A coarse-applied American study poses the shadow side of the diversitat of communities: each of the other a community is composed, the more people tend to mistrust and jerking
Companies will be richer through immigrants, enjoying the one who are afraid of others afraid. A number of investigations underpin the adoption of those who plan for diversity, and refers to coarse economic growth, more tax revenues, coarse creativity and better science (such a very high proportion of immigrants can be found, for example, among American Nobel printing directions). But the newer social research must now deal with a study result, which is more likely to become the arguments of the opponents of multicultural coexistence: the highly the diversitat is in a community, the lower their social capital, so the result of a coarse-compliant study under the direction of the renowned American Social researcher Robert Putnam out.
The study carried through Putnam in collaboration with the University of Manchester is roughly laid out, she was even allowed to be the biggest of her kind: over 30.000 people from a wide variety of life maintenance were interviewed — from 41 "communities", scattered on the whole US, from homogeneous communities in North Dakota, up to highly different composite residential quarters in San Francisco and Los Angeles. A division of US Census from 2000 took Putnam to help to divide the respondents into four categories: Fair, Latinos, Black and Asians.
At the center of the research interest of Putnam, social capital. His book "Bowling Alone" was allowed to know some. The thesis derived from 2000 from the unemployment of the Americans who are already captured in the title of the book was also known here in connection with the criticism of American (cf). My Charlotte, my parents and me).
With social capital, Putnam means the vital benefits, the social networks and associated elementary values such as exchange and confidence. As concrete examples, the social scientist manages that, for example, most jobs over social networks are awarded ("We Are Likely to Get Our Jobs Through Whom WE Know As Through What WE Know").
In addition, studies have been prove that children have growing together in environments with high social capital of healthy and safer and had a better education; The inhabitants of such places became more happy and age; Democracy and business were better working there, as Putnam himself determined in the 2000 study. Putnam is a dedicated scientist who is particularly strong for civil society participation; An American newspaper recently described him as a "National Guru of Burger Engagement".
The youngest findings of his study, which until 30.August to read in the trade magazine Scandinavian Political Studies online, Putnam (and many others also) now confront with an "uncomfortable truth": the social capital of a community, so the evaluations of Putnam and his team showed with the mab of diversitat the community off. Each of the different one community is composed, the smaller the social capital of Community.
In areas that showed himself by coarse diversitat of the inhabitants, showed:
- a lower confidence in the municipal self-government, the locals and local media
- a lesser confidence in your own influence or. The religion
- a lower turnout
- Lower expectation to the cooperation of others when it comes to community problems (eg.B. For water or power failure)
- a lower likelihood that someone employs a civil society organized project
- that the residents have less tight friends and familiar
- that they perceive themselves less themselves and gradually classify their life qualitat
- that you specify more TV and the "as the most important source of entertainment".
The study demonstrates, so Putnam, that people in such heterogeneous communities are retrying further — like snails. The mistrust compared to others is predominant. These results of the study refute previous amptions. Not only the amption that heterogeneous communities are bridge to people of other skin color or origin beating Konne, but also the theory, according to which mixed societies increase the tensions between the different groupings.
No "Bad Race Relations"
According to Putnam’s investigations, this is not the case — the residents do not react offensive, but with pronounced juxmal. The amazing of Putnam’s results is that the mistrust in such heterogeneous environments comprises all groupings — including those to which respondents themselves obedience. So not: the Latinos mistrust the wife, the blacks and the Asians, but the Latinos mistrust the Latin’s wives, the blacks and the Asians.
Although diversitat has not produced a "Bad Race Relations", so putnam, but the results and the conclusions of it are provocative. For science, this had the advantage that Putnam had the study again and again processed criteria and factors statistically controlled, checked or newly (B. Income, poverty, "Upscale and Downscale Neighbourhoods"; Gender: Women pull back faster than manner?; Education, political attitude, Age: Young people are different than early generations? Etc.) — But at the result nothing or only very insignificant.
The pattern did not appear, also as a putnam from all possible pages at reviewed: Diversitat affected manner like women, conservatives such as liberals, women like people of other skin color. Colleagues had accused him, according to Putnam, he forgot this "X" or that; At the end, it had been 20 or 30 x and the result is changed.
What emerged in more Diverse Communities What a Bleeak Picture of Civic Desolation, Affecting Everything from Political Engagement to the State of Social Ties.
Thus, Putnam remained only to add another to the truth of the study: that after his segregation, every modern society with anxious security must expect to be different in a generation than now. For a short period of time, as the result of the study shows, such a change a challenge for society. But that’s how Putnam, then positive perspectives were given: "Successful immigrants companies invent new forms of social solidarity and reduce the negative aspects of diversitat in which they build new identities with much more community.