Merge pull request #505 from wesc/wes_bowling-alone

Add commentary on Bowling Alone to associations chapter.

contents/english/04-02-association-and-⿻-publics.md

@@ -125,6 +125,10 @@ Furthermore, all of the space around these topics is suffused with work on stand
 
 ### Association, identity and commerce
 
+In 1995, political scientist Robert Putnam began documenting the decline of American civic life starting in 1960s in his essay "Bowling Alone". He attributes this to a corresponding reduction in participatory community associations such as fraternal organizations, religious groups and parent teacher associations, leading to his quip that there are more people bowling and fewer bowling leagues.  He argues that the decrease in associative behavior directly affects the development of social capital and trust which "facilitate coordindation and cooperation for mutual benefit."[^BowlingAlone]
+
+Putnam addresses several possible reasons but focuses in particular on television and the "privatizing" of our leisure time, noting that "television has made our communities ... wider and shallower."  His essay preceded the modern Internet but we might import into his argument a phrase from our contemporary digital lives: there's an app for that.  A challenge then for the extraordinary reach of 21st century digital technology is the harnessing of that power to form meaningful communities and deeper social interactions.  Strong community engagement also cultivates robust civic discourse where social and political problems can be hashed out by constituent citizens.
+
 Digital freedom of association is tightly connected to the other freedoms we discuss in this part of the book.  As we saw in the previous chapter, "privacy" is at the core of the integrity of identity systems yet concerns usually labeled as such are more appropriately connected to the diversity of contexts an individual navigates rather than privacy in an individualistic sense.  Thus the right to freedom of association and the right to the integrity of personhood are inseparable: if it is our entanglement in a diversity of social groups that creates our separateness as a person, it is only by protecting the integrity of that diversity that separate personhood is possible.  And, of course, because groups are made up of people, the opposite is true as well: without persons with well-articulated identities, there is no way to create groups defined by common knowledge among these persons.
 
 Furthermore, the right of free association is the foundation on which commerce and contracts are built.  Transactions are among the simplest forms of association and how digital transaction systems can replicate the privacy that is often touted as a core benefit of cash depends intimately on who can view what transactions at what resolution.  Contracts are more sophisticated forms of association and corporations even more so.  All rely heavily on information integrity and common understandings of obligations.  In this sense, the freedom of association we outlined in this chapter, together with identity in the last, are the linchpins for what follows in the rest of the book.
@@ -137,3 +141,4 @@ Furthermore, the right of free association is the foundation on which commerce a
 [^ContextualConfidence]: Jain, Hitzig, Mishkin (2023). Contextual Confidence and Generative AI. https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.01193
 [^Spritely]: Spritely Project. https://spritelyproject.org/
 [^ZKCanon]: Elena Burger, Bryan Chiang, Sonal Chokshi, Eddy Lazzarin, Justin Thaler, Ali Yahya. Zero Knowledge Canon. https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/zero-knowledge-canon/
+[^BowlingAlone]: Putnam, R.D. (1995). "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital". *Journal of Democracy*. https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.1995.0002.