Social Capital
From Internet: Knowledge and Community
According to Putnam, social capital is the stuff that underlies and strengthens peoples' ability to bind together idealogically, affording them the opportunity to strive to really get things done as a group. He writes of the decline of social capital in the last half century or so and, through a process of elimination, reaches the conclusion that television is the one inescapable variable responsible for adversely affecting social capital. This is based mostly on the notion that televison traditionally keeps people at home watching television and is apparently the only thing that crucially obstructs their ability to socially interact away from home. Ever since the advent of television, communities have ceased to be what they once were; people have, over time, become less civically and socially involved, period. Putnam projects that if society does not make an attempt at re-building social capital, the trend will only continue and worsen.
