USA300H1 Lecture Notes - Bowling Alone, Representative Democracy, Jeremiad
23 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
USA300H1 – Individualism and Community
• Roert D. Puta ad Bolig Aloe
o Large scale versus small scale arguments
▪ Copare Fre, Puta’s projetios s. Lee’s lose aalsis
▪ Exaggeration of stakes, claims: Putnam pinning huge stakes (resolution of all
social ills) on a simple argument, the necessity for social engagement
o Puta a politial sietist est ko for Bolig Aloe, direted at a roader
audience than simply other academic political scientists
▪ American community and measures of ii egageet: about participation
in non-governmental institutions/associations, social networks
• Not primarily a matter of individual engagement or direct engagement
with government, but plural communal engagement
• Shorthand: about meeting in person with other people regularly
• No distinctions between type of activity: Putnam interested in the
quantity of community engagement (divorced from quality)
▪ “oial apital: the produt of soial networks, of connections between people
• A kind of contact fostering reciprocity and trust: those resources are
what is necessary for any functioning community
• What is the good of high civic engagement and high social capital?
o Conditions that bolster effective representative democratic government
▪ Emphasis on the functionality of liberal democracy, particularly as measured via
voter turnout; this stat correlates to civic engagement
• Putnam claiming that problems like drug abuse, crime, poor health,
poverty can be inoculated against by encouraging civil engagement
▪ Argument that civic engagement causes democracy; yet we should consider why
cause and effect is framed this way and if it is correct
o Coteporar delie i soial apital, falle a aout a fourth i the last 25 ears
▪ Generalized decline over a variety of forms of social engagement
▪ Noting demographics: middle aged, middle to upper class/educated people the
ost likel to e egaged, ut ee this group’s egageet i delie
▪ Problem with the erosion of social capital: underpins the function of
community, society, and in particular democratic government
• Not concerned with individual happiness or fulfillment: Putnam looking
at the way this kind of engagement makes better nations, governments
• Social Jeremiad: critique of a society with a problem that dooms
American society to corruption and so needs to be addressed
• Resposes to Puta’s arguets aout ii egageet
o Ignoring of outside pressures: voter suppression, etc.
▪ Consider Australia, where election days are a national holiday: would this
increase effectiveness of real democracy w/o addressing civic engagement?
o Non-discrimination between types of associational groups
▪ Are there anti-democratic associations, i.e. the KKK or neo-Nazi groups?
▪ Tea party, for example: express purpose of refuting Obama in all cases
• Example of a group of dedicated and engaged citizens committed to the
explicitly anti-democratic cause of obstructing government
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