair and there is a great need for investigation by scientists and economists to find more precise answers.

What this conclusion doesn’t say is that cultural changes are difficult for scientific investigation. The simplest form of investigation holds one factor varying while others are constant. This is impossible for cultural change where many factors interact. Economists face a similar problem and have become used to teasing out information from situations with many variables. Statistical methods developed by economists may be very useful

One issue will be finding someone to pay. Scientific work has both a Science Research National Body and much is also privately funded by industry and others. There is an Economic and Social Research Council but I would think its resources are limited. I would imagine it will also be difficult to secure private funding.

I am thinking in terms of high quality and objective research. Regrettably there are many pseudo scientific organisations who think more in terms of pursuing a political objective than in objective investigation. While Puttnam is a respected investigator sponsored by a respected institution I’m not sure his work has ever been checked or repeated. I note that a great deal of social and  psychological investigations, including some famous and much referenced, have turned to be not validated on repetition.

Berlin Airlift

The Airlift in 1948 was to supply West Berlin after Russia cut all surface supply routes. It is reckoned a major opening round in the Cold War.

As a child I was fascinated to know what was happening in the world. I saw odd snippets in news broadcasts but I had no overall knowledge. The initiation of the blockade was scary with newspapers talking of war. I was very impressed and interested when later about perhaps 1950 my primary school teacher gave a brief account of the airlift. Unusually for my school this was a man whose name I forget; we almost always had female teachers. I recall his talk vividly sketching the 3 main air lanes into Berlin. Around the same time he took boys for PE and he taught us forward roll which remains about the only gymnastic move I can ( or rather could ) perform.