Search results for social capital

Soon after the networks declared Donald Trump the winner of the 2016 presidential election, it became apparent that the Democratic party as we know it needs serious reform. Progressive luminaries wasted no time in offering autopsies and solutions for going forward. Bernie Sanders reiterated his claim for a political revolution. Elizabeth Warren reasserted her intention to challenge Wall Street excess. DNC chair hopeful Keith Ellison spoke of voter mobilization and community engagement.

The myriad of responses tend to be tied together by a tried and true Democratic party formula – economic populism. The response from these leaders is to provide a clearer message of standing against corporate capitalism by raising taxes on the wealthy, ensuring a living wage, providing free access to college and other noteworthy policies. These are all important elements of a new Democratic coalition, but how these policies are discussed and which of them are emphasized is an important determinant of their success.

While there are dozens of reasons for Hillary Clinton’s loss, a lack of economic populism was not one of them. Her policy positions very closely mirrored that of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Clinton’s policy shop painstakingly crafted proposals to help the middle and working class — from a minimum wage increase, to expanding the earned income tax credit, to offering universal pre-kindergarten. All these proposals were designed to help the very working families that turned their back to HRC en-masse.

Why did these policies fail to resonate? Some of the blame falls on poor messaging, or message confusion. But the deeper problem was the belief on the part of enough voters that Hillary Clinton “progressive economics” was just a kindler, gentler, top-down, globalism. Lots of voters surmised that Clinton wasn’t addressing what Ben Page and Martin Gilens found in their influential work on the connections between the wealthy and political elites. Voters on both the right and the left (unfairly) saw Hillary Clinton as a custodian of this system.

If a consensus is slowly building over the need to develop a sharper economic message, what should that message be? The natural response for the Democratic party is to adopt Bernie Sanders’ democratic socialist policy framing whole cloth. I think using this language is a bad and unnecessary idea. The party should adopt as a core principle the idea of democratizing capitalism or enacting policies that expand economic control over individual lives.

In many ways this is more a shift in message than in substance. Bernie Sanders’ plans to provide expanded higher education access and guarantees for individual health care are not simply “handouts” but tools that allow citizens to determine their own destines. But how progressives talk about these policies is as important as what they actually contain. Self-reliance and individual initiative are still deeply resonant core values in American society. Framing social welfare spending policy in terms of Democratic socialism primes many voters to view those policies as “handouts” even if they themselves might be key beneficiaries.

More importantly, framing college access or health care as socialist needlessly cedes rhetorical ground to the right. The terms “freedom” and “rights” are contested in political philosophy, but not in actual politics. The British philosopher T.H. Marshall notes that social rights (access to college, health care, etc.) are an essential part of individual human flourishing — true “freedom/liberty.” As a professor, I teach both sides of this coin as alternative visions of “the good life,” but in politics, concepts like freedom, liberty and capitalism are uncontested by Democrats. In our current political discourse, Democrats accede to Republicans the argument that corporatism equals freedom and state intervention equals socialist enslavement.

But language alone is not enough. Democrats need to emphasize policies that promote individual access to capital. One of Bernie Sanders most innovative (but least discussed) proposals was allowing the Post Office to provide banking services, thereby eliminating or significantly curtailing the predatory payday lending business. You can think of this policy as “government intrusion” into a private sector enterprise (payday lending) or as an effort to provide all Americans with easier access to the capital they need to thrive. Many small business owners have to take out credit card to invest in their start-ups because banks can make much more money through credit card rates and late fees. Regulatory schemes taht work to provide more access to voters might be fraught with unintended consequences, but the voting public should at least be given a clear alternative to deregulation and corporate rent-seeking as the only “free” position.

Progressives would be well served to reframe their policy agenda. Instead of calling it “universal health care” why not “health freedom.” Instead of “free college” why not “educational liberty.” Or how about calling the de-regulation of banks “economic tyranny”?

Democratizing capitalism is a message that can resonate with a wide swath of voters. Former Congressman Jack Kemp actually had interesting ideas about giving people in low-income housing projects the ability to purchase their homes. Teddy Roosevelt recognized that both government and corporate power could be tyrannical and destructive to individual freedom and need to be checked. We are in a populist moment. Identity politics and protecting the rights on marginalized groups is a key part of the Democratic party message, but in addition, the Democratic party has an essential role to play in offering a truly democratic alternative to corporatism.

This CollegeHumor parody eTrade ad has been making the rounds. In light of the recent stock market “correction”, what is underscored is there is a two-tiered market, as Jon Stewart claimed when he had Jim Cramer on The Daily Show in 2009—one for the powers that be and one for the rest of us. Economic sociology blasts apart the naïve assumption that markets have “atomized” agents guided by rational choice. There are embedded social networks and institutional factors that create information asymmetries, with the deck stacked in favour of those “in the know”. The individual investor and those relying on the market through defined contribution plans, IRAs, etc. for their retirements might relate to this parody ad far too well. Oh, how we should long for the days of the defined benefit pension.

As an aside, as one who has ditched the ivory tower for navigating the entrepreneurial waters, I can say one thing that I knew all along, but is abundantly clear in so many ways—the system is geared towards business and doors open that are closed to individuals, save for those with great means.

In light of the threat of the “r” word—recession, it’s easy to second-guess the “jobless recovery” and US economic policy aimed at bailouts {Obama style} and propping up the capital markets. While corporations are better off than they were three years ago, they have grown accustomed to sitting on cash and extracting more out of the labour force because it’s a buyers’ market. The unanimous consensus is that the economic indicators aren’t rosy and the prospects for US GDP growth are dim. The political focus on deficits is the last thing that the economy needed.

Was the stock market yet another bubble that’s about to burst? Canada’s housing bubble should cause worries, as well, as Canadian unemployment is still relatively high. Of course, Canada’s Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, refuses to acknowledge there’s a housing bubble, hoping the Canadian economy grows out of any and all predicaments, which is exactly what Obama, Geithner, et al were hoping from day one.

There are times when I feel Salon.com should be accompanied by a laughtrack or at least a wide assortment of humourous sound effects from Hanna-Barbera cartoons. This week, there’s a confessional tale by a guy who loved a scam. Jason Jellick was man who says he preyed upon liberal returns policies and was willing to tell lies to get free food from McDonalds or free upgrades at 5 star hotels. These mad skills made his friends green with envy. His idea was purportedly to stick it to the man, the corporate hegemon,—not individuals, but over time it became clear that he was interested in the art of the steal. He makes the distinction between shoplifting and conning trusting individuals and gaming a system meant to ensure customer satisfaction, but those distinctions are lost on me. In consumer behaviour lingo, Jellick is guilty of slippage—consumer actions that result in losses, and the only moral high ground he can stand on over shoplifters or Winona Ryder is that his actions are harder to detect as crimes or torts.

He sets this all up by recounting a tale of his mother’s Christmas scam and his conjecture that she was a member of the enlightened bourgeoisie::

“This was something I learned from watching my mother, who knew all too well how to root out a good con. Her defining scam was the Christmas special, when, on the day after Christmas, she’d gather up the presents from under the tree and return them to the stores along with the masses — poor Mommy forced to return all of her thoughtful gifts. But unlike most of those people, she’d circle back to the stores (once the shift change had taken effect) and repurchase those same presents for vastly reduced prices. Was this out of necessity? Was it out of some need to display her cunning? Looking back, I suspect my mother had become convinced of some higher moral agenda, in which the weak (the middle class) outfox the strong (the rich). All I know is that we always got what we wanted for Christmas.”

Ha! No, mommy was a hustler and taught her kids that the ends justify the means. I’m sure mommy would say that she’s just working the system. Don’t bitch her out, bitch out the system.

Jellick goes on to chronicle how he laxed his rule of only targeting corporations once he got a sweet taste of the confidence scam, including a bizarre Minnesota motel scam that went sideways. There’s also a bit of mea culpa and penance thrown in, since Salon needs to have some semblance of a moral centre. Salon tried to use the article as a springboard for more confessional tales::

While I think that stealing from {e.g., de Certeau’s “perruque”} or engaging in antisocial behaviour towards {e.g., Darnton’s “The Great Cat Massacre”} those with power is part of everyday life, there’s a Machiavellian posture taken by Jellick that leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth.

As an aside, this is the perfect Salon article attempting to get people to rethink pathological behaviour by ascribing some sort of higher meaning to the actions. Many commenters weren’t buying it and bitched Jellick out—there are 18 pages of comments, as of 2:25 PM EST. On Twitter, there are plenty of naysayers calling bullshit on his story {e.g., see @snarkysmachine}.

I think there are social implications for Jellick’s actions. I see them as the consumer counterpart to corporate practices that push in the opposite direction. I know of an instance at Wal*Mart in the 1990s where managers had unwritten policies that denied returns. Why? It helped the bottom line, which made the department manager look good, which made the store manager look good, which made the district manager look good…all the way to the shareholder. One could argue that Jellick and the Wal*Mart example are both pathological extremes. Jellick’s alleged “duping” of capitalism and Wal*Mart’s practices to limit returns are cut from the same bolt—these are highly individualistic actions motivated by gain. Jellick does recognize his own rationalizations for his behaviours, but one gets a sense that Jellick is just mouthing the words. His values are that of the theoretical homo economicus, acting rationally in his own self interest in a world of atomized, arms-length social actors. Mommy would be proud.

Twitterversion:: Jason Jellick @Salon article on conning capitalism. The grift is the reward, but sweeter w/phony bourgeois enlightenment. @ThickCulture @Prof_K

This blog post is part of a series on Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker article on how social activism during the Civil Rights era is categorically different from activism using social media. Malcolm Gladwell’s controversial piece in this week’s New Yorker is shaking things up, as he’s advocating that social media doesn’t lend itself well to social activism. He cites examples of how social media only fosters surface-level, low-commitment actions based on weak ties and that social movements, like those pushing for civil rights, require hierarchies. I disagree. Others have, as well, as John Hudson has compiled over on The Atlantic. I’ll focus on Gladwell’s take on weak ties in this post, which I find problematic due to his sweeping generalizations of ties and their potential in guiding everyday life. The Nature of Ties Gladwell claims that social media fosters weak ties::

“There is strength in weak ties, as the sociologist Mark Granovetter has observed. Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. The Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency. It’s terrific at the diffusion of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, seamlessly matching up buyers and sellers, and the logistical functions of the dating world. But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.”

Others have critiqued this by stating that social media tools {like Twitter and Facebook} can foster more than weak ties. Network structures are combinations of both weak and strong ties. The organizational research of Brian Uzzi at Northwestern {see image above} found that there are dangers of being overembedded {too many strong ties leading to insularity} and being underembedded {too many weak  or arms-length ties leading to a lacking of social structure}. Gladwell’s critique on this front hinges upon characterizing all networks as underembedded networks. There’s another issue here, which is the content of the tie. Ties can be characterized as strong or weak, but they can also be multiplex, i.e., representing a complex relationship that has more than one channel. For example, a tie can be characterized by flows of different types of capital, e.g., social, economic, political, etc., with varying degrees of strength. Social media campaigns can and do tap into networks and use people’s multiplex ties to increase engagement. Hearing about an issue through someone in your network is often more persuasive than from media and advertising, so there’s great potential here, but going from a social media campaign to action, let alone social change, is far from automatic.

My next post will address the issue of motivation and social media. Gladwell doesn’t think social media motivates people, but drives participation. I question this puzzling sweeping generalization.

Crossposting:: An abridged, less sociology-heavy version is here.

Notes from north of 49ºN.

Social capital is nothing new to ThickCulture, with quite a few posts on the topic, including this one by José, Trust is for Suckers.  When I teach sociology, I draw heavily on Pierre Bourdieu and have the class get a sense of how different forms of capital interact.  Cultural capital has always interested me {here’s a great overview of it by Weininger & Lareau}, despite going crazy trying to explain graphs like these::

I’ve used this very graph, but I’ve always wanted a way to engage students in a discussion of cultural capital that they could relate to.  So, I was catching up on Macleans reading and found articles on Canada’s smartest cities. It brings up an interesting question of how learning capacity affects the local economic development. The Composite Learning Index, using ideas developed by UNESCO, gauges a city’s ability to foster lifelong learning::

Twitterversion:: #newblogpost Hey Canada…How smart is your town? @macleansmag article on Composite Learning Index popularizing sociology? http://url.ie/1qkn  @Prof_K

Song:: Town Called Malice – The Jam

Video::

It was May Day here in Ontario.  I just Tweeted about a program I saw on TVO with socialism as a theme with Ontario NDP leader, Andrea Horwath, and political scientist at York University, Leo Panitch.

The discussions were interesting, but what really stuck with me was whether or not good politicians follow the votes or get the electorate to see things differently.  For example, given the anti-corporate climate, will politicians pander to where they think the electorate is or will they try to shape thinking about the economy?

Sell the sizzle, not the steak

In a shameless attempt to drive more pageviews, I included a pic. and cartoon of Ségolène Royal {Ségolène is a ThickCulture crowd-pleaser, according to our Google Analytics}, a French socialist {Parti Socialiste, PS} centre-left politician who ran for President in 2007 {losing to Sarkozy} and may run in 2012.    Say what you will about Ségolène, she manages to capture attention.  She has been known to have a quirky, evangelical style and has been accused by some as having a Joan of Arc complex.  Well, this sounds familiar (see Glenn Beck video from last fall).

The comparison isn’t accidental.  Obama with his power of persuasion, thus far, and the state of the economy may be providing a perfect storm for a change in the political zeitgeist. Will the Democrats see this as an opportunity to embrace that dreaded third-rail word, socialism, in terms of either rhetoric or implemented policy -or- would that just bring about a Gingrichian revolt akin to 1994?  Change?  What kind of change?  New Deal change?  New Frontier change?  Great Society change?  Is it a matter of the public looking for it -or- will savvy politicians frame a “new” economic order for them?  I think we’re in for seeing plenty of sizzle sold, but at some point, steak will have to be on the table, specifically, in terms of economic recovery.

The upcoming election in British Columbia is pitting the centre-left  (NDP) versus the centre-right (BC Liberal) {e.g., see blog on the BC Carbon Tax issue}, where the centre-left has a shot of controlling the provincial government.  Nationwide, the NDP support has risen 1 point since December to 13%, while the Liberals and Tories swapped positions and are polling 36 and 33%, respectively.  Perhaps regionally, there may a shift to the left {Canada has had NDP provincial governments in the past}, but I wonder as joblessness continues and bailouts persist, will national-scene politics in Canada and the US move towards a more socialist agenda?  While Barack is far from a socialist, he’s gaining comfort in his centre-left stance::

“The economic philosophy that Mr. Obama developed during the presidential campaign drew from across the ideological spectrum even as it remained rooted on the center-left. As that philosophy has been tested in practice through his early months in office, the president has if anything become more comfortable with an occasionally intrusive government as a counterweight to market forces that are now so powerful and fast-moving that they cannot be counted on to be self-correcting when things go wrong.”

–“Obamanomics: Redefining Capitalism After the Fall,” NYT, Richard W. Stevenson

So, are you ready for some socialism?  Will we see the selling of socialism?  Sounds like an oxymoron, but it may be a matter of time before we see something like this.  What’s Springsteen up to this summer?

I welcome any and all thoughts.

OK Ségo fans, while not entirely flattering, the following cartoon should help you with your fix. 

Twitterversion:: EpicFail for capitalism? Given current econ & political climate, is US/Canada ready for socialism? Will politicns pander or reshape thinkng?

Song::  

I spend holidays in Ontario, Canada and listen to CBC every so often.  I heard this episode of Spark with an interview with Clay Shirky (NYU).  They discuss concepts from his book, Here Comes Everybody, including “cognitive surplus,” where the Internet is taking advantage of people’s unstructured thinking time.  Where is this time coming from?  Aren’t our lives overbooked with no spare time.  Barry Wellman and other found that the rise of the Internet was hand in glove with less TV viewing.  

One of the issues about TV is that’s it’s passive.  It’s a passive consumption experience, while the Internet in Web 2.0 can have the potential to be participatory, involving producing content, sharing content, and viewing content.

They also discuss how Web 2.0 is adding value in ways that would not be undertaken by market forces.  No firm or organization would undertake creating a tagged image repository such as Flickr with its 1B images, but enabling the crowd to do so is a big idea.  The question is how the limits of the freemium model in commercial possibilities.

• Will the crowd help firms/organizations see the path to cash?  (Revenues)

I think there’s also an interesting discussion on intellectual property sharing.  Will mass amateurization become commonplace?  Yes.  New opportunities will transform our relationship with innovations and intellectual property, as open source will open doors and close others.  

While not discussed on Spark, independent researchers can even engage in medical research, as evidenced by a physician hacking into his daughter’s DNA.   Many nations have an eye on the biotech prize, as this has huge implications for the cost of health care and on pharmaceutical innovations, how will open source affect biotech?

• Will the scale and scope of China (given their take on open source) blast apart our current notions of property rights and capitalizing on intellectual property rights?

Much of these discussions go back to the idea of data.  23andme is allowing users to get a DNA report.  You need not identify yourself, but they will be able to use and sell the aggregate data.  

I think we’re in new territory here with innovations, open source, and globalization.  I think it’s unclear what the “rules” are and we need to be aware for signs that the market is not working.  After all, value was created by Flickr, but it was the “wisdom” of the crowd that played a huge role in enabling it.

Finally, I thought there were good points on the notion of ethics and Web 2.0.  I’m not a technological utopian and I feel that technology transforms culture and often amplifies what is going on already.  Did MySpace spontaneously “create” pedophiles?  (Or did a brainchild for a NBC ratings grab create the illusion of an epidemic?)  Did MySpace create  real dangers for the youth?  The research points to ‘no’ on both counts, but the question remains:

• How will culture manifest itself online with norms, sanctions, and rules of conduct?

I liked Shirky’s quote that ethicists are like ambulance chasers.  Not to slam ethicists, but I think it’s extremely difficult to create prescriptions or a normative mode for an evolving social context.

In California, identity politics is a way of life.  Ask Pete Wilson, ex-Governor of California on how Latino politics can derail a career, as detailed in a LA Times magazine article from 2004.  The same article highlights Republican concerns with shifting demographics::

“Many Republicans view the mushrooming Latino voter rolls in the same way a person looks at a growing mole: One hopes it’s benign but fears for the worst.”

Unlike in California where immigration is resulting in dramatic demographic shifts, here in Canada, a hot-button issue is Québec separatism that stems from centuries-old disputes.  The province of Québec has a distinct francophone culture when compared to the rest of predominantly anglophone Canada and this cultural divide naturally affects politics at both the provincial and federal levels.

Currently, at the federal level, Canada {with a variation of the Westminster parliamentary system} has a minority government {plurality of parliamentary seats} with Conservative Stephen Harper as Prime Minister.  Minority governments tend to be unstable.  Indicative of this, the Conservatives had a scare last December when Stephen Harper angered the other parties, bringing the country to the brink of Constitutional crisis.  Recent polls in Canada showed that about half of the voters wanted a more stable majority government, where one party has a majority of the seats.  Moreover, recent polls indicated that support for the Conservatives is dwindling, likely leading to a situation where the Conservatives and Liberals have close to the same number of seats, further deadlocking Parliament.  An article a week and a half ago by the Montréal Gazette brought up a controversial argument::

The 2008 federal results in Québec saw BQ making a strong showing with 49 ridings {seats} of 75 in Québec and 308 in Canada. The map below shows Bloc in light blue, Conservatives (PC) in dark blue, Liberals (LP) in Red, and New Democrats (NDP) in orange. The Bloc is strong throughout the province, while the Conservatives have support in a few rural areas, and the Liberals and NDP have appeal in or near the cities of Montréal and Ottawa.

“It’s the same good old Liberal Party of Canada that wants to put Québec in its place.”

–Pierre Paquette, Bloc MP Joliette

“It shows that he’s not only been out of Canada for 35 years, he’s never known anything about Québec except what he learned at Upper Canada College and, frankly, I’m not afraid of him a bit.”

–Thomas Mulcair, NDP MP Outremont

Song:: Tricot Machine -L’Ours {Montréal, QC}

Bummer chart of the day….unless you’re in the military, or a devoted misanthrope.  new data from the 2008 General Social Survey shows declining levels of trust for every institution in the United States except for the military and education.

What accounts for this mass scale institutional distrust?  I think Robert Putnam has a book that talks about this stuff 🙂  One way of looking at all this is to weep for civil society and make the Putnam argument that this is evidence of a decline in social capital.  If we all had each other over for dinner, we’d trust each other more and thus trust the public institutions in which we all have a stake.

I think there’s a lot to this, but I’d offer we also this of this cynicism as increased expectations.  As society has become more inured to mass marketing appeals, we’ve become more desirous of more transparency and more effectiveness from our institutions.  This increased demand that our institutions produce more can be damaging int that they may not be designed to produce at a high level (I’m looking at you California government).  But they can also be the result of a sense of greater agency and efficacy amongst the public in general.

We’ve become a high standards people.  That can redound to our benefit if people back up their high expectations with a sense of engagement.  I fear that our “high expectations” culture is devolving into a flabby grousing about corrupt politicians without any real intention of addressing the problem.

HT: Social Capital Blog