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Is Diversity Bad for Democracy?

New studies by Robert Putnam ("Bowling Alone") could suggest that it is! Putnam's new data seems to say that living and working in an ethnically or racially diverse environment can be stressful. The outcome for many people is a tendency to self-isolate and "hunker down" in their own homes. Ultimately, the worry is that these people become disconnected from their communities and tend to display less trust in others. (Interestingly enough, the distrust is not just of people who are ethnically or racially different--its of everyone!)

Putnam is, of course, famous for his argument about the loss of social capital in the United States. Less people bowl in leagues today, but about the same amount of people still go bowling. In other words, Americans are not joining social groups as much as they did even 40 years ago. They are not building community ties and civic friendships as much as previous generations.

The worry about such trends, Putnam argues, based on previous studies, is that the loss of social capital in a society makes democracy function much less efficiently. Its harder to make collaborative decisions and think about the common good when the community is distrustful of one another.

Putnam was shocked by some of these results concerning diversity, considering that he supports diversity as a social good. His hope is that even though diversity might reduce social capital in the short term, exposure to diversity can help to erase the stereotypes that lead to the discomfort, in the long term.

Assuming that the data is correct and diversity leads to a kind of mistrust in community: is this necessarily bad for democratic politics? Is trust essential to democratic community?

Perhaps if your vision of democratic politics involves honest talk among equals that's meant to arrive at a consensus about what needs to be done to satisfy everyone. But that's not the only view available. Ian Shapiro, in "The State of Democratic Theory", argues for a view of democracy as a system oriented toward trying to prevent domination. He draws heavily on Machiavelli's work in "The Discourses On Livy" (especialy this part). Democracy is not about deliberation among equal parties for the common good in this view. Its about maintaining power relations to prevent other groups from amassing too much control that they can use it to dominate you. Here, mistrust is more of a guarantee of your liberty than trust is. Diversity is not a problem in this view. Its just the state of things, but one that can create the conditions for a robust politics of different interests confronting one another.

So how ought we to integrate diversity into our democratic life?


posted by Joseph Orosco @ 8:45 PM   6 Comments 
Richard Rorty (1931-2007)

Online Videos by Veoh.com

UPDATE JUNE 12, 2007

An obituary by Jurgen Habermas for Rorty.

Labels: american democracy, engaged philosophy, human rights, terrorism

posted by Joseph Orosco @ 12:01 AM   2 Comments 
Engage on New Blog Carnivals!

Labels: engaged philosophy, feminism

posted by Joseph Orosco @ 2:27 AM   2 Comments If you're Peter Gelderloos, then the answer might be: Neither, because both of them are just as dangerous to real peace and justice in the world today. Gelderloos is the author of "How Nonviolence Protects the State". The main purpose behind this book is to try to shake off the supposed stranglehold that nonviolent theory has upon political activists in the United States and point out that nonviolent movements have never accomplished any significant social change in modern history. In a few short chapters, Gelderloos argues that nonviolence is 1) ineffective as a means of transforming society, 2) racist, 3) patriarchal and sexist, 4) tactically inferior to other methods of social change (read: direct action), and 5) statist (that is, instead of standing up the institutional injustices of the nation-state, nonviolence theory and its practitioners actually do everything to make sure that the state remains as an organization to inflict harm upon communities). You can read an exerpt from the book here.

What is most frustrating and seemingly contradictory about the thesis of this book is this: Gelderloos claims to want to open up the discussion of social change to include the possibility of a "diversity of tactics" and that peace activists today are so wedded to nonviolence that they immediatly rule out the use of sabotage, property destruction, and other forms of potentially violent ( to persons and property) action. But the argument quickly turns into how nonviolence is NOT an option in the world today and if you think thing are going to change using nonviolence, you are either 1) seriously deluded or 2) morally corrupt and part of the structures that need to swept aside. An passage from Gelderloos:

"Our options have been violently constrained to the following: actively supporting the violence of the system; tacitly supporting that violence by failing to challenge it; supporting some of the existing forceful attempts to destroy the system of violence; or pursuing new and original ways to fight and destroy that system. Privileged activists need to understand what the rest of the world's people have known all too long; we are in the midst of a war, and neutrality is not possible. There is nothing in this world currently deserving of the name peace. Rather, it is a question of whose violence frightens us most, and on whose side we will stand." (p. 134)

What is most frightening about this rhetoric is how closely is matches the language of world leaders used to justify war and violent retaliation (for instance, in the "war on terror"). The world is us against them, and the only morally relevant question is: whose side are you on?

For what its worth, most of the major theorists of nonviolent direct action, Gandhi, King, and Chavez for instance, rejected thinking of the world in these terms. Gandhi would have said the stark choices laid out by Gelderloos might be appropriate as part of the law of the jungle, but we are no longer in that kind of existence. We would not have survived as long as we are today if we had not learned different forms of cooperation and creative means by which to live with one another. The task for nonviolent activists, say these figures, is to push ourselves to learn more and more creative ways to resolve conflict peacefully. Toward that end, I really appreciate Mark Juergensmeyer's article which attempts to point out how Gandhi might approach the problem of terrorism today. Juergensmeyer points out that Gandhi was certainly not passive and would not have allowed anyone to be taken advantage of (Gelderloos continually conflates the idea of pacifism and passivity), and might even have justified the use of some force to contain violent offenders like Osama bin Laden.

Hopefully the world is more complex than having to decide which forms of violence are more appropriate for the work of justice today.

 
No Justice, No Peace 

Labels: american democracy, human rights, nonviolence

posted by Joseph Orosco @ 8:54 PM   5 Comments