Critically Summarizing Putnam's Position
Adrian Johnston (rdm9298@jeeves.la.utexas.edu)
Tue, 3 Oct 1995 12:43:43 -0500
Robert D. Putnam, in "Making Democracy Work," presents his readers with an
impressive amount of charts, graphs, and empirical data. Within the
microcosm of Italian regional politics (Putnam's laboratory of sorts here),
Putnam seems to believe that he's capable of definitively demonstrating both
what civil/democratic societies/governments consist of and under what
conditions they are capable of sustained development and "success." Putnam
then goes on to define his terms, crucial to the methodological research
gathering and assessment, and in so doing reveals what his own understanding
(beyond the "objective veneer" of statistics and graphs) of "civility"
amounts to.
The fundamental questions that Putnam must answer from the outset, in
order for all of his research to amount to anything, are "what is civil
society?" "How is this type of society related to a 'successful' democracy?"
In and of itself, the empirical data is meaningless; it only takes on a
significance within the larger framework of Putnam's built-in assumptions.
So then, what is the paradigm for civil society and democracy that Putnam is
using here? Since Putnam appears to argue that a vibrant "civil society" is
required for a "successful" (democratic) government, this inquiry will begin
with Putnam's views on the social structures involved in this Italian
experiment.
Before he sets-about gathering and analyzing the data on social patterns,
Putnam defines "civic-mindedness" as high individual identifications with the
larger public sphere and with the increased participation in public life that
results from such an identification. A "civil society" is one in which its
citizens are actively engaged with each other on some neutral public ground
where everybody is "equal." For such a society, individuals' trust in their
institutions and in each other is the most valuable form of social capital.
In measurable terms, Putnam's definition of "civicness" amounts to
determining the approximate density of associational life. What types of
associations qualify as civil for Putnam? What activities are "civil?"
There are basically four indexes of the degree of civility of a society for
Putnam: voluntary association participation, newspaper-readership/media-
participation, public referendum turnout, and preference-voting patterns.
This summary/analysis is only going to scrutinize two of these indexes, the
voluntary association category and the newspaper/media area. In both of
these cases, Putnam's definitions of terms, methodological constraints, and
inherent assumptions lead to several problematics crucial for any discussion
of "civil society" (especially in areas such as the Middle East).
With the issue of associationalism, Putnam's data ends-up showing that 73
percent of the groups he qualifies as "civic" are athletic organizations.
Why is this the case? Are "locker rooms" crucial to a functional democratic
system? Instead of grappling with the meaning of the positive "empirical"
results in this instance, perhaps it would be better to consider what
groups were excluded as relevant and why. The primary group excluded in this
study of Italy was the Catholic church and any of its affiliated religious
networks (even though the Catholic church's complex involvement/intertwining
in Italian society is unarguably a massive, historically-entrenched fact).
For Putnam, a civil society is a secular society. Why are soccer clubs more
civil than church organizations? Putnam argues that the Church is a
hierarchized, pedagogical order; it can't qualify as civil since it lacks
the essential element of egalitarianism (the "fellowship" of sports).
Putnam's definition of civility now turns on a flimsy opposition between
secular "freedom" and religious "authoritarianism." Once one forgoes the
naieve assumption that secular society is free of pedagogy itself (or that
religion is all authority and no individual participation), Putnam's
exclusion of religious groups appears both unjustifiable and irrationally
biased (consider the ramifications of Putnam's study for Islamic societies;
they could hardly even qualify as "civil" ever).
The second index of Putnam's that will be scrutinized here is the media-
participation measure of civility. Putnam feels that by doing such things
as reading a newspaper, an individual is somehow participating in the public
sphere and shows an interest in the larger society. Considering his reason-
ing above for the exclusion of religion-as-civil on the grounds of it being
hierarchical, Putnam is being inconsistent (or naieve again) in assuming the
media to be free of pedagogy. Like the priest at mass, the media decides
on what is important to discuss, and in a sense "preaches" to its audience.
If Putnam allows the media to play a role in increasing civicness, then why
does he deny religion the same capacity? For some reason, sitting around
reading a newspaper is more "civic" than actively joining and participating
in a religious group that involves meeting people and exchanging
conversations about various topics (?!).
Finally, the issue of economics in relation to "civil society" presents a
major stumbling-block for Putnam. Even though all of the Italian regions
whose "civility" scores were high were also the wealthy ones of the north,
Putnam argues that economics plays no causal role in his study. In order
to explain why the fault-line of "civility" falls along the same division of
Italy in economic terms (the rich and civil north versus the poor and
unstable south), Putnam claims that strong civil societies create prosperous
economies (and not vice versa). And amidst all of this plethora of "hard"
social scientific data, what arises to support this "established" causal
sequence? On pages 155 and 157 appear two little charts drawn by Putnam.
No data or gathered results are contained in these charts; only a visual
reinforcement of Putnam's assumptive claim. It's surprising that Putnam
is so critical of "pedagogy" when one examines this central issue that he
attempts to gloss-over.
-----------
Remote host: bur-mac9.la.utexas.edu