Article Review: Diversity and Social Capital in the 21st Century

E Pluribus Unum, a principle to symbolize the diversity of the people of the United States. In more or less the same position, we can place E Pluribus Unum equivalent to the principle of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, a principle that emphasizes the important elements of diversity. This article by Robert Putnam was read when he received the Johan Skytte Prize in 2006 from Uppsala University.

This award is given annually by the political science department at Uppsala University, especially to political scientists who are considered to have made a major contribution to the development of political science. Beyond the discussion regarding the celebration, this article has had a major impact on discussions of social capital (social capital), especially in the context of the success of this article in encouraging more serious studies regarding social capital.

The main focus of this article is on issues of society and diversity, especially in northern countries, or what are known as advanced industrialist countries. However, the development of industrialization in the northern countries was followed by the development of society. Of the many stories, migration is one of the fragments that cannot be separated from the stories of developed countries. The United States is one of the countries with a high degree of heterogeneity.

In his article, Putnam explained that in the future, heterogeneity will be higher along with increasing immigration to the country. The challenge lies in how, in the long run, a country manages this diversity, so that this diversity can have a positive effect on issues such as culture, economy, fiscal and development. The topic discussed by Putnam brings us to a discussion related to social capital, a concept that has indeed stuck and led Putnam to receive the Johan Skytte Prize. Let's elaborate on the concept of social capital.

Social Capital and Diversity

Basically, the concept of social capital is a discussion that has been elaborated by Putnam for a long time. Before Putnam, there were already many scientists and thinkers who discussed this conception. Among these many names, there are the names of Piere Bourdieau and James Coleman, both known as sociologists and thinkers. Apart from this name, there is the name of Francis Fukuyama who is also known as a political scientist. Compared to Fukuyama, Putnam's name first established himself as a political scientist who elaborated social capital with democracy.

Putnam's initial research on social capital was in Italy, when he looked at how social structures in North and South Italy formed different social capital. In simple and concise terms, social capital can be understood as social bonds in which there are norms of reciprocity and trust. The results from Putnam's study show that northern Italy forms social networks that cut across distinct group identities, or so-called bridging social capital, while southern Italy forms an exclusive social network, otherwise known as bonding social capital (Putnam, 1994; 2000). The main differentiator of the two regions is in their social structure, northern Italy has settings social industrial society that allows for more egalitarian social interactions. In contrast to southern Italy, which has a strong patron-client pattern, considering that in this region there are still several royal structures and many mafia groups.

Based on these two categories related to social capital, Putnam elaborates a discussion related to diversity and social capital. In this article, Putnam elaborates on two theorizing related to this discussion, namely contactand conflict theory. contact theory emphasizes that diversity will reduce differences between groups of people who are identical with our attributes, such as ethnic, religious and other tribal attributes, and encourage cross-group solidarity, or what is commonly referred to as bridging social capital. On a different side, conflict theory emphasizes that diversity will strengthen differences and strengthen solidarity in groups, or what is called bonding social capital.

In this article, Putnam adds a category which explains that diversity can reduce inward and outward solidarity, or in other words reduce bridging social capital and bonding social capitalat the same time. It is labeled by Putnam as constrict theory. Based on a conceptual structure like this, Putnam then pushes propositions related to diversity and social capital. For him in the short term, there will be clashes between people regarding diversity, but in the long term, diversity will have a positive effect on external aspects such as democracy, economy, and culture.

The proposition presented by Putnam was criticized in part by himself. However, the issue of identity in the 21st century is different from previous decades. Identity is not a standard or fixed construction. As an illustration, a child born to a father from Latin America and a mother from India, for example, will find it difficult to identify himself as Latin American or Indian. These problems are even more complicated when the context influences how we evaluate diversity in the region. For studies related to this matter, it is needed process tracing to see how the social construction in the region is formed from time to time.

Citizenship

In a more in-depth discussion, Putnam's article emphasizes how a country manages immigrant integration policies to be able to blend with existing citizens. In different languages, it is important that the conception of citizenship is placed as the main value, beyond ethnocentrism identities. Identity as a citizen of the United States or in our context, as a citizen of Indonesia, must be above ethnic identity. The hope is that these diverse identities will enable us to be able to encourage joint actions, or in different ways to encourage citizenship norms.

The problem is, immigration integration is not as easy as imagined. My personal experience shows this. In 2014, when I was still taking a course in Political Science at Uppsala University, there was an incident of stabbing an immigrant against a 'local resident'. At a different moment, there was sexual harassment committed by immigrants from the Middle East. As a country that is known to be quite friendly towards immigrants, Sweden is overwhelmed in managing its immigrants, as evidenced by the problem of conflicting norms. Society in the Middle East perhaps rarely saw women with more revealing clothes and failed to adopt the norm in Sweden. This is a small fragment related to policy failures related to immigration.

On a different side, world politics shows a tendency for populism to operate in elections in democratic countries. One example of how populism works is in the 2016 United States election. The candidates running at that time were Donald Trump from the Republican party and Hillary Clinton from the Democrat party. The story ends with Donald Trump's victory with the tagline Make America Great Again, accompanied by a policy offer to build a wall on the border of the United States with Mexico, as well as issues regarding immigration. The construction of this border wall, however, is a symbol of how Trump approaches immigration and diversity issues. As a result, this election battle has positioned the Republicans as a party that is blatantly anti-immigrant, while the Democrats are on the opposite side.

In the Indonesian context, the 2017 DKI Jakarta regional elections show something similar. Identity mobilization with a main narrative of religious background divides society into two large groups of supporters of each candidate, both Anies Baswedan and Basuki Tjahaja Purnama. Although in a different context, the issue of diversity has become a crucial subject of discussion, especially in the 21st century when diversity is an unavoidable issue.

Contribution

The Putnam study was built using quantitative data with population census data sources and dividing areas based on homogeneity and heterogeneity of the population, associated with variables trust. The construction of this data is basically similar to his book entitled 'Bowling Alone' with the main focus on the declining level of individual involvement in associations in the United States. The quantitative data structure compiled in the first half of the article aims to demonstrate homogeneity and heterogeneity issues, especially in relation to its theoretical proportions regarding the management of diversity in the long and short term.

In the other half, this article describes the unanswered questions related to identity and diversity. These issues span from various paradigms to methods, from post-structuralist paradigms to methods process tracing. Putnam seemed aware of the many unanswered questions. In this context, this article is positioned as a reference point for scientists who wish to conduct research related to social capital and diversity. If we look back at the citation level of this article, it can be said that the purpose of this article is to provoke a similar topic of discussion.

Bibliography

Putnam, RD (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of the American community. Simon and Schuster. Putnam, RD (2007). E pluribus unum: Diversity and community in the twenty‐first century the 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture. Scandinavian political studies, 30(2), 137-174.
Putnam, RD, Leonardi, R., & Nanetti, RY (1994). Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton universitypress.