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The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again Hardcover – 13 October 2020
by Robert D. Putnam (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 384 ratings
An eminent political scientist s brilliant analysis of economic, social, and political trends over the past century demonstrating how we have gone from an individualistic I society to a more communitarian We society and then back again,
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 384 ratings
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Robert D. Putnam
Robert D. Putnam is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University and founder of the Saguaro Seminar, a program dedicated to fostering civic engagement in America. He is the author or coauthor of ten previous books and is former dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Deepak Ramachandran
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant overview of 20th Century politicsReviewed in Canada on 17 August 2023
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I love it when retired professors step back and write something that really takes in a whole field or a wide scope of vision. While they’re still teaching or subject to colleagues’ reviews, I notice that very few academics feel brace enough to paint in broad brushstrokes — they tend to focus on filling in details, or using a microcosm to describe themes that may or may not extend. But when they’re retired, the best academics often have something much bigger and deeper to say, and it’s always a pleasure when it’s also well-supported by research.
This is one of those books. There has been plenty of criticism of course, notably for the over-reliance on Google Books statistics as an indicator of ideas’ rise and fall in social consciousness. But the broad brushstrokes paint a compelling picture.
Putnam makes a strong case that our times today mirror not only the 1930s’ Petri dish of fascism, but even more the 1890s’ gilded age of deep inequality. He also points to the example of late-19th century and early-20th century social progressives as community builders, creating the YMCA / YWCA system, Boy Scouts, NAACP, and many other organizations that explicitly aimed to foster social cohesion at a time when life could easily feel like, “everyone for themselves”. (Forgive me if I got the specific examples wrong; the right examples are in the book.)
I personally found this book engaging and inspiring, a call to action to help build progressive social capital. As Putnam points out, the fact that the 20th century saw a rise and then fall in social conformity — with a peak in the 1950s, when wearing a blue dress shirt, instead of white, was an unheard-of deviation — does not mean that social tolerance and inclusion follows a natural sine wave. It is up to us to build back the society we want to live in. This book offers excellent perspective, motivation and examples for how to do that, together.
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Thomas
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent argument from a statistical perspective of historyReviewed in the United States on 8 January 2021
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Excellent book, I highly recommend.
Putnam's argument is that expanding our cultural analysis back 120 years (beyond the popular 60) provides a remarkable perspective of the causes behind our current political & cultural crises. Rather than dismissing the polarization we have today as being a predictable decline from a 1950's ideal, he sees how our crisis resembles the political & cultural conditions at the end of the 19th century, and how we as a country overcame those conditions through the early 20th century, which effect creates a noticeable curve from polarization to cooperation and back to polarization again, and which effect he optimistically notes, we can accomplish again. His methodology tries to utilize as often as possible statistical data, from voting records to census records to organization membership records, so as to avoid the common criticism that his arguments might be too anecdotal or subject to researcher bias. It succeeds as far as it can: trying to view income disparity from survey and tax records might be easy to do from the 1960s, but those same data don't exist for the late 19th century, and there are points where he needs to fill in data using weaker sources, but these are shortfalls not of his book so much as they are of any study going back that far in history. (Though, as I am a medievalist, I will say working in late 19th century history is for me nary so hard as working in statistics of the 14th century...) Excellent book, excellent conclusions, and timely (I read this in November 2020, but write this two days after the attack on the Capitol).
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A.P. Johnston
5.0 out of 5 stars An optimistic view of our American futureReviewed in the United States on 1 November 2020
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Two insightful authors and the work of a team of researchers bring us a hopeful book about our American future. In essence, the message is that we can reset our focus from a current divisive and polarizing Individualism to an “individualism and community as twin ideals.” That is, as de Tocqueville saw Americans 200 years ago, to a practical “self-interest properly considered.”
The hard part, say the authors, is that the initiative will have to come from the bottom up, starting with small groups enacting a reawakening of deep American values, just as our forebears did in the Progressive Era. And as then it is expected that policy will follow and enable once again decades of unparalleled growth economically, politically, culturally and in societal institutions. But it is we the people who will need to lead the way to “a community that values the contributions of all, limits the opportunities of none, and offers prosperity without prejudice.“
The Upswing is rich in data and offers surprising looks at our history, seen over the long view. It is well worth digesting for those who have the interest and energy to help reboot the USA.
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5 people found this helpfulReport
A. Menon
4.0 out of 5 stars A look at cohesion within society and its evolution through the 20th centuryReviewed in the United States on 2 March 2021
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There is much literature on the why's of the increased tribalism we are witnessing to such a large extent. The social unrest that is manifesting itself in so many capacities is scary and there is an abundance of literature on the causes and potential solutions to these emerging and self-sustaining conflicts. Putnam and Garrett give an account of how the feeling common mission of the population has been cyclical and the properties of tribalism today mirror those of 100 years ago. The authors take a unique approach to considering the dynamics of the last century in that they have tried to make an analytical and statistical survey of sentiment indicators on a variety of variables that measure sympathy for ones fellow citizen and show that the shape of these sympathies and their changes overlap.
The polarization of populations today are concerning to a degree not witnessed in decades if not more. When trying to reflect on the causes and the potential trajectories one is faces with so much complexity that true explanation is most likely impossible. Nonetheless Putnam and Garrett are able to distill the trends that took us here and show that it has had a historical cycle, though that should not lead to complacency that the cycle will on its own properties revert. The authors discuss racial equality, perspectives on immigration and women's rights through the 20th century and then show how the indicator and sentiment variables for all of these inclusiveness concepts have a coincident history of broad sympathy that peaked in the mid 60s and have since gone into decline. The period in time most similar to today coincides with the last guilded age. None of this is particularly surprising but it is a somewhat illuminating result that the coincidence of sympathy for racial and gender equality peaked at the same time and have not been more monotonically increasing as many would assume in the 70s-90s. In terms of the rigor of the methods, there are some statistical methods used to confirm a theory but the data set are sentiment variables often rather than things which would be considered universally objective. Certainly generational mobility, income distributions and relative wages are objective data sets so the authors claims are certainly credible in identifying civic attitudes and the measurable changes that were witnessed in the 20th century.
In terms of the lesson, it seems like the message is similar to Bowling Alone where we need more civic participation and the interest of populations to engage with one another to drive a shared sense of mutual vision. This shared vision of the future is at a low point as the opportunity set of various parts of the population have bifurcated most notably with the coasts vs some of the industrial heartland. The authors don't really have great policy solutions, to which there are no easy ones, but the fact that many issues for overall progress seem to be driven by an underlying more significant causal variable is important to recognize. Overall the book was interesting to read but the message could be cleaned pretty quickly and the data substantiation is quite weak, but nonetheless plausible.
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Randall G. Bretz
5.0 out of 5 stars The Upswing Will Begin When WE Join HandsReviewed in the United States on 30 January 2022
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Putnam suggests, the answer is a combination of grassroots and national leadership such as what we experienced in the early 1900’s. It was in those early years that many civic and social organizations were created.
For example, in 1905, a fellow by the name of Paul Harris started what we now know as Rotary. Within six years, Rotary had clubs in every major city in America. Not just Rotary but Kiwanis and Lions clubs and many more flourished in the early part of the past century. Citizens were getting together and that helped our country become more “WE” oriented. Let's do it again.
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The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again Hardcover – 13 October 2020
by Robert D. Putnam (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 384 ratings
An eminent political scientist s brilliant analysis of economic, social, and political trends over the past century demonstrating how we have gone from an individualistic I society to a more communitarian We society and then back again,
and how we c an learn from that experience to become a stronger, more unified nation from the author of Bowling Alone and Our Kids.
- Deep and accelerating inequality;
- unprecedented political polarization;
- vitriolic public discourse;
- a fraying social fabric;
- public and private narcissism
Americans today seem to agree on only one thing: This is the worst of times.
But we ve been here before.
But we ve been here before.
During the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, America was highly individualistic, starkly unequal, fiercely polarized, and deeply fragmented, just as it is today. However as the twentieth century opened, America became slowly, unevenly, but steadily more egalitarian, more cooperative, more generous; a society on the upswing, more focused on our responsibilities to one another and less focused on our narrower self-interest. Sometime during the 1960s, however, these trends reversed, leaving us in today s disarray.
In a sweeping overview of more than a century of history, drawing on his inimitable combination of statistical analysis and storytelling, Robert Putnam analyzes a remarkable confluence of trends that brought us from an I society to a We society and then back again. He draws inspiring lessons for our time from an earlier era, when a dedicated group of reformers righted the ship, putting us on a path to becoming a society once again based on community. Engaging, revelatory, and timely, this is Putnam s most ambitious work yet, a fitting capstone to a brilliant career.
===
480 pages
In a sweeping overview of more than a century of history, drawing on his inimitable combination of statistical analysis and storytelling, Robert Putnam analyzes a remarkable confluence of trends that brought us from an I society to a We society and then back again. He draws inspiring lessons for our time from an earlier era, when a dedicated group of reformers righted the ship, putting us on a path to becoming a society once again based on community. Engaging, revelatory, and timely, this is Putnam s most ambitious work yet, a fitting capstone to a brilliant career.
===
480 pages
===
Review
"A top-notch addition to the why-America-is-in-such-a-mess genre. . . . A tour de force exploration of why America got better and then went into reverse.", Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"America s deep-seated divisions were healed in the past and can be again, argues this sweeping and persuasive study. . . . This fresh, ambitious take on America s fraying social fabric will provoke much discussion.", Publishers Weekly
"Robert Putnam has long been our indispensable guide to contemporary America. His books on social capital, on religion, and on children are essential reading. The Upswing is another masterpiece; it weaves seemingly unrelated stories into a grand master narrative of the last hundred years. A triumph." -- Professor Sir Angus Deaton, FBA HonFRSE, Nobel Prize winner and coauthor of Deaths of Despair
In the most ambitious and compelling of his several exemplary books, Robert Putnam masterfully re-casts the history of our country from the Gilded Age to the present. . . . The Upswing is a singularly illuminating book and a clarion call to action. -- David M. Kennedy, Professor of History Emeritus, Stanford University
Americans who feel we are now living in the worst of times will see their spirits lifted and their hopes raised after reading The Upswing. Based on a careful analysis of data trends, Robert D. Putnam s compelling narratives reveal why we should take inspiration and instruction from how America s first Gilded Age, a period of despair much like today, turned into the Progressive Era, which moved America in a positive direction for over half a century. The Upswing is a must-read for those who wonder how we can once again reclaim our nation s promise. --William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor Emeritus, Harvard University
"No one understands the United States better than Bob Putnam, and no one else could have written this essential book. The Upswing brings together his vast knowledge, love of data, storytelling ability, and passion. It's an astonishing work that reminds Americans we are a great people, shows us what we can accomplish when we come together, and makes clear that we need to do so again. Now." --Andrew McAfee, MIT scientist, author of More from Less, and coauthor of The Second Machine Age
"The Upswing is a revelation tailor-made for this polarized age and destined to be a central reference point for urgent debates and determined activism. Here, one of America s most renowned public intellectuals gives us a new understanding of our history and a profoundly insightful road map for a future we can only create together. Squarely facing race and gender inequity, Putnam and Garrett shed new light on the moral awakening and collective action that a diverse group of Americans sparked more than a century ago and show how we can build on their example, but also learn from their blind spots, today." --Xavier de Souza Briggs, Distinguished Visiting Professor, New York University, and former Vice President, the Ford Foundation
Review
"A top-notch addition to the why-America-is-in-such-a-mess genre. . . . A tour de force exploration of why America got better and then went into reverse.", Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"America s deep-seated divisions were healed in the past and can be again, argues this sweeping and persuasive study. . . . This fresh, ambitious take on America s fraying social fabric will provoke much discussion.", Publishers Weekly
"Robert Putnam has long been our indispensable guide to contemporary America. His books on social capital, on religion, and on children are essential reading. The Upswing is another masterpiece; it weaves seemingly unrelated stories into a grand master narrative of the last hundred years. A triumph." -- Professor Sir Angus Deaton, FBA HonFRSE, Nobel Prize winner and coauthor of Deaths of Despair
In the most ambitious and compelling of his several exemplary books, Robert Putnam masterfully re-casts the history of our country from the Gilded Age to the present. . . . The Upswing is a singularly illuminating book and a clarion call to action. -- David M. Kennedy, Professor of History Emeritus, Stanford University
Americans who feel we are now living in the worst of times will see their spirits lifted and their hopes raised after reading The Upswing. Based on a careful analysis of data trends, Robert D. Putnam s compelling narratives reveal why we should take inspiration and instruction from how America s first Gilded Age, a period of despair much like today, turned into the Progressive Era, which moved America in a positive direction for over half a century. The Upswing is a must-read for those who wonder how we can once again reclaim our nation s promise. --William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor Emeritus, Harvard University
"No one understands the United States better than Bob Putnam, and no one else could have written this essential book. The Upswing brings together his vast knowledge, love of data, storytelling ability, and passion. It's an astonishing work that reminds Americans we are a great people, shows us what we can accomplish when we come together, and makes clear that we need to do so again. Now." --Andrew McAfee, MIT scientist, author of More from Less, and coauthor of The Second Machine Age
"The Upswing is a revelation tailor-made for this polarized age and destined to be a central reference point for urgent debates and determined activism. Here, one of America s most renowned public intellectuals gives us a new understanding of our history and a profoundly insightful road map for a future we can only create together. Squarely facing race and gender inequity, Putnam and Garrett shed new light on the moral awakening and collective action that a diverse group of Americans sparked more than a century ago and show how we can build on their example, but also learn from their blind spots, today." --Xavier de Souza Briggs, Distinguished Visiting Professor, New York University, and former Vice President, the Ford Foundation
===
About the Author
Robert D. Putnam is the Malkin Research Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University and a former Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Nationally honored as a leading humanist and a renowned scientist, he has written fourteen books, including the bestselling Our Kids and Bowling Alone, and has consulted for the last four US Presidents. In 2012, President Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal, the nation s highest honor for contributions to the humanities. His research program, the Saguaro Seminar, is dedicated to fostering civic engagement in America. Visit RobertDPutnam.com.
Shaylyn Romney Garrett is a writer and award-winning social entrepreneur. She is a founding contributor to Weave: The Social Fabric Project, an Aspen Institute initiative. She also contributed to Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell s American Grace. Shaylyn holds a degree in Government from Harvard University, and is a returned Peace Corps volunteer.
Product details
Publisher : Simon & Schuster (13 October 2020)
Language : English
Hardcover : 480 pages
====
About the Author
Robert D. Putnam is the Malkin Research Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University and a former Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Nationally honored as a leading humanist and a renowned scientist, he has written fourteen books, including the bestselling Our Kids and Bowling Alone, and has consulted for the last four US Presidents. In 2012, President Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal, the nation s highest honor for contributions to the humanities. His research program, the Saguaro Seminar, is dedicated to fostering civic engagement in America. Visit RobertDPutnam.com.
Shaylyn Romney Garrett is a writer and award-winning social entrepreneur. She is a founding contributor to Weave: The Social Fabric Project, an Aspen Institute initiative. She also contributed to Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell s American Grace. Shaylyn holds a degree in Government from Harvard University, and is a returned Peace Corps volunteer.
Product details
Publisher : Simon & Schuster (13 October 2020)
Language : English
Hardcover : 480 pages
====
이찬수
18 h ·
로버트 D. 퍼트넘, 『업스윙: 나홀로 사회인가 우리함께 사회인가』(이종인 옮김, 페이퍼로드, 2022)
연말에 뜻밖에 좋은 책을 만났다.
번역도 유려해 냅다 읽었다.
그 핵심인즉, 미국은 지난 125년간,
개인주의(‘나’ 중심주의; 1880~1900, 개인의 권리 강조 “greed is good!”)
-> ‘우리’사회(진보시대 1900~1960; 책임을 강조, 1920년대 잠시 개인주의를 거치긴 했지만...)
-> ‘나’ 중심(1960년대~, 권리, 정체성 등을 강조)으로 이동해왔다는 것이다.
이런 사실을 다양하고 정밀한 통계를 중심으로 명확하게 진단한다.
흥미로운 사실 중의 하나는 ‘권리’를 앞세운 ‘나’ 중심의 개발시대에는 이름도 독특하게 작명하고(실라스, 제이든, 하퍼, 모드...), ‘책임’을 앞세운 ‘우리’ 중심 사회에서는 부모가 지어준 전통적이고 일반적인 이름을 선호한다고(존, 데이비드, 수잔, 메리...)...
===
이 책을 보다가 Google Ngram Viewer을 알게 되었는데 정말 놀랍다.
구글에서 16세기 이후 출판된 영어책 수백만권을 디저털화해서, 어떤 낱말이나 문구를 넣으면 그것이 지난 2백여년 동안 어떤 빈도로 사용되었는지 그래프로 단박에 보여준다. 영어권 전반의 통계라 반드시 미국의 현실이라고 할 수만은 없지만, 미국인의 관심사가 어떻게 흘러왔는지 가늠하게 해준다.
각종 연구에 유용할 것 같다. 그러나 겁나기도 한다. 과거의 통계를 쥔 이가 미래의 통계를 임의로 만들수도 있겠어서...
퍼트넘도 이 책에서 구글엔그램을 다각도로 활용하고 있다. 지난 125년 동안 미국의 경제, 정치, 사회, 문화, 인종, 젠더와 관련된 여러 지표들의 변천사에서 일관된 유형을 발견해낸다.
===
미국사회는 기본적으로 나->우리->나로 이동하는 ∩의 모양을 보여준다는 것이다.
결론이 그렇다면, 이후의 지향은 분명하다. 개인 중심의 최악의 시대를 역전시켜 공동체주의적 역사를 회복해야 한다는 것이다.
‘나’, ‘권리’를 내세우며 차별과 양극화를 만들던 사회에서 다시 ‘우리’, 책임, 공동체 사회로 이끌어가야 한다는 것이다. 그렇게 되었으면 좋겠다.
그러나 정말 희망대로 되려나...
과거를 알면 미래를 예상할 수 있다지만, 과거를 이용해 다시 이기주의적 욕망을 더 채우려는 흐름이 커져갈 수도 있기 때문이다. 인간이, 아니 AI가, 아니 구글이 모든 통계를 파악하고 저만의 질서를 만들어가는 한 그것은 인류를 위해서가 아니라, 기업을 위해서, 저마다의 욕망을 위해서 활용할 가능성도 크기 때문이다. 예상되는 미래를 다시 전복시킬 수 있는 가능성도 커지기 때문이다. 그래서 걱정도 앞선다.
===
어떻든 이 책 덕분에 미국사회에 대해 어느 정도 정리할 수 있었다.
사람사는 데는 어디나 비슷한 모양...
같은 저자의 책이 몇 권 더 나와있던데, 목차라도 들여다봐야겠다.
#업스윙(The Upswing), #나홀로볼링(Bowling alone), #우리아이들(Our Kids) #사회적자본과민주주의(Making Democracy Works)
===
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 384 ratings
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Robert D. Putnam
Robert D. Putnam is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University and founder of the Saguaro Seminar, a program dedicated to fostering civic engagement in America. He is the author or coauthor of ten previous books and is former dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Deepak Ramachandran
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant overview of 20th Century politicsReviewed in Canada on 17 August 2023
Verified Purchase
I love it when retired professors step back and write something that really takes in a whole field or a wide scope of vision. While they’re still teaching or subject to colleagues’ reviews, I notice that very few academics feel brace enough to paint in broad brushstrokes — they tend to focus on filling in details, or using a microcosm to describe themes that may or may not extend. But when they’re retired, the best academics often have something much bigger and deeper to say, and it’s always a pleasure when it’s also well-supported by research.
This is one of those books. There has been plenty of criticism of course, notably for the over-reliance on Google Books statistics as an indicator of ideas’ rise and fall in social consciousness. But the broad brushstrokes paint a compelling picture.
Putnam makes a strong case that our times today mirror not only the 1930s’ Petri dish of fascism, but even more the 1890s’ gilded age of deep inequality. He also points to the example of late-19th century and early-20th century social progressives as community builders, creating the YMCA / YWCA system, Boy Scouts, NAACP, and many other organizations that explicitly aimed to foster social cohesion at a time when life could easily feel like, “everyone for themselves”. (Forgive me if I got the specific examples wrong; the right examples are in the book.)
I personally found this book engaging and inspiring, a call to action to help build progressive social capital. As Putnam points out, the fact that the 20th century saw a rise and then fall in social conformity — with a peak in the 1950s, when wearing a blue dress shirt, instead of white, was an unheard-of deviation — does not mean that social tolerance and inclusion follows a natural sine wave. It is up to us to build back the society we want to live in. This book offers excellent perspective, motivation and examples for how to do that, together.
Read less
Report
Thomas
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent argument from a statistical perspective of historyReviewed in the United States on 8 January 2021
Verified Purchase
Excellent book, I highly recommend.
Putnam's argument is that expanding our cultural analysis back 120 years (beyond the popular 60) provides a remarkable perspective of the causes behind our current political & cultural crises. Rather than dismissing the polarization we have today as being a predictable decline from a 1950's ideal, he sees how our crisis resembles the political & cultural conditions at the end of the 19th century, and how we as a country overcame those conditions through the early 20th century, which effect creates a noticeable curve from polarization to cooperation and back to polarization again, and which effect he optimistically notes, we can accomplish again. His methodology tries to utilize as often as possible statistical data, from voting records to census records to organization membership records, so as to avoid the common criticism that his arguments might be too anecdotal or subject to researcher bias. It succeeds as far as it can: trying to view income disparity from survey and tax records might be easy to do from the 1960s, but those same data don't exist for the late 19th century, and there are points where he needs to fill in data using weaker sources, but these are shortfalls not of his book so much as they are of any study going back that far in history. (Though, as I am a medievalist, I will say working in late 19th century history is for me nary so hard as working in statistics of the 14th century...) Excellent book, excellent conclusions, and timely (I read this in November 2020, but write this two days after the attack on the Capitol).
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2 people found this helpfulReport
A.P. Johnston
5.0 out of 5 stars An optimistic view of our American futureReviewed in the United States on 1 November 2020
Verified Purchase
Two insightful authors and the work of a team of researchers bring us a hopeful book about our American future. In essence, the message is that we can reset our focus from a current divisive and polarizing Individualism to an “individualism and community as twin ideals.” That is, as de Tocqueville saw Americans 200 years ago, to a practical “self-interest properly considered.”
The hard part, say the authors, is that the initiative will have to come from the bottom up, starting with small groups enacting a reawakening of deep American values, just as our forebears did in the Progressive Era. And as then it is expected that policy will follow and enable once again decades of unparalleled growth economically, politically, culturally and in societal institutions. But it is we the people who will need to lead the way to “a community that values the contributions of all, limits the opportunities of none, and offers prosperity without prejudice.“
The Upswing is rich in data and offers surprising looks at our history, seen over the long view. It is well worth digesting for those who have the interest and energy to help reboot the USA.
Read less
5 people found this helpfulReport
A. Menon
4.0 out of 5 stars A look at cohesion within society and its evolution through the 20th centuryReviewed in the United States on 2 March 2021
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There is much literature on the why's of the increased tribalism we are witnessing to such a large extent. The social unrest that is manifesting itself in so many capacities is scary and there is an abundance of literature on the causes and potential solutions to these emerging and self-sustaining conflicts. Putnam and Garrett give an account of how the feeling common mission of the population has been cyclical and the properties of tribalism today mirror those of 100 years ago. The authors take a unique approach to considering the dynamics of the last century in that they have tried to make an analytical and statistical survey of sentiment indicators on a variety of variables that measure sympathy for ones fellow citizen and show that the shape of these sympathies and their changes overlap.
The polarization of populations today are concerning to a degree not witnessed in decades if not more. When trying to reflect on the causes and the potential trajectories one is faces with so much complexity that true explanation is most likely impossible. Nonetheless Putnam and Garrett are able to distill the trends that took us here and show that it has had a historical cycle, though that should not lead to complacency that the cycle will on its own properties revert. The authors discuss racial equality, perspectives on immigration and women's rights through the 20th century and then show how the indicator and sentiment variables for all of these inclusiveness concepts have a coincident history of broad sympathy that peaked in the mid 60s and have since gone into decline. The period in time most similar to today coincides with the last guilded age. None of this is particularly surprising but it is a somewhat illuminating result that the coincidence of sympathy for racial and gender equality peaked at the same time and have not been more monotonically increasing as many would assume in the 70s-90s. In terms of the rigor of the methods, there are some statistical methods used to confirm a theory but the data set are sentiment variables often rather than things which would be considered universally objective. Certainly generational mobility, income distributions and relative wages are objective data sets so the authors claims are certainly credible in identifying civic attitudes and the measurable changes that were witnessed in the 20th century.
In terms of the lesson, it seems like the message is similar to Bowling Alone where we need more civic participation and the interest of populations to engage with one another to drive a shared sense of mutual vision. This shared vision of the future is at a low point as the opportunity set of various parts of the population have bifurcated most notably with the coasts vs some of the industrial heartland. The authors don't really have great policy solutions, to which there are no easy ones, but the fact that many issues for overall progress seem to be driven by an underlying more significant causal variable is important to recognize. Overall the book was interesting to read but the message could be cleaned pretty quickly and the data substantiation is quite weak, but nonetheless plausible.
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Randall G. Bretz
5.0 out of 5 stars The Upswing Will Begin When WE Join HandsReviewed in the United States on 30 January 2022
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Putnam suggests, the answer is a combination of grassroots and national leadership such as what we experienced in the early 1900’s. It was in those early years that many civic and social organizations were created.
For example, in 1905, a fellow by the name of Paul Harris started what we now know as Rotary. Within six years, Rotary had clubs in every major city in America. Not just Rotary but Kiwanis and Lions clubs and many more flourished in the early part of the past century. Citizens were getting together and that helped our country become more “WE” oriented. Let's do it again.
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NPR REVIEW
BOOK REVIEWS
In 'The Upswing,' History Holds The Keys To Moving Away From Today's Tumultuous Age
NOVEMBER 2, 202011:29 AM ET
By
Martha Anne Toll
The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again, by Robert R. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett
Simon & Schuster
The Upswing, written by Robert D. Putnam in partnership with Shaylyn Romney Garrett, argues that history holds the answers for how to move out of today's tumultuous age.
Putnam is the Malkin Research Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University and author of 14 books. Garrett is a social entrepreneur, writer, and founding contributor to "Weave: The Social Fabric Project," an Aspen Institute initiative.
The Upswing follows Putnam's Our Kids, which decried narrowing social mobility for America's young people, and Bowling Alone, published in 2000, which became a bestseller. Sifting through evidence from nearly 500,000 interviews, Bowling Alone argued that Americans have become increasingly disconnected from one another. For this proposition, Putnam cited Americans' disintegrating participation in organizations such as bowling leagues, parent-teacher associations, and other volunteer groups that help weave together civil society.
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The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again takes a different tack. Beginning with a chapter called "What's Past is Prologue," The Upswing's thesis is that America's Gilded Age — 1870s through 1890s — shows remarkable similarity to our own, including a yawning gap between rich and poor, and a societal focus on "I" rather than "we." During the Gilded Age:
"Inequality, political polarization, social dislocation, and cultural narcissism prevailed — all accompanied, as they are now, by unprecedented technological advances, prosperity, and material well-being."
In other words, if we have righted our American ship before, we can right it again.
Putnam and Garrett plot a hill-shaped curve to reflect trends from the Gilded Age to the present. They see an "I-we-I" curve crosscutting these issues over the past 125 years. The height of the curve represents the lowest gap between rich and poor; most favorable health indicators; highest social spending to help the poor; lowest political polarization; and the apex of America's sense of moving forward together, as opposed to the toxic fractionalization of today. Roughly speaking, the height of the curve occurred mid-20th century and has headed downward ever since.
Most of The Upswing is taken up with how the curve evolved. It is less clear why the curve evolved. The authors take great pains to untangle complex and nuanced explanations, none of which can solely explain the curve's trajectory.
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In a chapter on cultural change, the authors make use of "Ngram" data. As Google has digitized millions of books, scholars can now search the frequency of words to evaluate social trends. Putnam and Garrett searched American books post-1880 for terms like "survival of the fittest." That term faded through most of the 20th century, "only to win a new lease on life in the twenty-first century." The cultural salience of terms like "association," "cooperation," and "socialism" rose from 1880, peaked around 1970, and declined thereafter. Use of the term "common man" rose steadily from 1880 to a peak in the late 1940s and plunged sharply thereafter.
One can question the reliability of this kind of evaluation, but Ngrams are only one part of the authors' much larger analyses. No doubt, future writers and researchers will appreciate the nearly 100 pages of endnotes. The Upswing is saturated with data and charts, so much so that it can be difficult for a lay person to weigh and evaluate what is presented. This matters, because readers will be eager for guidance to move the curve toward a more connected, unified "we."
The authors divide the book into chapters that examine economic realities, politics, society, and culture. They also break out separate chapters on race and gender. Given how structural racism underlies everything from economic security to health and political participation, I would have preferred that race was a more intentional through line, rather than a stand-alone chapter. As the authors note, "Renewed party polarization of the last half century began with race — the one constant and central conflict in American history...."
I had similar feelings about addressing gender in a stand-alone chapter. After all, half the American population did not have voting rights until the 20th century, and grossly lagged on economic rights. To be fair, Putnam and Garrett do mention race and gender in other chapters. But I couldn't help wondering how their interpretation of data might have changed with more deliberate inclusion of non-white, non-male theorists throughout.
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Most of all, I longed for clear, prescriptive solutions for a better, more inclusive future. In a final chapter called "Drift and Mastery," the authors review hallmarks of the Progressive Era (roughly 1890s to 1920s) to tease out ideas for today. They highlight the importance of leaders with a strong moral compass, heavy youth participation, and a "groundswell" of agitation along with an insistence on political action. They caution against overreach, such as Prohibition, an unfortunate overcorrection "into social control by well-meaning reformers who sought to protect women, children, and the poor."
Martha Anne Toll just completed 26 years at the Butler Family Fund, a social justice philanthropy. She won the 2020 Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction and her novel, Three Muses, is forthcoming in 2022.
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The Upswing review - can Biden heal America?
The US remains divided, but this study by Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett points out that it has emerged before from an era of inequality and partisanship. Can it again?
Colin Kidd
Thu 12 Nov 2020 18.30 AEDT
So the Biden-Harris ticket has won, but by narrow margins in some of the battleground states. How did partisanship reach such a pitch that Donald Trump’s tribal appeal easily cancelled doubts about his manifest unfitness for office? And what can Joe Biden do to patch together a frayed nation? The political scientists Robert Putnam, author of the acclaimed Bowling Alone, and Shaylyn Romney Garrett provide a wealth of sociologically grounded answers in The Upswing. Although the title is reassuringly buoyant, this is a tale of two long-term trends, one benign, the other a dark descent. An unabashed centrism prevails: political stability, the authors recognise, is a dance that requires a measure of cooperation and disciplined deportment from both parties.
At the book’s core is a set of graphs describing the broad contours of American social, political, economic and cultural life over the past 125 years. All the graphs broadly conform to a common hump-like pattern: a growing swell over half a century or so of greater social trust, equality, bipartisanship and civic do-gooding peaking around the 1960s – followed by a marked and steady decline in all these criteria in the subsequent 50 years.
The bad news is that we are living through the worst of the downswing, amid gross inequalities, corporate exploitation of the vulnerable and uncompromising hyper-partisanship. The good news is that the US has been here before – in the late 19th-century Gilded Age – and successfully pulled itself out of the mire. An antidote emerged to the robber baron industrialists, social Darwinists and anti-corporate populists of the Gilded Age in the form of the Progressive movement, whose ideals attracted reformers from within both main parties. Indeed, the short-lived Progressive party of the 1910s was an offshoot from Theodore Roosevelt’s “Bull Moose” brand of reformist Republicanism.
Although Republican moderates managed to see off this third-party threat, Progressive ideals – the replacement of oligarchy, clientilism and corruption with modern, scientifically informed administration by middle-class professionals – endured as a significant strand in Republican politics. Progressive sentiments informed the New Deal of Roosevelt’s distant Democrat cousin FDR, but also the politics of mid 20th-century accommodationist Republicans such as Wendell Willkie and Thomas Dewey.
The finest exemplar of harmonious “Tweedledum-Tweedledee” politics was General Eisenhower who, declining the opportunity to run for president as a Democrat, campaigned as a non-partisan Republican and governed as a big-spending progressive. The “low tide” of partisanship came in the mid-1960s when Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty, the introduction of Medicare and implementation of black civil rights enjoyed support across the aisle from Republicans.
Putnam and Garrett perceive an upswing in the position of women and African Americans before the rights revolution of the 60s
In this age of “depolarisation”, the real ideological divisions lay within parties, between liberal Republicans and anti-New Deal conservative isolationists, between unionised northern blue-collar Democrats, many of them Catholic, and southern Democrats – predominantly Protestant segregationists whose cultural values belonged far to the right of liberal Republicans. The authors note that on issues of race and gender progressive Republicans were often to the left of Democrats, and that as late as the 1960s Democrats were more likely to be churchgoers.
Politics was, however, only one strand in “the Great Convergence” described by Putnam and Garrett. It was an age not only of growing income equalisation but of volunteering. Americans participated in huge numbers in chapter-based civic associations, such as the Elks and Rotarians, the Knights of Columbus and African American Prince Hall freemasonry. The mainstream Protestant churches themselves converged, favouring an ecumenical, theologically slender, all-American religion of social service and helping out.
Staggeringly hard as it is now to believe, the Southern Baptists initially welcomed the pro-choice result in the Roe v Wade abortion case of 1973. Indeed, Putnam and Garrett perceive a long unobtrusive upswing in the position of women and African Americans before the rights revolution of the 60s. The black-to-white income ratio improved 7.7% per decade between 1940 and 1970.
But the pendulum had already begun to swing in the other direction. Most of us might guess that it was the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 that initiated the turn to inequality and division. Not so, insist Putnam and Garrett, for the Reagan counter-revolution turns out to be a “lagging indicator”. More ambiguous is the presidency of Richard Nixon, who appears here in strongly contrasting tones: a liberal Keynesian Republican on the policy front, but hard-boiled and amoral when electioneering.
Adding a green tinge to progressive Republicanism, Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency and signed a clean air act. Yet ultimately ideals were a front for the harvesting of votes. Cynically alert to Southern Democrat disenchantment with Johnson’s civil rights legislation, Nixon embarked on a Southern strategy to woo the solidly Democratic South for the party of Abraham Lincoln. The process took decades, and explains one of today’s most glaring and historically illiterate ironies: the flying of Confederate flags by rural Republican-supporting northerners.
However, as Putnam and Garrett demonstrate, the Great Divergence is about much more than political realignment. The great arc of modern American history concerns economic outcomes, social trends and a range of cultural transitions that the authors describe as an “I-We-I” curve. Things started to go awry on a number of fronts from the 1960s. Both the libertarian New Right and the countercultural New Left offered different routes to personal liberation. But individual fulfilment came at a cost in social capital.
Escape from the drab soulless conformity associated with the 1950s ended up all too often in lonely atomisation. A long road led from the straitjacket of early marriage in the 1950s via the freedom of cohabitation to the growing phenomenon of singleton households. Chapter-based voluntary organisations that involved turning up for meetings and activities gave way to impersonal professionally run non-profits whose Potemkin memberships existed only as mass mailing lists. Unions ceased to be focal points of worker camaraderie and sociability, and shrivelled to a core function of collective bargaining.
The authors believe that the new group loyalties of Republicans and Democrats are only weakly ideological, and are based rather on emotional allegiances of a tribal nature
What’s more, the great mid-century levelling of incomes went into reverse. First, the gap grew between the middle and the bottom, then the incomes of the elite raced away from those of struggling middle-earners, and finally, as Putnam and Garrett show, the wealth of the top 0.1% vastly outgrew that of the top 1%.
The downswing America described in this book contains some surprising features. Partisan antipathy has risen to a high pitch as – seen over the long term – the intensity of religious and racial hostilities has mellowed. The authors believe that the new group loyalties of Republicans and Democrats are only weakly ideological, and are based rather on emotional allegiances of a tribal nature.
Today’s partisans do not simply dislike their opponents: they loathe them, and assign character flaws to their rivals. This helps explain why Trump was able to usurp the Republican party and its followers, while to all intents and purposes jettisoning a whole slew of traditional Republican policieslike a new football manager who changes a team’s style of playwithout losing the allegiance of its hardcore fans. We might be tempted to blame social media for this state of affairs, but Facebook and Twitter have an “ironclad alibi”. The beginnings of the Great Divergence predate the internet by decades.
A Biden presidency brings into focus the difficult job of healing and reconciliation. But here Putnam and Garrett run into trouble, for it is impossible to identify a single decisive factor that caused the downswing. Rather the authors identify a range of “entwined” trends “braided together by reciprocal causality”. Just as diagnosis of ultimate causes is treacherous, so too is finding a compelling plan for throwing the Great Downswing into reverse. The authors look for the green shoots of a new Progressive movement in various forms of grassroots activism, but are worried that they have yet to see this take a “truly nonpartisan” form. They try to be upbeat, but the dominant note is wistful.
Yet even on their terms the election does present limited grounds for optimism. The energetic campaigning efforts of the Lincoln Project and other Biden-endorsing Republicans shows that the party – though long since abandoned by its liberal progressives – still contains several mansions. Consider the crossover potential of libertarians, Republican-inclined, who offer an unpredictable smorgasbord of options for jaded partisan palates: laissez-faire on morals as well as markets. In tight races in Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia, Jo Jorgensen, the third-party Libertarian candidate, drew small but significant numbers of disaffected Republicans away from Trump.
And what are we to make of the quiet Trump phenomenon, the huge numbers of voters who unostentatiously turned to him, largely, it seems, because of the economy? That electorate – however narrowly self-interested – is at least amenable to reason. Despite all the worrying auguries, the election was not a straightforward scrap between whites and minorities. Trump lost white males to Biden, but gained surprising proportions of Latinx and African-American voters, and won niche groups such as older Vietnamese-Americans. Today’s tribes have not, alas, dissolved, but tomorrow’s seem likely on both sides to be rainbow coalitions.
The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again is published by Swift (£25). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com.
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