Review Essays: Are Urban Historians Bowling Alone? Social Capital Theory and Urban History

Robert Putnam , Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community ( New York, 2000).

For critiques of social capital theory, see Sheri Berman, "Civil Society and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic," World Politics 49, no. 3 (1997): 401-29; Michael W. Foley and Bob Edwards, "Is It Time to Disinvest in Social Capital," Journal of Public Policy 19, no. 2 (1999): 141-73; Irene Taviss Thomson, "The Theory That Won’t Die: From Mass Society to the Decline of Social Capital," Sociological Forum 20, no. 3 (September 2005): 421-48. For a historian’s assessment of Bowling Alone, see Robyn Muncy, "Disconnecting: Social and Civic Life in America since 1965," Reviews in American History 29, no. 1 (March 2001): 141-49.

Exceptions include Stephen Innes, Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan New England (New York, 1995); David T. Beito , "To Advance The ‘Practice of Thrift and Economy’: Fraternal Societies and Social Capital, 1890-1920," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29, no. 4 (1999): 585-612.

Sam Bass Warner Jr. , The Private City: Philadelphia in Three Periods of Its Growth, 2d ed. (Philadelphia , 1987).

Jon C. Teaford , The Unheralded Triumph: City Government in America, 1870-1900 (Baltimore, 1984 ); Terence J. McDonald, The Parameters of Urban Fiscal Policy: Socio-economic Change and Political Culture in San Francisco, 1860-1906 ( Berkeley, 1986); Philip J. Ethington, The Public City: The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850-1900 (New York, 1994); Robin L. Einhorn, Property Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1833-1872 ( Chicago, 1991); Sven Beckert, The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850-1896 (New York, 2001 ); Mary P. Ryan , Civic Wars: Democracy and Public Life in the American City during the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley, 1997).

For use and exchange values, see John R. Logan and Harvey L. Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place (Berkeley, 1987).

Mark Chaves , Congregations in America (Cambridge, MA, 2004).

Doug Rossinow , The Politics of Authenticity (New York, 1998).

Although its origins lie in Quakerism, Bryn Mawr shifted to a secular orientation far earlier than either Swarthmore or Haverford. For Lyons on the Old Left, see Paul Lyons, Philadelphia Communists, 1936-1956 (Philadelphia, 1982).