From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Apr 01 2003 - 15:12:04 MST
On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 02:51:05PM -0000, cryofan@mylinuxisp.com wrote:
>
> However, here is article discussing a paper by an MIT social scientist that
> indicates that social capital is decreased by ethnic and cultural diversity:
>
> http://vdare.com/letters/tl_033103.htm
Hmm, I think I will refrain of saying something ad hominem (ad retem?)
about that site. But it is hard ;-)
Looking at http://web.mit.edu/costa/www/scapital8.pdf one thing that
really is noticeable is that it says "we argue that the decline in
social capital has been over-stated." It also points out that increasing
work of women appears to be a relevant factor:
"Our examination of U.S. trends in social capital produced both inside
the community and the home showed that on the whole, both types of
social capital have fallen, with the biggest declines among those
produced inside the home and moderate declines in those produced within
the community. Whether the magnitude of the decline social capital
produced within the community is large enough to cause alarm is in the
eye of the beholder. We argued that declines among women accounted for
most of the declines in social capital centered in the home. Women's
growing committment to careers may therefore play a role in declines in
social capital. The most important factor explaining the decline in
social capital centered in the community was rising income inequality,
but growing ethnic heterogeneity and declines among women played roles
as well."
So maybe ethnic and cultural diversity are less worrying than income
disparity?
> I have always thought that the basic premise that diversity is inherently
> beneficial is flawed, just because of the conclusion drawn by the cited paper.
> I have always thought that it was obvious, mainly because it is much easier
> for the citizenry to control the govt when the populace is homogenous.
I don't see it as obvious at all. There are many other deep cultural
factors in control over governments (like power distance, and the ideas
about the proper role of government).
Diversity is beneficial as potential: more ideas, more meetings are
possible. Homogeneous cultures does seem far less likely to innovate
and can easily stagnate. Diversity causes lots of wasteful conflicts and
interactions, but also more creative solutions and resilient networks.
> Witness Switzerland and Iceland, and to a (continually) lesser degree,
> Scandanavia.
Hmm, by the definition used in the article of social capital, it has
definitely decreased here in Sweden (many social organisations are in
crisis due to lack of volunteers). But diversity is rather
inhomogeneously distributed, with much more diversity in the
metropolitan areas than in the rest of the country. But the decrease
seems (I have no solid research to quote right now) to be distributed
across the country. Hence I doubt diversity is the issue - unless
joining the EU and being less insular towards the outside world should
be defined as diversity-increasing. Income disparity has increased, but
not that much.
Maybe we should turn the question around: what good is social capital?
What do we want to use it for?
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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