Talk:Bowling Alone

unsourced and original research
I've put an explicit citation of the book in the External Links section, which I've renamed References. I've also flagged about three individual claims in the Controversies section as needing citations:
 * if the incident at Waterloo was "notable," then presumably it's been reported somewhere.
 * if "others have claimed" that Putnam ignored previous studies, have they done so in print?
 * if Putnam has "come in for criticism" re: liberty, have those criticisms been published?

Is there anything else here that warrants the "unsourced" and "original research" flags? The "(par. 13)"-style references are to paragraphs of the article that's linked to in the References section. I'm not sure how they could be improved.


 * I've removed the Waterloo incident, as it apparently didn't happen. Shimgray | talk | 17:33, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Bias against the 1950s
This article has an obvious bias, assuming that life in the 1950s must have been terrible because it was before the Civil Rights Movements had passed. It mentions things such as racism, without stating how they have any relevance to the topic. Now that it is mentioned though, African Americans actually became significantly less happy, gradually less and less happy as the Civil Rights era progressed through the 50s and 60s (source: Conditions of Happiness by Ruut Veenhoven) Peoplesunionpro 00:22, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

No mention of cars
When I read this book, Putnam seemed to very clearly point to cars, and longer commute times, as one of the culprits to blame in the collapse of community in America. Why is this not mentioned on this page? It seems to be one of the central conclusions of the book--and I recall Putnam actually saying it is a bigger factor than women leaving the home. Cazort (talk) 22:56, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Problematic book that encourages white supremacy
We all know that during the 1950’s America was (and still is) a white supremacist nation despite much effort being made to remedy the issues of whiteness. When an unsuspecting person who has not been properly educated hears about this sort of book, they may be swayed to the wrong line of thinking. This article and by extension wikipedia is complicit in the radicalization of the American folk by not providing some sort of warning about the book’s contents. A warning along with a link to pages detailing white supremacy should (hopefully) deter anyone from reading this book and taking what it says as acceptable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1004:B03B:B45E:38DB:8A8B:9099:2F30 (talk) 21:42, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Please could you clarify the point that you are attempting to make.--82.35.253.166 (talk) 20:03, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for sharing your concerns with this article. However, I disagree that links to white supremacy-related content is appropriate in this article. I believe such content would skew the readers perception of this book and its contents rather than add to their understanding. If you would like to provide citations to scholarly articles or books discussing how Bowling Alone relates to white supremacy, we could consider adding a summary of their conclusions to this article. Otherwise, discussion of this topic would be original research, which is not allowed on Wikipedia. Daask (talk) 20:54, 24 April 2020 (UTC)