Tolerance and Civic Involvement
By Robert Putnam
Posted Friday, June 16, 2000, at 11:32 AM ETDear Nick,
It's been an instructive two days for me and I hope for you. The most important disagreement between us, it becomes clear at the end, is not the use and misuse of numbers. (I leave aside the disconcerting fact that although you quote from the important Robinson study, you inexplicably end with evidence that is now 15 years old and has been superceded by more recent evidence from Robinson's later work and other studies, as summarized in Bowling Alone.) Despite your opening remarks (which now puzzle me more than ever) that you agree with me on the importance of community, you make crystal clear in your concluding remarks that as long as you are comfortable enough and can tell everyone else to "f*** off," you cannot imagine a better society.
I can. Of course, it would not be a simple rerun of the society of 1960. That was, as I argue at length in Bowling Alone, in many ways an intolerant (and surely a less affluent) society. But there are features of that society of 1960 that I do admire more than ours, for it was a less lonely and a far more public-spirited society. Keep in mind, Nick, that the civil rights revolutions whose benefits we all enjoy were not initiated by the wealthy boomers and X'ers you admire, but by less affluent African-Americans and women and young people who came of age in the 1950s. Do you think that we today match their commitment and vision? I do not. Do you think we are doing as much to remedy the injustices and intolerances in our society today as they did in theirs? I do not. I certainly don't long for the injustice of those years, but it would be nice to recapture their commitment to fight against it.
You talk a populist game about elite domination, Nick, but it's precisely the top echelons in our society who have done just fine in the last decade or so. Political power is more concentrated today, and so is financial and economic power. Civic re-engagement by the rest of us is not the only remedy for those ills, but it is hard to see how we can make changes without that engagement.
Underlying some of your argument, I believe, is a subtle and important assumption. You believe that the sort of community engagement and social connectedness that I value is incompatible with the tolerance for diversity that we both value. (One principle of tolerance and debate might be not to intentionally misstate others' views, and you know perfectly well from reading Bowling Alone that my argument and evidence are not just about formal organizations, much less uniformed ones, but about all forms of social connection, formal and informal.) Like many others on both the left and right, you seem to believe that community and tolerance are fundamentally incompatible.
That is not a silly view at all; lots of smart people besides you have shared that view. "Might not the gain in liberty over the last few decades be worth the loss in community?" they have asked. Is there not a kind of iron law linking social capital and intolerance, so that the decline of social capital is simply "the flip side" of the rise of tolerant individualism? Don't we face in the end a painful and even arbitrary choice of values--community or individualism, but not both? We no longer connect, but at least I don't bother you and you don't bother me.A tough choice--and I believe a false one. As an empirical matter, even among people of identical levels of education, individuals who are more engaged with their communities are generally more tolerant than their stay-at-home neighbors, not less. This was true in the 1950s and it remains true today. Social joiners and civic activists are as a rule more tolerant of dissent and unconventional behavior than social isolates. The most tolerant communities in America are precisely the places with the greatest civic involvement. Conversely, communities whose residents bowl alone are the least tolerant places in America.
Some community-mongers in the past have fostered intolerance, and their 21st-century heirs (like me) need to be held to a higher standard. That said, the greatest threat to American liberty comes from the disengaged, not the engaged. The most intolerant individuals and communities in America today are the least connected, not the most connected. There is no evidence whatever that civic disengagement is a useful tool against bigotry, nor even that tolerance is a convenient side effect of disengagement. In short, Bowling Alone articulates a more hopeful view, Nick--that together we can build a society even more tolerant and much more connected than the one we enjoy today.
Bob
Tolerance and Civic Involvement
By Robert Putnam
Posted Friday, June 16, 2000, at 11:32 AM ET
This week, Nick Gillespie grills Robert Putnam on his book Bowling Alone (click here to read the first chapter of the book, and click here to buy it). Gillespie is the editor of Reason and a frequent contributor to the Web site suck.com, where he writes under the name Mr. Mxyzptlk. Robert Putnam is a professor of public policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Reader Response from The Fray--to be read after the final entry:
It seems to me that income inequality is the elephant in the middle of the room that nobody's talking about here. Mr Putnam's findings that social capital multiplied until about 1970 and has dwindled since at least coincides in time with the pattern of income inequality, which dropped steadily until the 1973 oil-crisis and has risen every year since then. Dr Richard Wilkinson, an English epidemiologist, has written a very provocative book called Unhealthy Societies which suggests that the reason public health suffers as income inequality increases is that more unequal societies are less socially cohesive than more equal ones. The fine points of his argument are too involved to go into here, but Dr Wilkinson's basic reasoning is definitely intuitively plausible: He figures that in relatively unequal societies where people live at similar standards of living, it's far easier for them to identify with one another, to trust each other and to come together in civic groups. The more unequal the society, the more difficult it is for people to really identify with one another's daily lives, and the less likely they are to come together socially.
--F.Toro
(To reply, click
here.)
The author replies: Excellent question, Francisco! I discuss the links between social capital and income inequality at length in Bowling Alone. There is a strong positive correlation across American states, across countries in the world, and (as you point out) across time in the U.S. between equality and social capital. No one yet knows which way the causal arrow runs, but most researchers now think it runs both ways. It's easier to connect in a society with smaller cleavages, but better connections also encourage policies that narrow cleavages. Interestingly, Richard Wilkinson himself has written very nice things about my work, saying that social capital is a key part of the story about inequality. On the health effects, the best work so far (not including my own work) suggests that the correlation between health and inequality is, in fact, mostly explained by differences in social capital.
As a political matter, the social capital agenda and the social justice agenda are complementary, not competitive. Both injustice and disengagement badly need to be fixed, and fixing one will help fix the other.
--Bob Putnam
(To reply, click
here.)
Bob Putnam appears to believe that relationships premised upon proximity are stronger. This is only half-true and ignores that fact that many people in the past lived lives of quiet desperation. You were often stuck in destructive and eviscerating relationships because it was very difficult to travel regularly more than a few miles away from your front door. Modern communications and traveling dramatically increase the odds that we will find relationships more enriching and sustainable. It is not that Putnam's body of work is totally wrong, but I am convinced that the good far outweighs the bad if we barely say hi to our next-door neighbors. Our everyday relationships should be primarily premised upon having something in common with the other person. I will also reiterate what I have said previously: the clock will not be turned back! It would behoove us to instead focus upon enriching our standard relationships while reminding ourselves not to overlook those individuals within our immediate physical environment.
--David Thomson
(To reply, click
here.)
(6/20)
Mr Gillespie, after ranting about how much richer Americans are, criticizes Mr Putnam's book as follows:
Doesn't your social capital theory hold that the opposite should be happening--that as our communal ties fray, our economic conditions should too?
This is a classic example of burning a straw man. Gillespie attributes an argument to Putnam that Putnam did not make (otherwise Gillespie would have quoted it) and then rebuts the argument. Putnam's view is that Americans suffer from isolation and emotional poverty--not that they suffer from economic poverty. Thus, Gillespie's assertion that we are all materially better off is utterly beside the point. The Bible asks whether it matters if a man gains the whole world if he loses his soul (loosely paraphrased); even 2000 years ago, people were aware that one could be materially wealthy and spiritually poor. Why can't Gillespie see something so obvious?
--Michael Lewyn
(To reply, click
here.)
My mother has a card club of couples she's gathered to eat, drink and play with for about 20 years. They've been through two couples' divorces, one remarriage, kids w/drug problems, kids with chronic illnesses, people moving, etc. They are a tight community. I want to find that where I live, but nothing seems to be gelling. Maybe I have to wait until I have kids and then other parents will become our friends, but I don't think it will be easy to find a group like my mom has. Just some thoughts. I agree the informal and formal social networks are dissipating. People have too many cell phones, houses that don't face the street, no front porches and too many commitments.
--AM
(To reply, click
here.)
How about email, and this message board itself. People are forming communities and gathering socially in different ways than they did before. It is not necessary for people to meet face to face in order to share ideas, converse or be political. All these things are happening now in non-traditional ways. A study that purports to measure social capital must take into account the new ways in which people are communicating with each other and forming social bonds or its results cannot be considered valid.
--Trev
(To reply, click
here.)
To Trev: Thanks for your insights. I agree completely that it would be irresponsible in 2000 to write a book about social connections that ignored the Internet. I didn't. When you have a chance to check out Bowling Alone, you'll see that I devoted the better part of a chapter to reviewing dozens of studies on cmc ("computer-mediated communication"), on-line communities, and the like. Frankly, the empirical evidence is mixed, and I'm ambivalent, so you may not agree with what I write. But I certainly don't ignore the topic. Here in synthesis is my take on the issue:
(1)The Internet had nothing to do with the downturn in social involvement. The evidence clearly shows that the downturn was underway before Mark Andreessen was born.
(2) Some research shows Internet usage associated with more social interaction, some with less. It's much too soon in the process to be sure whether the Internet will turn out to be a nifty telephone (helpful to social connection) or a nifty TV (unhelpful). Predictions at a comparable stage of the evolution of the telephone turned out to be mostly off the mark, so we need to be modest about our own wisdom.
(3) Technology is not a force beyond our control. We have it in our power to develop and use the new tools of electronic communication to strengthen old bonds and make new ones. We need to be about that task with gusto.
--Bob Putnam
(To reply, click
here.)
The very freedom that the Internet provides to form communities based on interests, identities, and just about anything else we can dream up, is part of the problem when it comes to the death-of-local-community ties. I am certainly not going to argue that Internet communities are somehow lesser than other types because of the medium they use. I will point out though, that they don't foster involvement with local institutions, and their ability to support their members begins and ends with advice/encouragement. You can't really expect your friend from Yahoo clubs to travel halfway across the country to watch your kids when you are sick.
--Reality Check
(To reply, click
here.)
(6/15)
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Reader Response from The Fray--to be read after the final entry:
It seems to me that income inequality is the elephant in the middle of the room that nobody's talking about here. Mr Putnam's findings that social capital multiplied until about 1970 and has dwindled since at least coincides in time with the pattern of income inequality, which dropped steadily until the 1973 oil-crisis and has risen every year since then. Dr Richard Wilkinson, an English epidemiologist, has written a very provocative book called Unhealthy Societies which suggests that the reason public health suffers as income inequality increases is that more unequal societies are less socially cohesive than more equal ones. The fine points of his argument are too involved to go into here, but Dr Wilkinson's basic reasoning is definitely intuitively plausible: He figures that in relatively unequal societies where people live at similar standards of living, it's far easier for them to identify with one another, to trust each other and to come together in civic groups. The more unequal the society, the more difficult it is for people to really identify with one another's daily lives, and the less likely they are to come together socially.
--F.Toro
(To reply, click here.)
The author replies: Excellent question, Francisco! I discuss the links between social capital and income inequality at length in Bowling Alone. There is a strong positive correlation across American states, across countries in the world, and (as you point out) across time in the U.S. between equality and social capital. No one yet knows which way the causal arrow runs, but most researchers now think it runs both ways. It's easier to connect in a society with smaller cleavages, but better connections also encourage policies that narrow cleavages. Interestingly, Richard Wilkinson himself has written very nice things about my work, saying that social capital is a key part of the story about inequality. On the health effects, the best work so far (not including my own work) suggests that the correlation between health and inequality is, in fact, mostly explained by differences in social capital.
As a political matter, the social capital agenda and the social justice agenda are complementary, not competitive. Both injustice and disengagement badly need to be fixed, and fixing one will help fix the other.
--Bob Putnam
(To reply, click here.)
Bob Putnam appears to believe that relationships premised upon proximity are stronger. This is only half-true and ignores that fact that many people in the past lived lives of quiet desperation. You were often stuck in destructive and eviscerating relationships because it was very difficult to travel regularly more than a few miles away from your front door. Modern communications and traveling dramatically increase the odds that we will find relationships more enriching and sustainable. It is not that Putnam's body of work is totally wrong, but I am convinced that the good far outweighs the bad if we barely say hi to our next-door neighbors. Our everyday relationships should be primarily premised upon having something in common with the other person. I will also reiterate what I have said previously: the clock will not be turned back! It would behoove us to instead focus upon enriching our standard relationships while reminding ourselves not to overlook those individuals within our immediate physical environment.
--David Thomson
(To reply, click here.)
(6/20)
Mr Gillespie, after ranting about how much richer Americans are, criticizes Mr Putnam's book as follows:
This is a classic example of burning a straw man. Gillespie attributes an argument to Putnam that Putnam did not make (otherwise Gillespie would have quoted it) and then rebuts the argument. Putnam's view is that Americans suffer from isolation and emotional poverty--not that they suffer from economic poverty. Thus, Gillespie's assertion that we are all materially better off is utterly beside the point. The Bible asks whether it matters if a man gains the whole world if he loses his soul (loosely paraphrased); even 2000 years ago, people were aware that one could be materially wealthy and spiritually poor. Why can't Gillespie see something so obvious?
--Michael Lewyn
(To reply, click here.)
My mother has a card club of couples she's gathered to eat, drink and play with for about 20 years. They've been through two couples' divorces, one remarriage, kids w/drug problems, kids with chronic illnesses, people moving, etc. They are a tight community. I want to find that where I live, but nothing seems to be gelling. Maybe I have to wait until I have kids and then other parents will become our friends, but I don't think it will be easy to find a group like my mom has. Just some thoughts. I agree the informal and formal social networks are dissipating. People have too many cell phones, houses that don't face the street, no front porches and too many commitments.
--AM
(To reply, click here.)
How about email, and this message board itself. People are forming communities and gathering socially in different ways than they did before. It is not necessary for people to meet face to face in order to share ideas, converse or be political. All these things are happening now in non-traditional ways. A study that purports to measure social capital must take into account the new ways in which people are communicating with each other and forming social bonds or its results cannot be considered valid.
--Trev
(To reply, click here.)
To Trev: Thanks for your insights. I agree completely that it would be irresponsible in 2000 to write a book about social connections that ignored the Internet. I didn't. When you have a chance to check out Bowling Alone, you'll see that I devoted the better part of a chapter to reviewing dozens of studies on cmc ("computer-mediated communication"), on-line communities, and the like. Frankly, the empirical evidence is mixed, and I'm ambivalent, so you may not agree with what I write. But I certainly don't ignore the topic. Here in synthesis is my take on the issue:
(1)The Internet had nothing to do with the downturn in social involvement. The evidence clearly shows that the downturn was underway before Mark Andreessen was born.
(2) Some research shows Internet usage associated with more social interaction, some with less. It's much too soon in the process to be sure whether the Internet will turn out to be a nifty telephone (helpful to social connection) or a nifty TV (unhelpful). Predictions at a comparable stage of the evolution of the telephone turned out to be mostly off the mark, so we need to be modest about our own wisdom.
(3) Technology is not a force beyond our control. We have it in our power to develop and use the new tools of electronic communication to strengthen old bonds and make new ones. We need to be about that task with gusto.
--Bob Putnam
(To reply, click here.)
The very freedom that the Internet provides to form communities based on interests, identities, and just about anything else we can dream up, is part of the problem when it comes to the death-of-local-community ties. I am certainly not going to argue that Internet communities are somehow lesser than other types because of the medium they use. I will point out though, that they don't foster involvement with local institutions, and their ability to support their members begins and ends with advice/encouragement. You can't really expect your friend from Yahoo clubs to travel halfway across the country to watch your kids when you are sick.
--Reality Check
(To reply, click here.)
(6/15)