Nicely laid-out, clear and succinct .. makes me want to read the book .. AND seek for studies or research that represents ‘dynamic’ evidence about the effects of immigration and diversity over long periods of time within a single place (makes me wonder if Montreal’s evolution over the past 150-to-200-years would qualify).
The study means nothing until it is carried out over time. At first, people resist getting to know or care about people who are not “like us.” Over time, they redefine what “like us” means.
— Dennis Fischman Aug 8, 01:45 PM #
Dennis Fischman is right that time matters, and it is a point I emphasize in the underlying article. (What also matters is how we act, for developing a more encompassing sense of ‘we’ cannot simply be left to the passage of time.) The Chronicle’s account of this issue has been terribly misleading. Before you comment or “make your mind what you think” about my argument, you might want to read the actual essay that is at the core of this controversy, at http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x
Thanks for this blog, Albert. We have a discussion of Putnam’s article scheduled for one of our regular brown bags at work. One of our younger staff members is pretty upset by Putnam’s article and I’m afraid the whole discussion is going to go downhill pretty fast.
Deep down, you know it’s silly. The intensity with which the subject is treated. The hoopla and the brouhaha salivation over some data discrediting our wholesome and organic faith in the liberal mental architecture.
Western civilisation, was built on ideals of superiority, achievement, and excelence. It was a brutal mindset, which begot equally brutal reactions. The castrating ferocity of feminism, the numbing brainlessness of the sixties. All legit, all necessary.
Yet, deep down, our treatment of the subject, of the changes in question, are silly. They expose the profound naivete of our intellectual establishment, and the need of its content members to conform to a variety of acceptable cliches - in order to be published, heard, and sancationed.
For anyone living in a diverse neighbourhood, you don’t need a sobbish liberal like Putnam, to open your eyes to the obvious difficulty people experience when dealing with the other. Reading your Hegel, Fichte, Sartre, Levinas, and Lacan, shouldn’t it be obvious that multiculturalims, liberalism, pluralism, are all hoisted on people in complete contradiction to their populist needs? Yet, society, needs to suppress their needs, in order to go on working. Its a social cognitive dissonance - and I dare say, you are all acting it out. Your roles have been prescribed.
The dynamics of social capital formation as impacted by differential rates of diversity- i.e. why diversity might factor in comparative rates of associativity over time- is, I imagine, a function of
1) the likelihood of negative exogenous shocks- economic or otherwise. Presumably sauve qui peut would be the more natural reaction in less homogenous contexts with both individuals and marginal communities voting with their feet as I believe has happened recently in Emporia (?) where the local Somali community decided to leave en bloc after the closing of the big meat packing plant. More generally, gold rush towns are diverse- indeed increasing diversity drives fungibility- but quickly become ghost towns for that very reason. But, this suggests the idea that Putnam’s result may reflect the perceived increased vulnerability to exogenous shocks in a globalised market since the Thatcher/Reagan years rather than the failure of multi-culturalism and the well known fact that coloured people are all muggers and rapists.
In other words diverse neighborhoods, or employers with high diversity, etc. tend - under conditions of radical uncertainty- to act like Schelling focal points for gold rush camps- i.e. places you move to when you don’t want to put down roots- and places you can move out again from by selling to the next lot of the newly rootless.
2) lowered probability of, or pre-emption of the fruits of, positive endogenous or exogenous shocks- i.e. ‘we’ve struck oil under Springfield Primary!”- let’s set up committees to decide how to spend the money! Why bother? Mr. Burns will have siphoned it all away by now. In other words the association between diversity and low social capital formation may reflect what has happened to the Kuznets curve (income distribution getting worse rather than better) as a result of those Wall Street guys- Gordon Gekko etc. etc. In other words, whereas diverse ‘gold-rush’ communities would have a strong incentive to associate if they get to keep a portion of the wind-fall, the reverse is the case when it comes to standing up to the robber barons.
3) decline of potlatch expenditure as a social solvent coz of deindustrialisation leading to higher prices for property, services and non-tradable goods thus lowering the sacrificial value of the goods consumed in the potlatch. Run away property prices might also have a hand in creating ghettos whose natural leaders have fled. Corporate and Municipal potlatch too might decline because of the watchful eye of share-holders and tax payers and so on. Presumably, diversity reduces the legitimacy of innovative potlatch since, by definition, diversity is recent rather than a settled God of the tribe.
4) intenser preference revelation problem under conditions of diversity- “no, I won’t contribute to building a skating rink. Hello! I’m Hindu, what I look like- frigging Eskimo?”- making local provision of public goods too costly to administer. Also, changes in diversity- its composition rather than absolute level - probably changes the whole matrix of external costs and benefits in an unanticipated way thus rendering civic association for the provision of public goods, or the internalisation of externalities, into a losing battle. If high diversity is associated with rapid demographic turnover- as I believe is the case- then associativity is going to be reactive, more a pooling of frustration, a gathering up of grievances, rather than anything rewarding in its own right.
5) institutionalised conflict (stasis) - gang turf wars, Public sector paralysis, the ‘doughnut effect’ etc, etc. Did I mention that all coloured people are rapists and muggers? I did? Well tick that off then.
Thinking about it, I guess au fond diversity is uncertainty. It sets up multiple signal extraction problems at every cross-roads. Goddam! I’ve just argued myself into believing diversity is bad coz ceteris paribus more uncertainty means lower economic activity- right?
Wrong. Under plausible conditions more uncertainty means nothing but economic activity, ceaseless economic activity, economic activity seeking more and more outlets and (perhaps) thus gaining the motivation to fulfill Coase’s theorem- i.e. make up for missing markets by creating new forms of non-associative associativity- & thus, fex Urbis lex Orbis, new Golgothas and new Gods.
Every ethnicity should have the right to live according to its way of life and have its roots not denied to them. Diversity as a way to redefine or over ride roots of a people should be considered a crime against humanity. Culture is the real wealth of the world, and the real diversity. Liberal diversity is homogenization and that is something that I cannot stand.
COMMENTS
BY Jon Husband
ON August 22, 2007 08:48 AM
Nicely laid-out, clear and succinct .. makes me want to read the book .. AND seek for studies or research that represents ‘dynamic’ evidence about the effects of immigration and diversity over long periods of time within a single place (makes me wonder if Montreal’s evolution over the past 150-to-200-years would qualify).
BY Dennis Fischman
ON August 23, 2007 01:16 PM
The following exchange occurred over at “Give and Take” (http://philanthropy.com/giveandtake/article/275/does-ethnic-diversity-hurt-philanthropy#comment):
The study means nothing until it is carried out over time. At first, people resist getting to know or care about people who are not “like us.” Over time, they redefine what “like us” means.
— Dennis Fischman Aug 8, 01:45 PM #
Dennis Fischman is right that time matters, and it is a point I emphasize in the underlying article. (What also matters is how we act, for developing a more encompassing sense of ‘we’ cannot simply be left to the passage of time.) The Chronicle’s account of this issue has been terribly misleading. Before you comment or “make your mind what you think” about my argument, you might want to read the actual essay that is at the core of this controversy, at http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x
— Bob Putnam Aug 8, 02:13 PM
BY Dee Hicks
ON August 24, 2007 07:40 AM
Thanks for this blog, Albert. We have a discussion of Putnam’s article scheduled for one of our regular brown bags at work. One of our younger staff members is pretty upset by Putnam’s article and I’m afraid the whole discussion is going to go downhill pretty fast.
BY blobo
ON August 25, 2007 02:32 PM
Deep down, you know it’s silly. The intensity with which the subject is treated. The hoopla and the brouhaha salivation over some data discrediting our wholesome and organic faith in the liberal mental architecture.
Western civilisation, was built on ideals of superiority, achievement, and excelence. It was a brutal mindset, which begot equally brutal reactions. The castrating ferocity of feminism, the numbing brainlessness of the sixties. All legit, all necessary.
Yet, deep down, our treatment of the subject, of the changes in question, are silly. They expose the profound naivete of our intellectual establishment, and the need of its content members to conform to a variety of acceptable cliches - in order to be published, heard, and sancationed.
For anyone living in a diverse neighbourhood, you don’t need a sobbish liberal like Putnam, to open your eyes to the obvious difficulty people experience when dealing with the other. Reading your Hegel, Fichte, Sartre, Levinas, and Lacan, shouldn’t it be obvious that multiculturalims, liberalism, pluralism, are all hoisted on people in complete contradiction to their populist needs? Yet, society, needs to suppress their needs, in order to go on working. Its a social cognitive dissonance - and I dare say, you are all acting it out. Your roles have been prescribed.
BY vivek iyer
ON February 22, 2008 11:04 PM
The dynamics of social capital formation as impacted by differential rates of diversity- i.e. why diversity might factor in comparative rates of associativity over time- is, I imagine, a function of
1) the likelihood of negative exogenous shocks- economic or otherwise. Presumably sauve qui peut would be the more natural reaction in less homogenous contexts with both individuals and marginal communities voting with their feet as I believe has happened recently in Emporia (?) where the local Somali community decided to leave en bloc after the closing of the big meat packing plant. More generally, gold rush towns are diverse- indeed increasing diversity drives fungibility- but quickly become ghost towns for that very reason. But, this suggests the idea that Putnam’s result may reflect the perceived increased vulnerability to exogenous shocks in a globalised market since the Thatcher/Reagan years rather than the failure of multi-culturalism and the well known fact that coloured people are all muggers and rapists.
In other words diverse neighborhoods, or employers with high diversity, etc. tend - under conditions of radical uncertainty- to act like Schelling focal points for gold rush camps- i.e. places you move to when you don’t want to put down roots- and places you can move out again from by selling to the next lot of the newly rootless.
2) lowered probability of, or pre-emption of the fruits of, positive endogenous or exogenous shocks- i.e. ‘we’ve struck oil under Springfield Primary!”- let’s set up committees to decide how to spend the money! Why bother? Mr. Burns will have siphoned it all away by now. In other words the association between diversity and low social capital formation may reflect what has happened to the Kuznets curve (income distribution getting worse rather than better) as a result of those Wall Street guys- Gordon Gekko etc. etc. In other words, whereas diverse ‘gold-rush’ communities would have a strong incentive to associate if they get to keep a portion of the wind-fall, the reverse is the case when it comes to standing up to the robber barons.
3) decline of potlatch expenditure as a social solvent coz of deindustrialisation leading to higher prices for property, services and non-tradable goods thus lowering the sacrificial value of the goods consumed in the potlatch. Run away property prices might also have a hand in creating ghettos whose natural leaders have fled. Corporate and Municipal potlatch too might decline because of the watchful eye of share-holders and tax payers and so on. Presumably, diversity reduces the legitimacy of innovative potlatch since, by definition, diversity is recent rather than a settled God of the tribe.
4) intenser preference revelation problem under conditions of diversity- “no, I won’t contribute to building a skating rink. Hello! I’m Hindu, what I look like- frigging Eskimo?”- making local provision of public goods too costly to administer. Also, changes in diversity- its composition rather than absolute level - probably changes the whole matrix of external costs and benefits in an unanticipated way thus rendering civic association for the provision of public goods, or the internalisation of externalities, into a losing battle. If high diversity is associated with rapid demographic turnover- as I believe is the case- then associativity is going to be reactive, more a pooling of frustration, a gathering up of grievances, rather than anything rewarding in its own right.
5) institutionalised conflict (stasis) - gang turf wars, Public sector paralysis, the ‘doughnut effect’ etc, etc. Did I mention that all coloured people are rapists and muggers? I did? Well tick that off then.
Thinking about it, I guess au fond diversity is uncertainty. It sets up multiple signal extraction problems at every cross-roads. Goddam! I’ve just argued myself into believing diversity is bad coz ceteris paribus more uncertainty means lower economic activity- right?
Wrong. Under plausible conditions more uncertainty means nothing but economic activity, ceaseless economic activity, economic activity seeking more and more outlets and (perhaps) thus gaining the motivation to fulfill Coase’s theorem- i.e. make up for missing markets by creating new forms of non-associative associativity- & thus, fex Urbis lex Orbis, new Golgothas and new Gods.
BY Robby
ON October 4, 2018 02:53 AM
Every ethnicity should have the right to live according to its way of life and have its roots not denied to them. Diversity as a way to redefine or over ride roots of a people should be considered a crime against humanity. Culture is the real wealth of the world, and the real diversity. Liberal diversity is homogenization and that is something that I cannot stand.