Bowling Alone: Urban Tribes in Concrete Jungles

Abstract

Utilising the modern social network theory, the present descriptive article has examined the art of urbanites’ ‘bowling alone’ in concrete jungles and its negative effect on their social and civic life. Mainly, such a process has resulted in the formation of ‘urban tribes’ characterized by their isolation from the mainstream social life influenced by people’s ego-centric and limited personal networks in the form of cliques with clique culture, dominated by rugged individualism, instead of developing broad social networks based on reciprocity that generate social capital with community feeling, collective consciousness and altruism.

Their silent withdrawal from social intercourse has affected urbanites propensity to pitch into the common tasks that bind people together with a ‘we feeling’. The net result is, today, people in large cities have collectively turned away from the responsibilities of community building, community development and community participation in civic activities and social and public affairs. The article in this context has identified some of the factors that have contributed to this urban pathology and civic malaise and, finally, offers some possible and feasible remedies to control and contain this social malady.