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November 21, 2022 - January 7, 2023
American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us.
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Whereas physical capital refers to physical objects and human capital refers to properties of individuals, social capital refers to connections among individuals—social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them. In that sense social capital is closely related to what some have called “civic virtue.” The difference is that “social capital” calls attention to the fact that civic virtue is most powerful when embedded in a dense network of reciprocal social relations. A society of many virtuous but isolated individuals is not necessarily rich in social capital.
social capital has both an individual and a collective aspect—a private face and a public face.
First, individuals form connections that benefit our own interests.
the underlying norm of generalized reciprocity—the firefighters will come even if you don’t.
A society characterized by generalized reciprocity is more efficient than a distrustful society, for the same reason that money is more efficient than barter. If we don’t have to balance every exchange instantly, we can get a lot more accomplished. Trustworthiness lubricates social life. Frequent interaction among a diverse set of people tends to produce a norm of generalized reciprocity.
the “weak” ties that link me to distant acquaintances who move in different circles from mine are actually more valuable than the “strong” ties that link me to relatives and intimate friends whose sociological niche is very like my own.
American history carefully examined is a story of ups and downs in civic engagement, not just downs—a story of collapse and of renewal.
For the first two-thirds of the twentieth century a powerful tide bore Americans into ever deeper engagement in the life of their communities, but a few decades ago—silently, without warning—that tide reversed and we were overtaken by a treacherous rip current. Without at first noticing, we have been pulled apart from one another and from our communities over the last third of the century.
BEFORE OCTOBER 29, 1997, John Lambert and Andy Boschma knew each other only through their local bowling league at the Ypsi-Arbor Lanes in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Lambert, a sixty-four-year-old retired employee of the University of Michigan hospital, had been on a kidney transplant waiting list for three years when Boschma, a thirty-three-year-old accountant, learned casually of Lambert’s need and unexpectedly approached him to offer to donate one of his own kidneys. “Andy saw something in me that others didn’t,” said Lambert. “When we were in the hospital Andy said to me, ‘John, I really like you
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If different generations have different tastes or habits, the social physiology of birth and death will eventually transform society, even if no individual ever changes.
Declining electoral participation is merely the most visible symptom of a broader disengagement from community life.
In other words, it is precisely those forms of civic engagement most vulnerable to coordination problems and free riding—those activities that brought citizens together, those activities that most clearly embody social capital—that have declined most rapidly.
The changing pattern of civic participation in American communities over the last two decades has shifted the balance in the larger society between the articulation of grievances and the aggregation of coalitions to address those grievances. In this sense, this disjunctive pattern of decline—cooperation falling more rapidly than self-expression—may well have encouraged the single-issue blare and declining civility of contemporary political discourse.
One distinctive feature of a social-capital-creating formal organization is that it includes local chapters in which members can meet one another.
So the vigor of the new Washington-based organizations, though they are large, proliferating, and powerful, is an unreliable guide to the vitality of social connectedness and civic engagement in American communities.
Trends in numbers of voluntary associations nationwide are not a reliable guide to trends in social capital, especially for associations that lack a structure of local chapters in which members can actually participate.
IN TWO IMPORTANT RESPECTS, however, membership figures for individual organizations are an uncertain guide to trends in Americans’ involvement in voluntary associations. First, the popularity of specific groups may wax and wane quite independently of the general level of community engagement.
Second, formal “card-carrying” membership may not accurately reflect actual involvement in community activities.
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One intriguing survey that asked people to enumerate all individuals with whom they had had a face-to-face conversation in the course of the day found that religious attendance was the most powerful predictor of the number of one’s daily personal encounters.
lyceum,
“Unless religious impulses find a home in more than the individual heart or soul, they will have few long-lasting public consequences.”
the more demanding the form of involvement—actual attendance as compared to formal membership, for example—the greater the decline.
In effect, the classic institutions of American civic life, both religious and secular, have been “hollowed out.” Seen from without, the institutional edifice appears virtually intact—little decline in professions of faith, formal membership down just a bit, and so on. When examined more closely, however, it seems clear that decay has consumed the load-bearing beams of our civic infrastructure.
Privatized religion may be morally compelling and psychically fulfilling, but it embodies less social capital. More people are “surfing” from congregation to congregation more frequently, so that while they may still be “religious,” they are less committed to a particular community of believers.
But by most accounts, “the big ‘winner’ in the switching game is the growing secular constituency.”41
The bottom line: While for many boomers privatized religion is a worthy expression of autonomous moral judgment, institutionalized religion is less central to their lives than it was to their parents’ lives.
The result is that the country is becoming ever more clearly divided into two groups—the devoutly observant and the entirely unchurched.
Both individually and congregationally, evangelicals are more likely to be involved in activities within their own religious community but are less likely to be involved in the broader community.
The social capital of evangelicals, however, is invested at home more than in the wider community. Among evangelicals, church attendance is not correlated with membership in community organizations.
Religion may have a salutary effect on civil society by encouraging its members to worship, to spend time with their families, and to learn the moral lessons embedded in religious traditions. But religion is likely to have a diminished impact on society if that is the only role it plays.
It is that broader civic role that, with few exceptions, evangelical religion has not yet come to play in contemporary America.
At least so far, however, the community-building efforts of the new denominations have been directed inward rather than outward, thus limiting their otherwise salutary effects on America’s stock of social capital. In short, as the twenty-first century opens, Americans are going to church less often than we did three or four decades ago, and the churches we go to are less engaged with the wider community. Trends in religious life reinforce rather than counterbalance the ominous plunge in social connectedness in the secular community.
Perhaps the problem with union membership is not so much skepticism about the idea of “union” as skepticism about the idea of “membership.”
“The young worker thinks primarily of himself. We are experiencing the cult of the individual, and labor is taking a beating preaching the comfort of coalition.”
Work-based networks are often used for instrumental purposes, thus somewhat undercutting their value for community and social purposes.
Because we form such ties to promote the highly secular activities of getting and spending, friendships and connections developed at work are generally assumed to have a more instrumental character: we use people, and they use us, to solicit more business, advance our careers, sell more products, or demonstrate our popularity…. If so, it follows that even if the decline of civil ties in the neighborhood is being compensated by new ties formed at work, the instrumental character of the latter cannot be an adequate substitute for the loss of the former.36
The workplace is not the salvation for our fraying civil society.
In short, we invest more in guns, dogs, and locks than in social capital for crime defense.
Crime watch groups may have become more common, but they provide a frail replacement for the vanished social capital of traditional neighborhoods—sociological AstroTurf, suitable only where the real thing won’t grow.
This striking shift in the way we allocate our time—toward ourselves and our immediate family and away from the wider community—is confirmed by a survey of twenty-four thousand time diaries
the largest changes of all involve time spent at worship and visiting with friends, both of which fell by more than 20 percent,
informal social connectedness has declined in all parts of American society.
As long-suffering Red Sox fans know, even shared adversity can build community.
Social capital refers to networks of social connection—doing with. Doing good for other people, however laudable, is not part of the definition of social capital.
The norm of generalized reciprocity is so fundamental to civilized life that all prominent moral codes contain some equivalent of the Golden Rule.
When each of us can relax her guard a little, what economists term “transaction costs”—the costs of the everyday business of life, as well as the costs of commercial transactions—are reduced.
life expectancy itself is enhanced in more trustful communities.
You and I will both be better off if we are honest toward one another than if—each fearing betrayal—we decline to cooperate. However, only a seeker of sainthood will be better off being honest in the face of persistent dishonesty. Generalized reciprocity is a community asset, but generalized gullibility is not.6 Trustworthiness, not simply trust, is the key ingredient.
