— Robert Putnam, E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century
A better world can be imagined, and, if for no other reason than to provide hope, our best thinkers must continue to conjure paths that lead us out of war and away from societal collapse, tribalism, or the final triumph of oligopolies. Iraq, Afghanistan, global warming, massive wealth disparities: there is rotten news everywhere, it seems. But thoughtful ways out cannot be oriented purely to the avoidance of this or that calamity; for sacrifices to be accepted and aspirations to blossom, people must feel they are building a more purposeful tomorrow, not just forestalling the end.
As it happened, the last great moment of hope, the ushering in of a new world order in 1989 after the collapse of Communism, turned into an aborted beginning of a millennial project. After twelve short years, the curtains were drawn on the practice of allowing national governments to sequester themselves in dark and increasingly insignificant talk shops, as markets expanded and capital and brand awareness went global. The incendiary events of September 11, 2001, struck fear in the heart of our commons, and everything changed. During the breathless months that followed, we lurched clumsily, reacted with haste, and looked to national governments for guidance, for a way out of the discontinuity.
Some became merchants of fear, their prescriptions reductionist, and, in the case of the Bush White House, the track record will remain a halting, imperial stain on a great republic. While Ottawa responded with questionable anti-terrorism legislation and security crackdowns, in the rest of Canada there was greater pause, and a somewhat comforting lack of certainty. The world had become difficult to understand, wars asymmetric, fail-safe approaches anything but ordained, and while discussion and debate was hardly a soothing balm it did temper the gathering storm.
I sense now, however, that we have forgotten those uneasy but more reflective years — roughly from the spring of 2002 to the beginning of 2004 — and have sunk into concerns of a more parochial nature and gossipy chit-chat about politicians and their questionable intents. We have allowed the temporal to overtake us, and have left clarion calls for purposeful government by the side of the road, and we are now in danger of thinking without analysis, of accepting government proclamations as resonant when they clearly are not.
I am not thinking here about Canada’s role in Afghanistan, which, while disputed, has a momentum of its own — and the decision-makers remain unchecked. Nor am I pondering one or another social program, contested or not, or how the taxation pendulum is swinging. Rather, I am considering our collective response to a phenomenon that has crept up on us (not unlike global warming), and to which we have paid too little attention for too long: the essential challenge posed by ever-increasing ethnic diversity.
We have colourful festivals, to be sure, but beneath them lurks a question: how can I embrace the other when his values might be hostile to my own?
Measured, contemplative, and based on solid empirical evidence, Robert Putnam’s E Pluribus Unum is a cautionary report about our ability to get along with those outside our own tribes. The Harvard sociologist and political scientist — and recent winner of the prestigious Johan Skytte Prize — is resolutely in favour of immigration, the main driver of cresting diversity, but, he maintains, in the short and medium term there will be trouble. Indeed, Putnam finds that most forms of social capital — volunteerism, basic trust, electoral engagement, a commitment to the very institutions upon which communities are based — suffer when local populations become more heterogeneous, when streetscapes become mixed and the smells and odours and skin colours suggest alien others in “our” midst.
Of course, as Putnam’s research is rooted in forty-one American communities, Canadian nationalists of a certain persuasion will be quick to dismiss his thesis as telling about the US but not pertinent here. In so doing, these purveyors of Canadian exceptionalism make a category mistake: multiculturalism as a government proclamation or a stated goal — customarily announced as a mark of distinction from the arrogant melting-pot insistence of the US — is just that, a hope or an ideology that might diverge demonstrably from what is happening on our streets. National borders, after all, are artificial constructs; people, whether black, white, or Asian, are not. We are made of flesh, blood, and bone, and wherever we reside, we require a sense of belonging. We are finding this in Canada, but mostly and increasingly among our own kind.
While there is talk of the gradual browning of modern societies, and racial harmony as creative miscegenation takes hold — with evidence of its happening on university campuses, for instance — there is a parallel development that may extend Putnam’s short and medium term to longer, more intractable realities.
Comments (4 comments)
Donnie McLeod: We talk about diversity conflicting with tribes. It seems the perspective of tribes is usually in the context of a culture defined by something like colour of skin. I think tribes can be defined from almost any way; a company that treats employees fairly often takes on the perspective of a tribe. A religious domination can take on tribal characteristics with its language and culture. But I content tribes is not granular enough, we need to focus at smaller grouping than tribes.
A tribe is too many people. We are still looking from the perspective of the state or the tribe level. And we are incredibly burdened by our religions, especially with the social conservative misleading to protect the infallibility of the Bible. The latent religious thinking burdens the discussion of being a successful species relative to other competitive approaches to success. The Bible stops us from seeing how the individual is a key part of success of the species. Why for example does a polar bear, a successful species, count a lone human individual as an easy opportunity but counts 5 as more than just 1 individual plus 4 more individuals? They see 5 in a group as more than the sum of its parts. They count 5 as a threat. What does that say about the individuals fit in our species, which was successful because we team well?
I suggest we will learn that the tribe is not as important as the small team of people we work with in a grouping of 5, 6 or 7. Each person dong what they do well while working with the others who have complimentary skills. Incentive and motivation comes from the “action of doing with others”. It does not matter the color of skin, sex, religion or political bias. What does matter is the level of trust of all the individuals in the group.
That groups need for trust excludes my brother-in law Lyle from any grouping. He has not a once of fairness in his genetic make up. Lyle and others like him, for example Judas, will do anything for a few silver shekels. Judas was 1 of 12. I take that as a good enough survey to state that 8.3% of any populations are like Lyle and Judas. They think only “what is in this for me”. And they are proof of evolution. We are descendants of single cell animals that always make one rational decision “its all about me”. Count the number of incredibly selfish people in your life? Is it closer to 3%, 10% or 30%. If they are family you have to live with it. If they are in your personal or your business life, make changes, today.
“Its all about me” is not the human character trait that made our species successful. Our competitive advantage as a species came with being fair. Fairness is way up and much later on in the evolutionary path towards success. Selfishness started way back in the primordial soup of creation, where it belongs. Fairness is easily fostered in various degrees in 91.7% of the population. But Lyle and Judas have to be excluded from the group and eliminated from any position of influence. That is why the team grouping has to be small such as 5, 6 or 7. In today’s world, 7 are too many because you can’t find a table in a restaurant that sits 7. Getting a table defines the maximum size to 6.
If every single Canadian with a bit of fairness can be helped to find their fit with 4 or 5 other people in a team the issues of tribes will solve itself. It is finding each individual’s fit in a team that society should worry about not the barriers of old tribes. It is exploiting and not ignoring what made our species successful that will provide the answers needed for today’s complex world.
December 10, 2007 09:55 EST
Anonymous: It is unfortunate that Mr. Alexander has taken Robert Putnam's work and, with only a perfunctory reflection upon its meaning and implications, has used it as the only "evidence" for his rather impressionistic article and thesis. In fact, he may not have read Putnam's entire paper, as in the later parts Putnam in fact suggests something akin to Canada's multicultural model to solve the social mistrust brought on by increasing ethnic diversity.
Putnam's well done research suggested that social trust is negatively associated with ethnic diversity. But this social mistrust extends not only to people of other races, but also to people of one's own race. So rather than diversity causing bad race relations, it, in the short and medium term, causes people to "hunker down" and retreat into their shells like turtles, as Putnam puts it. Thus diversity is associated with low levels of bridging capital (the social relations/capital between people of different races, in this case), as well as bonding capital (the social capital within people of the same race). One of his conclusions was that bridging and bonding capital were not mutually exclusive, and that bonding capital in certain cases can foster bridging capital.
Cities have always been composed of enclaves divided by some social force. Rich people tend to live with other rich people. Areas of the city that have one predominant ethnic group are nothing new. Multiculturalism in Canada has simply given an implicit blessing to people so that, for example, they can live in an area where they are close to their synagogue and the local kosher bakery, and go to those places without shame. Multiculturalism has gone further and stated that by virtue of attending your local synagogue and eating at your kosher bakery, you remain entirely Canadian, and in fact you are adding something new. This is bonding capital, and is a force against social mistrust. Multiculturalism then assists with fostering bridging capital by helping these ethnic groups become part of the national dialogue, whether it is by celebrating a cultural holiday at Nathan Phillips Square in the company of the mayor, or recruiting people of different ethnic communities to the police force. Of course, some people choose to remain within their enclave, as do some people in Rosedale chose to not venture outside their community. But when those bridging opportunties are available, there are those who will avail themselves of it. They may still live in an area where they can easily go to their local synagogue and kosher bakery, but they are equally involved in other areas of the larger community. Ultimately, our multicultural approach that encourages participation in activities of one's ethnic culture actually may, in part, reduce the social mistrust associated with diversity...these "enclaves" are a precursor to integration.
Finally, Mr. Alexander tends to exoticize "other" people's "values". By virtue of the fact that most "other" people are law abiding citizens, they without a doubt share our overarching values. Putnam's research was based on diversity in race as related to social mistrust - not diversity of values. We must always remember that the reasonable accommodation debate in Quebec emerged from a community that had very little to accommodate.
Certainly Mr. Alexander can make his point in an article like this, but to use important research in a reckless way serves to skew Robert Putnam's work and give faux scientific authority to an argument devoid of any. January 17, 2008 15:31 EST
Geoffrey Dow: Immigrants flocking together are due to 9/11?!? That is one bizarre twist of logic.
While ethnically-based neighbourhoods are far from ideal, the fact of them is as old as immigration itself. Simply put, newcomers who group together are able to build networks with each other much faster than they can with those who don't share their language and experience.
My maternal great-grandparents came (separately) to this country in the early years of the 20th century, part of the large Finnish diaspora of that era.
Like Ethiopian immigrants today, like the Greeks and the Portuguese in the 1950s, my ancestors did, in fact, create for themselves what Alexander called "a world apart". The Finns tended to settle in the same areas; Finnish immigrant married Finnish immigrant; Finnish-language newspapers and magazines were established and, for a time, flourished; even Old World political battles continued to be waged here on Canadian soil, only slowly being modified by the advance of time and a growing experience and involvement with strictly Canadian issues and disputes.
Homesteading outside of Sudbury, my great-grandparents' children were raised with Finnish as their first language, encountering English only when they were old enough to go to school. Nevertheless, among my grandmother's brothers came a master carpenter, an architect and a psychologist. My grandmother herself dabbled in writing - in English! - even if she remained fluent in Finn until the day of her death.
The same pattern is true of my father's side of the family, Slavs who settled in the Ottawa valley.
The point is simple: 'twas ever thus, and especially so during periods of high immigration.
In 1981, Canada had held open the door to non-European immigrants for not quite 15 years, and Brian Mulroney's government had not yet come to power; there were not yet the sheer number of newcomers necessary to create a significant number of new ethnic neighbourhoods. (See this Statscan chart for a useful overview of historical immigration patterns.)
Does this mean there are no problems with integrating 200,000-plus immigrants into a country of 30,000,000 people every year? Of course not. But those problems have more to do with economics (there are far fewer well-paying blue-collar jobs than there used to be) than with the natural desire of people to understand the language of their neighbours.
Nevertheless, having lived in Toronto's Kensington Market and now residing in Parkdale, I know from experience the vibrancy that can exist in heterogeneous neighbourhoods and am by no means saying ethnic neighbourhoods should be encouraged. But neither is their existence a reason for despair. You rightly note that our official multiculturalism policy not only encourages "...lively festivals and the celebration of exotic food and dress [but also] that it mean[s] cultural retention..." Wrongly, you seem to believe this state-sanctioned social-engineering policy has worked and that "...now we have blowback and the various challenges being waged over what constitutes reasonable accommodation for minority groups."
Well yes, we do. And so what?
Canadians have been arguing over reasonable accommodation between groups and, more importantly, between individuals, for 400 years or more. Where other countries have settled their differences through the barrel of a gun, Canada has opted for eternal argument, a process of evolution instead of revolution. We change our immigrants slowly, and slowly, our immigrants change Canada.
For the record, my extended family now includes (former) Belgians, English, First Nations, French, Germans, Italians, Jews, Nigerians, Norwegians, Poles, Russians, Scotts and Ukrainians - Canadians all.
Canada faces many problems, but the choice of immigrants to settle close to one another is not among the significant ones. January 26, 2008 16:03 EST
Jermaine Reyes: I admire Mr. Alexander’s observant eye, ear-to-the-ground perspective and see a man in tune to his city. I also appreciate his desire to envision something more than the empty praise heaped upon the textbook multicultural identity taught throughout my days of elementary school. But however worrisome the trends taking hold, despite his genuine interest in the debate over the reasonable accommodation of minority groups, I would like to tell Mr. Alexander that we - the subject of your investigation, the visible minority/soon to be majority, the actual inhabitants of those places you are guest and visitor to - are getting along quite well without your furrowed brow and troubled gaze upon us. We are too caught up in the business of life that already demands civility and respect and a sense of cooperation to prosper in this country that still feels it must single us out, whose government and media continues to reside in that stage of insecurity that seeks to put a label on a thing or person and classify it as ‘visible’ and ‘minority’ according to its own standard.
I would like to tell Mr. Alexander that I need not your dim outlook on my neighbourhood of Agincourt, which you find, “hard to imagine what kind of strange constellation of buildings, cars, and people might be.” Where your imagination fails, you can rest assured that ours are beginning to spark, but will heatedly refuse to apologize for not fulfilling your idea of what Canada and Canadians should be.
Prior to Mr. Alexander ever finding himself “puzzled by ethnicity,” this place already made sense to a mother escaping the Marcos regime and a father fleeing a life of peasantry. This place makes sense to peers in colleges and universities already reaping the rewards of intercultural dialogue Mr. Alexander duly notes.
Before you come to any conclusions Mr. Alexander, before you take to heart the Statistics Canada figures and pronouncements of high-minded academics, come talk to us. I promise we’ll give you something to be cheerful about. March 03, 2008 20:47 EST