91. Mark S. Bonchek, From Broadcast to Netcast: The Internet and the Flow of Political Information, Ph.D. diss. (Harvard University, 1997), esp. 99–109.
92. Brown and Duguid, Social Life of Information, 226.
93. Author’s analysis of DDB Needham Life Style surveys on Internet usage; Falling Through the Net II: New Data on the Digital Divide (Washington, D.C.: National Telecommunications and Information Administration, 1999), at www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/net2/falling.html accessed on July 1, 1999; Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996), 363–64; Pippa Norris, “Who Surfs? New Technology, Old Voters, & Virtual Democracy,” in Kamarck and Nye, democracy.com, 71–94; Pippa Norris, “Who Surfs Café Europa? Virtual Democracy in the U.S. and Western Europe,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (Atlanta, September 1999).
94. Dertouzos, What Will Be, 299.
95. Albert Mehrabian, Silent Messages: Implicit Communications of Emotions and Attitudes, 2nd ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1981), iii, as cited in Brittney G. Chenault, “Developing Personal and Emotional Relationships Via Computer-Mediated Communication,” Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine 5 (May 1998): 1, at www.december.com/cmc/mag/1998/may/chenault.html, as consulted October 16, 1999. On evolution and honesty, see Robert H. Frank, Passions Within Reason: The Strategic Roles of the Emotions (New York: Norton, 1988).
96. Research comparing face-to-face and computer-mediated communication is extensive. See Nohria and Eccles, “Face-to-Face,” esp. 292–299, from which the quotation is taken; Sara Kiesler, Jane Siegel, and Timothy W. McGuire, “Social Psychological Aspects of Computer-Mediated Communication,” American Psychologist 39 (1984): 1123–1134; L. K. Trevino, R. H. Lengel, and R. L. Daft, “Media Symbolism, Media Richness, and Media Choice in Organizations: A Symbolic Interactionist Perspective,” Communication Research 14 (1987): 553–574; Lee Sproull and Sara Kiesler, “Computers, Networks, and Work,” Scientific American 265 [3] (1991): 116–127; Poppy Lauretta McLeod, “An Assessment of the Experimental Literature on Electronic Support of Group Work: Results of a Meta-Analysis,” Human-Computer Interaction 7 (1992): 257–280; Joseph B. Walther, “Interpersonal Effects in Computer-Mediated Interaction: A Relational Perspective,” Communication Research 19 (1992): 52–90; Joseph B. Walther, “Anticipated Ongoing Interaction Versus Channel Effects on Relational Communication in Computer-Mediated Interaction,” Human-Computer Interaction 20 (1994): 473–501; M. Lea and R. Spears, “Love at First Byte? Building Personal Relationships over Computer Networks,” in Understudied Relationships: Off the Beaten Track, eds. J. T. Wood and S. Duck (Newbury Park, Calif.: 1995), 197–233; Garton and Barry Wellman, “Social Impacts”; Susan G. Straus, “Technology, Group Process, and Group Outcomes: Testing the Connections in Computer-Mediated and Face-to-Face Groups,” Human-Computer Interaction 12 (1997): 227–265, esp. 233–236; Elena Rocco, “Trust Breaks Down in Electronic Contexts but Can Be Repaired by Some Initial Face-to-Face Contact,” Computer-Human Interaction [CHI] Proceedings (Los Angeles, Calif.: April 1998), 492–502. Scientists do not yet agree on which differences between face-to-face and computer-mediated communication account for the different outcomes—the richer “social presence” in face-to-face settings, slower communication in text-based settings, the greater presumption of ongoing relations in face-to-face settings, or something else. Brown and Duguid, Social Life of Information, 41–52, provide a useful overview of the differences between negotiating in real life and in cyberspace.
97. Brown and Duguid, Social Life of Information, 61. On flaming, see Martin Lea, Tim O’Shea, Pat Fung, and Russell Spears, “‘Flaming’ in Computer-Mediated Communication: Observations, Explanations, Implications,” in Contexts of Computer-Mediated Communication, Martin Lea, ed. (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), 89–112; Garton and Wellman, “Social Impacts,” 441–442; and Straus, “Technology,” 234–235. Rocco (“Trust Breaks Down”) found that brief face-to-face interaction prior to computer-mediated communication improved cooperation.
98. Nohria and Eccles, “Face-to-Face,” 300–301; Andrew Cohill and Andrea Kavanaugh, Community Networks: Lessons from Blacksburg, Virginia (Norwood, Mass.: Artech House, 2000).
99. Galston, “(How) Does the Internet Affect Community?”
100. Brid O’Connaill, Steve Whittaker, and Sylvia Wilbur, “Conversations over Video Conferences: An Evaluation of the Spoken Aspects of Video-Mediated Communication,” Human-Computer Interaction 8 (1993): 389–428; Abigail J. Sellen, “Remote Conversations: The Effects of Mediating Talk with Technology,” Human-Computer Interaction 10 (1995): 401–444.
101. Marshall van Alstyne and Erik Brynjolfsson, “Electronic Communities: Global Village or Cyberbalkanization?” (1996), web.mit.edu/marshall/www/Abstracts.html, accessed on October 1, 1999. See Bruce Bimber, “The Internet and Political Transformation: Populism, Community, and Accelerated Pluralism,” Polity 31 (1998): 133–60, for a related argument that the Internet will encourage “the fragmentation of the present system of interest-based group politics.”
102. Stephen Doheny-Farina, The Wired Neighborhood (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996), 16.
103. I am grateful to Paul Resnick for continuing instruction and thoughtful reflection on the Internet and social capital.
104. Time, September 27, 1999; Robert Kraut, Michael Patterson, Vicki Lundmark, and Sara Kiesler, “Internet Paradox: A Social Technology That Reduces Social Involvement and Psychological Well-Being?” American Psychologist 53 (September 1998): 1017–1031.
105. Emmanuel Koku, Nancy Nazer, and Barry Wellman, “Netting Scholars: Online and Offline,” American Behavioral Scientist 43 (2000, forthcoming). Keith N. Hampton and Barry Wellman, “Netville On-line and Off-line: Observing and Surveying a Wired Suburb,” American Behavioral Scientist 43 (November/December 1999): 475–492, report that residents of wired suburb of Toronto used computer-mediated communication primarily to reinforce ties with neighbors rather than to extend their social networks beyond the bounds of physical space. Wellman also reports in “The Global Village Isn’t So Global,” Connection s 22 (1999): 14–16, that a pilot study of e-mail usage among University of California graduate students found that nearly two-thirds of their messages were from the Bay Area and fully half from within Berkeley itself. I am grateful to Barry Wellman for many helpful insights into the theme of this section as well as his BMW expertise. For additional evidence that telecommunications and face-to-face communication are complementary, not competitive, see Jess Gaspar and Edward L. Glaeser, “Information Technology and the Future of Cities,”Journal of Urban Economics 43 (1998): 136–156.
106. Dertouzos, What Will Be, 300; Brown and Duguid, Social Life of Information, 226, quoting Dan Huttenlocher.
CHAPTER 10: INTRODUCTION
1. Morris Janowitz, The Community Press in an Urban Setting: The Social Elements of Urbanism, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), xvii; Fischer, Jackson, et al., Networks and Places, 201–203.
2. Wuthnow, Sharing the Journey, 6.
3. For an analogous point, see Robert J. Sampson, “Local Friendship Ties,” 766–779.
4. Author’s analysis of General Social Survey, DDB Needham Life Style, and Roper Social and Political Trends archives. Henry E. Brady, Kay L. Schlozman, Sidney Verba, and Laurel Elms, “Who Bowls? Class, Race, and Political Inequality, 1973–1994” (paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, September 1998), confirm the absence of class differences in civic disengagement.
5. Generalizations in this paragraph are based on author’s analysis of DDB Needham Life Style, Roper Social and Political Trends, and General Social Survey archives, controlling for other demographic factors, including sex, race, marital, parental, and employment status, age, income and financial worries, and homeownership.
6. On the role of education in explaining differences in political participation, see Verba, Schlozman
, and Brady, Voice and Equality; and Norman H. Nie, Jane Junn, and Kenneth Stehlik-Barry, Education and Democratic Citizenship in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), as well as appendix I.
7. Statistical Abstract of the United States 1998 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau, 1998), supplemented by author’s analysis of General Social Survey.
8. As noted earlier, synergistic effects might blur or eliminate the individual-level correlation between two factors that were causally related in the aggregate.
CHAPTER 11: PRESSURES OF TIME AND MONEY
1. Verba, Schlozman, and Brady, Voice and Equality, 129; Giving and Volunteering: 1996, 4–112; Robinson and Godbey, Time for Life, 231; author’s multivariate analysis of DDB Needham Life Style and GSS surveys. In the DDB Needham surveys, for example, the fraction of Americans who “stayed late at work” at least once a month in the previous year climbed steadily from 29 percent in 1985 to 38 percent in 1999.
2. Ellen R. McGrattan and Richard Rogerson, “Changes in Hours Worked Since 1950,” Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Quarterly Review 22 (winter 1998): 2–19. For a recent balanced and comprehensive overview of trends in work hours, see Report on the American Workforce 1999 (Washington, D.C.: Department of Labor, 1999), ch. 3. As discussed below, this aggregate stability conceals large reallocations of hours worked across subgroups of the population.
3. Robinson and Godbey, Time for Life, 339. Free time is all time not spent on work, household, family and personal care, shopping, eating, and sleeping. On the debate about trends in work hours, see Robinson and Godbey, Time for Life; Juliet B. Schor, The Overworked American (New York: Basic Books, 1991); McGrattan and Rogerson, “Changes in Hours”; Mary T. Coleman and John Pencavel, “Changes in Work Hours of Male Employees, 1940–1988,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 46 (January 1993): 262–283; Mary T. Coleman and John Pencavel, “Trends in Market Work Behavior of Women Since 1940,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 46 (July 1993): 653–676; Laura Leete and Juliet B. Schor, “Assessing the Time Squeeze Hypothesis: Hours Worked in the United States, 1969–1989,” Industrial Relations 33 (January 1994): 25–43; Barry Bluestone and Stephen Rose, “Overworked and Underemployed,” The American Prospect 31 (March/April 1997): 58–69; Mishel, Bernstein, and Schmitt, The State of Working America, esp. 17–18, 123.
4. Author’s analysis of Harris polls, obtained from the Louis Harris poll archive at the University of North Carolina. Robinson and Godbey, Time for Life, 126–129. Time diary data are generally more reliable than survey recall questions, and they show less work time and more leisure time.
5. Schor, The Overworked American; Robinson and Godbey, Time for Life, 217–218; Report on the American Workforce 1999, 95, 100.
6. Juliet Schor, “Civic Engagement and Working Hours: Do Americans Really Have More Free Time Than Ever Before?” in Working Time, Overwork and Underemployment: Trends, Theory and Policy Perspectives, eds. Lonnie Golden and Deborah M. Figart (London: Routledge, 2000 forthcoming).
7. Author’s analysis of General Social Survey and DDB Needham Life Style data, controlling for sex, race, year of birth, year of survey, education, income, financial worries, region, size of city, marital, parental and employment status, self-reported health, expected mobility, homeownership, and mean commuting time in county of residence. Our DDB Needham index of time pressure is based on four closely intercorrelated items, the first three of them agree-disagree statements: 1) “I work very hard most of the time”; 2) “I have a lot of spare time” (scoring reversed); 3) “I feel I am under a great deal of pressure most of the time”; and 4) “How often during the past 12 months did you stay late at work?”
8. Richard B. Freeman, “Working for Nothing: The Supply of Volunteer Labor,” National Bureau of Economic Research working paper no. 5435 (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1996), 28–34; Verba, Schlozman, Brady, Voice and Equality, 352–358, esp. footnote 40; and Kay Lehman Schlozman, Henry E. Brady, Sidney Verba, Jennifer Erkulwater, and Laurel Elms, “Why Can’t They Be Like We Were? Life Cycle, Generation, and Political Participation” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, September 1999); author’s analysis of DDB Needham Life Style survey data.
9. John Robinson, “The Time Squeeze,” American Demographics, February 1990. Time pressure and TV dependence are also strongly negatively correlated in the DDB Needham data.
10. Author’s analysis of DDB Needham Life Style data.
11. Author’s analysis of DDB Needham Life Style data. Financial anxiety is measured by four agree-disagree statements: “No matter how fast our income goes up we never seem to get ahead” (agree); “Our family is too heavily in debt today” (agree); “We have more to spend on extras than most of our neighbors do” (disagree); and “Our family income is high enough to satisfy nearly all our important desires” (disagree). All four show an increase in financial worry between 1975 and 1999 (especially in the first half of that period); all four are strongly correlated with civic and social disengagement, with standard demographic controls. Of course, the negative correlation between social engagement and financial worry does not prove causation. Perhaps investments in social capital act as buffers against economic reversals, or perhaps socially engaged individuals are more easily satisfied economically than other, more materialistic individuals. (Thanks to Lara Putnam for these points.) In any event, controlling for financial worry only faintly diminishes the basic declines in civic and social engagement discussed in section II.
12. Juliet B. Schor, The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting, and the New Consumer (New York: Harper, 1999); Robert H. Frank, Luxury Fever: Why Money Fails to Satisfy in an Era of Excess (New York: Free Press, 1999). For more evidence of growing materialism, see figure 76.
13. Marie Jahoda, Paul Lazarsfeld, and Hans Zeisel, Marienthal (Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1933 [1971]); Eli Ginzberg, The Unemployed (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1943); Richard C. Wilcock and Walter H. Franke, Unwanted Workers (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963).
14. Generalizations in this paragraph and the next are based on author’s analysis of DDB Needham Life Style, Roper Social and Political Trends, and General Social Survey archives. In the GSS electoral turnout and group membership are positively correlated with financial satisfaction, controlling for income, education, age, sex, race, marital and parental status, and year of survey.
15. Caroline Hodges Persell, “The Interdependence of Social Justice and Civil Society” (New York: New York University, 1996); W. Lance Bennett, “The UnCivic Culture: Communication, Identity, and the Rise of Lifestyle Politics,” PS: Political Science & Politics 31 (December 1998): 741–761.
16. Author’s analysis of DDB Needham Life Style surveys.
17. Robert Wuthnow, “Changing Character of Social Capital in the United States.” Burnharn, “Turnout Problem,” offers evidence that between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s, turnout declined twice as rapidly among blue-collar workers as among their white-collar colleagues. Although I find little evidence that civic disengagement has been concentrated in the lower classes, my analysis of polls from 1966 to 1998 from the Harris poll archive at the University of North Carolina suggests that alienation has grown more rapidly at the bottom of the social hierarchy. In this sense, I find some support for the “marginality” interpretation as regards political attitudes and behavior.
18. Theda Skocpol, “Unraveling from Above,” The American Prospect, March/April 1996, 20–25.
19. Author’s analysis of the DDB Needham Life Style, General Social Survey, and Roper Social and Political Trends archives, using a wide range of indicators of both social participation and socioeconomic privilege. See also Verba et al., “Who Bowls?”
20. This generalization is based on extensive multivariate analysis of the General Social Survey, the DDB Needham Life Style archives, and the Roper Social and Political Trends archives, predicting measures of civic engagement from many demogra
phic factors, including income and financial worries, plus year of survey. The time trend is cut by no more than 5–10 percent, even under the most stringent of economic controls, both objective and subjective.
21. Bureau of Labor Statistics; Coleman and Pencavel, “Trends in Market Work Behavior of Women.” McGrattan and Rogerson, “Changes in Hours,” estimate that weekly paid working hours per woman increased by about seven hours between 1960 and 1990. Leete and Schor, “Assessing the Time Squeeze,” estimate women’s paid labor increased five hours per week from 1969 to 1989; Report on the American Workforce, 84, estimates an increase of six hours per week from 1976 to 1998. These studies use different methods and cover different periods but converge on an estimated increase of roughly one more hour per day in paid labor by the average woman over these three decades. Based on time diary data, Robinson and Godbey, Time for Life, 346, estimate that between 1965 and 1995 the increase in paid labor hours for all women amounted to eight hours per week, whereas the decline in housework and child care amounted to thirteen hours per week, leaving a net gain of about five hours per week in discretionary free time.
22. Ithiel de Sola Pool and Manfred Kochen, “Contacts and Influence,” Social Networks 1 (1978–79): 5–51; Patricia Klobus Edwards, John N. Edwards, and Ann DeWitt Watts, “Women, Work, and Social Participation,” Journal of Voluntary Action Research 13 (January/March 1984): 7–22; author’s analysis of Roper Social and Political Trends and GSS archives. Robinson and Godbey, Time for Life report that nonemployed women spend more time on activity in voluntary associations than their fully employed counterparts. That is confirmed by evidence from the DDB Needham archive, as reported in figure 49.
23. Author’s analysis of Roper Social and Political Trends archives. Holding standard demographic factors constant, full-time employment among women is linked with modest increases in local organizational leadership, signing petitions, writing Congress, and other public forms of community engagement.
BOWLING ALONE Page 66