Off Topic => General Off Topic => Topic started by: Angantyr on April 09, 2016, 07:44:31 pm
Title: Diversity and division
Post by: Angantyr on April 09, 2016, 07:44:31 pm
On Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam's study on multi-culturalism, involving more than 30,000 North Americans.
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People in ethnically diverse urban regions tend to 'hunker down' into their own little worlds. "Diversity, at least in the short run, seems to bring out the turtle in all of us," says Harvard's Robert Putnam. "The more ethnically diverse the people we live around, the less we trust them."
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While Putnam believes there may be long-term benefits for some from immigration (including enhanced scientific and intellectual innovation), he’s become convinced the short-term effect on most cities is a drop in “social capital.”
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As Putnam summarizes, higher diversity leads to “lower confidence in local government, local leaders and the local news media … less expectation others will cooperate to solve dilemmas … less likelihood of working on a community project … lower likelihood of giving to charity … and less happiness and lower perceived quality of life.”
One of the most serious downsides of greater diversity, emphasize Putnam and others, is people become more reluctant to pay taxes.
Glaeser, Collier and others have discovered higher ethnic diversity leads to more reluctance to redistribute wealth. In high-immigrant societies, Glaeser found the relatively well-off have less empathy for those on lower incomes because they don’t see them as being basically like themselves.
Title: Re: Diversity and division
Post by: Daunt_Flockula on April 09, 2016, 10:04:39 pm
Obviously ethnic diversity isn't the only factor that divides a society. Religious diversity (not necessarily interreligious, but intra-religious too) does that as well. It is in the average human's nature to approach any kind of difference in a sceptical manner, and thus consider it to be an element of dissolution.
Title: Re: Diversity and division
Post by: The_Bloody_Nine on April 09, 2016, 10:31:57 pm
Title: Re: Diversity and division
Post by: Prpavi on April 10, 2016, 01:13:17 am
Seems about right, there were studies I read years ago that basically said the same thing.
Title: Re: Diversity and division
Post by: Rhekimos on April 10, 2016, 02:10:07 am
Fear the other and tear into each another's throats!
Title: Re: Diversity and division
Post by: Butan on April 10, 2016, 02:12:02 am
... and when the aftershock has passed, people go back to normal.
It happened with religion/government; and will happen to culture/language.
Title: Re: Diversity and division
Post by: Kalam on April 12, 2016, 07:30:21 pm
I don't know why cultural appropriation gets a bad reputation. It's how cultures grow. In an ideal world, this would function like this: you see something cool or more effective that some other culture does, and then you do it too. It's this model that attempts at assimilation should follow. Encouraging new groups of people to build enclaves instead of absorbing them into the wider population is problematic.
Imagine a country is a giant amorphous jelly like ball. Say your country is a red ball. Right now, when blue people come in, they make tiny little blue balls inside your giant red ball. Instead, they should be absorbed into your red ball, so your red ball gets a little purple.
Oddly enough, colonization and imperialism occasionally did this right. Don't get me wrong, most of it was horrible for the people involved, but you've got to look at the good as well as the bad. If you're a human, your ancestors lost to a foreign culture at some point. I sure as hell wouldn't agree with how any of my ancestors lived. Hell, I disagree with living the way my parents live.
There's a curious effect in the United States. Millenials move to cities where people in their subculture are more common, and in a way, make themselves more homogeneous. Sure, these new subcultures are not necessarily connected to ethnicity or nationalism, but it's still a division that will probably threaten stability in the future.
Title: Re: Diversity and division
Post by: Daunt_Flockula on April 12, 2016, 08:08:34 pm
The whole idea is beautiful, yet doesn't work. Especially when the different groups stay in lumps, meaning they don't make an effort to blend in with each other, no absorption takes place. Instead different groups start silently clashing.
I have always found Turks in Germany to be a good example. See if they were just individuals scattered around, they would have and want to integrate. Although it would be difficult, they'd still try, because they'd have no other option. But they are living in large groups. They never became part of Germany. They never accepted the culture and identity. Rather than that, they chose to build their own congregations, staying more or less the same. That might change one day as generations keep following one another, but that will be an extremely slow process.
Title: Re: Diversity and division
Post by: Butan on April 12, 2016, 09:11:58 pm
Thats relatively true Flockula, but there is always also silent absorption taking place even within the worst environment (ghettos). Of course its not the dreamed assimilation, but 0% assimilation simply doesnt exist.
Title: Re: Diversity and division
Post by: Daunt_Flockula on April 12, 2016, 10:01:40 pm
The assimilation of course isn't 0%. However, the absorption takes place so slowly that it is downright insignificant. There are some among those Turks who are now seniors, have spent almost their entire lives in Germany and still speak only piss poor German. They dwell in the same neighborhood, build their mosques, exert immense pressure on their young ones, and try really hard to not be even remotely German.
As I said, this cycle will eventually break after numerous generations. In this particular case though, it will surely take a lot more than it should.
Title: Re: Diversity and division
Post by: Butan on April 13, 2016, 12:31:51 pm