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Why has "community engagement" broken down? The author phrases it in terms of "omg kids and their cell phones, lol" but it's at least worth contemplating: - th

Why has "community engagement" broken down? The author phrases it in terms of "omg kids and their cell phones, lol" but it's at least worth contemplating: - there was a massive campaign of neighborhood destruction from post-WW2 era to perhaps the mid 1990s, resulting in atomization, suburbanization, and quasi-military occupation of the remainder. There is a robust hypothesis that city living is at the root of civic engagment and that, eg, the Great Migrations explain the timing of the civil rights movement. Suburbanization is basically that in reverse. The atomization that happens when you geniunely can't trust your neighbors is as well. - "civic engagement" of a kind retrospectively judged to be "wrong" now goes on your Permanent Record. It's potentially unsafe to organize to do many meaningful things. - major institutions have lost their ability to be as exclusionist as they historically felt necessary to prevent entryism that fundamentally changes the nature of the institution. Instutions historically leading "civic engagment" become ineffective or lose their original purpose. - relentless focus on vacant aggregation-friendly metrics amongst our elite. You can put "volunteer hours" on a spreadsheet, thus, you get the optimal number of "volunteer hours", rather than civic engagment per se. Elite high school & college-age populations simply lack time for meaningful civic engagement, most of which is indistinguishable on a spreadsheet from "hanging out" - ironically, "chilling on the agora" is essentially what civic engagement breaks down to.

cbd1984 12y ago
> there was a massive campaign of neighborhood destruction ... driven by the fact most people who lived in cities, pre-WWII, didn't live in nice gentrified neighborhoods with fixed-up brownstones and Local Character. They lived in slums with crappy, run-down tenements and whatever you call what happens when you shove as many people as possible into as little room as you can bribe someone to let you get away with. Crime and disease, that's it. Having a GI Bill education, a car which let you move even if the trolley schedule said you stayed put, and a house with a yard where your kids don't end up in roving gangs sounded pretty damn good. It sounded like the American Dream. > There is a robust hypothesis that city living is at the root of civic engagment and that, eg, the Great Migrations explain the timing of the civil rights movement. To be clear, I agree with all this. My point is that it's important to maintain historical perspective, lest we fall into the trap of imagining that people from the past weren't reacting to comprehensible forces. Yes, some of those forces came down to frank racism, but others were as I mentioned above, and ignoring the good reasons while emphasizing the bad ones is not only an insult to history, it's a stumbling block to understanding the present. > major institutions have lost their ability to be as exclusionist as they historically felt necessary to prevent entryism that fundamentally changes the nature of the institution. So... social clubs have to let in blacks, now? Is that what you're saying? > relentless focus on vacant aggregation-friendly metrics amongst our elite. You can put "volunteer hours" on a spreadsheet, thus, you get the optimal number of "volunteer hours", rather than civic engagment per se. If you don't have rules, you have favoritism. If you do have rules, you have rules lawyering. If you have rules which are up to interpretation, you don't have rules.
- fiatmoney 12y ago
  "So... social clubs have to let in blacks, now? Is that what you're saying?" Ironically, this kind of baiting is exactly one of the contributors to social dissolution I'm talking about. Speaking at the PTA? Better hope one of your "neighbors" doesn't decide it's politically convenient to crucify you as having said something Wrong and put it on your Permanent Record. To give you a concrete for-instance of "entryism", the Campus Christian Club being forbidden to discriminate based on religion. Or, ongoing conflicts between the lesbian community and trans people who wish to participate in it, and between the broader feminist community and its lesbian contingent. Or, the institutional weakness of political parties in the US due to inability to restrict their memberships by ideology, and consequent flow of power to more unaccountable groups. It's probably not a huge contributor to social dissolution, all things considered, but there is a reason why it is said that "good fences make good neighbors".
  - A_COMPUTER 12y ago
    To support your suggestion, look at the decline of benefit societies, fraternal orders, clubs and the like. Things that have impacted them are: threat from broad anti-discrimination penalty powers; displacement of things like aid/insurance with government programs that are more widely available but administered by distant, impersonal bureaucracies; a general American "anti-exclusivity" attitude; stricter enforcement of separation of church and state issues. I'm not necessarily suggesting we should go back, after all those changes were made for good reasons. But it could be that those changes also had serious negative effects that have to be factored into social planning. On the other hand, I could be mixing up cause and effect.
  - navait 12y ago
    >Speaking at the PTA? Better hope one of your "neighbors" doesn't decide it's politically convenient to crucify you as having said something Wrong and put it on your Permanent Record. I know petty things happen when nothing is on the line, but your idea of the average PTA is ludicrous. There is no permanent record; People forget even controversial ideas quickly in such a situation. You have to act like a total douchebag to make a permanent negative impression on something like a PTA.

cbd1984 12y ago

> there was a massive campaign of neighborhood destruction ... driven by the fact most people who lived in cities, pre-WWII, didn't live in nice gentrified neighborhoods with fixed-up brownstones and Local Character. They lived in slums with crappy, run-down tenements and whatever you call what happens when you shove as many people as possible into as little room as you can bribe someone to let you get away with. Crime and disease, that's it. Having a GI Bill education, a car which let you move even if the trolley schedule said you stayed put, and a house with a yard where your kids don't end up in roving gangs sounded pretty damn good. It sounded like the American Dream. > There is a robust hypothesis that city living is at the root of civic engagment and that, eg, the Great Migrations explain the timing of the civil rights movement. To be clear, I agree with all this. My point is that it's important to maintain historical perspective, lest we fall into the trap of imagining that people from the past weren't reacting to comprehensible forces. Yes, some of those forces came down to frank racism, but others were as I mentioned above, and ignoring the good reasons while emphasizing the bad ones is not only an insult to history, it's a stumbling block to understanding the present. > major institutions have lost their ability to be as exclusionist as they historically felt necessary to prevent entryism that fundamentally changes the nature of the institution. So... social clubs have to let in blacks, now? Is that what you're saying? > relentless focus on vacant aggregation-friendly metrics amongst our elite. You can put "volunteer hours" on a spreadsheet, thus, you get the optimal number of "volunteer hours", rather than civic engagment per se. If you don't have rules, you have favoritism. If you do have rules, you have rules lawyering. If you have rules which are up to interpretation, you don't have rules.

fiatmoney 12y ago
"So... social clubs have to let in blacks, now? Is that what you're saying?" Ironically, this kind of baiting is exactly one of the contributors to social dissolution I'm talking about. Speaking at the PTA? Better hope one of your "neighbors" doesn't decide it's politically convenient to crucify you as having said something Wrong and put it on your Permanent Record. To give you a concrete for-instance of "entryism", the Campus Christian Club being forbidden to discriminate based on religion. Or, ongoing conflicts between the lesbian community and trans people who wish to participate in it, and between the broader feminist community and its lesbian contingent. Or, the institutional weakness of political parties in the US due to inability to restrict their memberships by ideology, and consequent flow of power to more unaccountable groups. It's probably not a huge contributor to social dissolution, all things considered, but there is a reason why it is said that "good fences make good neighbors".
- A_COMPUTER 12y ago
  To support your suggestion, look at the decline of benefit societies, fraternal orders, clubs and the like. Things that have impacted them are: threat from broad anti-discrimination penalty powers; displacement of things like aid/insurance with government programs that are more widely available but administered by distant, impersonal bureaucracies; a general American "anti-exclusivity" attitude; stricter enforcement of separation of church and state issues. I'm not necessarily suggesting we should go back, after all those changes were made for good reasons. But it could be that those changes also had serious negative effects that have to be factored into social planning. On the other hand, I could be mixing up cause and effect.
- navait 12y ago
  >Speaking at the PTA? Better hope one of your "neighbors" doesn't decide it's politically convenient to crucify you as having said something Wrong and put it on your Permanent Record. I know petty things happen when nothing is on the line, but your idea of the average PTA is ludicrous. There is no permanent record; People forget even controversial ideas quickly in such a situation. You have to act like a total douchebag to make a permanent negative impression on something like a PTA.