When Alexis de Tocqueville offered his famous observation about the “spirit of association” he found on his journey across America, he did not view the work to build civil society and its communal institutions as confined to specific income groups. Similarly, when contemporary social scientist Robert Putnam lamented the decline of civil society participation and the rise of “bowling alone,” his concern was a general one. But there’s reason to believe that the relative health of American civil society today may represent another version of inequality — that higher-income communities are homes to a wide range of charitable and volunteer-supported groups while poorer neighborhoods suffer from a lack of them, and the levels of cooperation and social trust they nurture.
Those who need communal support the most are also more likely to be deprived of it. In America, civil society isn’t dead — it just might have become another luxury good.
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