07-10-2007, 06:48 PM
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#1 (permalink)
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Member
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: I am about to relocate, hence I shall be offline for some time
Posts: 242
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Diversity is not black and white
Quote:
The latest round of research done by sociologist Robert Putnam has been spreading around the world in dribs and drabs for most of this decade. Mr Putnam, who teaches at both Harvard and the University of Manchester, is known for his work on social capital, which he defines as "social networks and the associated norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness".
Since social capital is linked to better health, wealth and education, longevity and a stronger democratic life, it is something worth guarding.Mr Putnam lamented its decline in a bestseller called Bowling Alone. At the start of this decade, Mr Putnam undertook a vast study that led him to a troubling conclusion: one of the big causes of the decline of social capital is racial diversity.
This summer, Mr Putnam's work on diversity came a step closer to penetrating the consciousness of the public when one of his lectures was published in the journal Scandinavian Political Studies. His social science colleagues have been mulling over his research for years and none has seriously challenged his conclusions. So an ideological crisis is looming. One of the cherished shibboleths of public policy, corporate identity and interpersonal relations - the idea that "diversity is strength" - is losing its legitimacy.
Mr Putnam studied 30,000 people, urban and rural, rich and poor, young and old, male and female, across the US. He found a steady correlation between ethnically mixed environments and withdrawal from public life. People living amidst diversity tend to "hunker down", in his words. They trust their neighbours less (whether of other races or their own), vote less and give less to charity. About the only things they excel at, in Mr Putnam's account, are television-watching and protest marching. They lead sadder lives.
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Cintinued...
FT.com / Home UK / UK - Diversity is not black and white
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"Have you ever wondered, perhaps, why opinions which the majority of people quite naturally hold are, if anyone dares express them publicly, denounced as 'controversial, 'extremist', 'explosive', 'disgraceful', and overwhelmed with a violence and venom quite unknown to debate on mere political issues? It is because the whole power of the aggressor depends upon preventing people from seeing what is happening and from saying what they see. "
Enoch Powell
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