"Putnam, whose 1990 landmark Bowling Alone bemoaning the growing atomization of Americans became a household name, published a paper 10 years ago showing that ethnically diverse communities in America suffered a loss of what he called "social capital" or solidarity. He studied 30,000 Americans across 41 communities — ranging from declining inner cities like Detroit, rural areas like South Dakota, and bustling metropolises like San Francisco. He found that regardless of income... level or crime rate, the more diverse the community, the less it trusted not just other ethnic groups but also, remarkably, its own. People don't riot in the streets, he found, they vacate them, retreating, turtle like, into their homes to watch TV rather than participate in community activities or neighborhood projects.
"To some extent, this makes sense. It is incontrovertible that people are more comfortable with those who share their way of life and cultural outlook. One doesn't have to harbor animus toward other groups to prefer one's own. Yet it becomes harder to cut through the multi-ethnic thicket in super diverse communities and find one's cultural kin, leaving us isolated — unable to reach out to our own and unable to connect with others.
"But just because one can find a plausible explanation for the finding doesn't mean it's the whole truth — or even the main truth. It is not easy to reduce complex cultural phenomena to measurable metrics. And even though Putnam's study is among the more thorough of its kind, his way of measuring trust — basically by asking people to rate on a three-point scale whether they would "say that most people can be trusted" — is arguably quite crude. Furthermore, George Mason University's Bryan Caplan notes, Putnam conveniently forgot to highlight that part of his research that showed that many other factors, particularly homeownership, correlate far more strongly with social trust than homogeneity. So why did Putnam bury them and highlight a less important factor instead? Essentially because it's more in line with his thesis in Bowling Alone. It's a classic case of "confirmation bias."
"Furthermore, as Putnam forthrightly acknowledges — but his right-wing appropriators ignore — the loss of trust due to increasing diversity is a short-term phenomenon. Over the long run, people reconstitute new identities and bonds based on other shared characteristics. Yesterday's "them" become tomorrow's "us." For example, Putnam notes, in the 1920s, Americans were acutely conscious of divisions among European sub-groups — the Irish, Italians, Germans, Eastern Europeans — and in the 1950s of various Protestant denominations — Methodists, Lutherans, Baptists. None of these distinctions matter anymore."
Ver mais"But just because one can find a plausible explanation for the finding doesn't mean it's the whole truth — or even the main truth. It is not easy to reduce complex cultural phenomena to measurable metrics. And even though Putnam's study is among the more thorough of its kind, his way of measuring trust — basically by asking people to rate on a three-point scale whether they would "say that most people can be trusted" — is arguably quite crude. Furthermore, George Mason University's Bryan Caplan notes, Putnam conveniently forgot to highlight that part of his research that showed that many other factors, particularly homeownership, correlate far more strongly with social trust than homogeneity. So why did Putnam bury them and highlight a less important factor instead? Essentially because it's more in line with his thesis in Bowling Alone. It's a classic case of "confirmation bias."
"Furthermore, as Putnam forthrightly acknowledges — but his right-wing appropriators ignore — the loss of trust due to increasing diversity is a short-term phenomenon. Over the long run, people reconstitute new identities and bonds based on other shared characteristics. Yesterday's "them" become tomorrow's "us." For example, Putnam notes, in the 1920s, Americans were acutely conscious of divisions among European sub-groups — the Irish, Italians, Germans, Eastern Europeans — and in the 1950s of various Protestant denominations — Methodists, Lutherans, Baptists. None of these distinctions matter anymore."
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