Agreed. Thanks for the links!

--
Jeff Denis
PhD Student
Department of Sociology
Harvard University

"The principle of organizing our society for the benefit of all the people and
not for a privileged few - that is still here and that is a principle to which
we adhere." - Tommy C. Douglas



Quoting Dennis Raphael <[log in to unmask]>:

> I absolutely agree with you.  But too often the structural analysis stops
> at the social capital level, with the attendant community-celebrating and
> community-blaming being the end result.  Toba Bryant, Robb Travers and I
> have a paper appearing in. Promotion and Education that argues that
> community research and action should be concerned with mobilizing
> communities to improve the social determinants of health through explicit
> political action.
>
> Sadly, much of the social capital literature is strikingly depoliticized
> and serves the interest of the entrenched.  See especially Robert Putnam
> being frequently being welcomed to the Clinton White House!
>
> see
>
> International Journal of Epidemiology 2002;31:261-267
>
> Essay Review
>
> Social capital, class gender and race conflict, and population health: an
> essay review of Bowling Alone's implications for social epidemiology
> Bowling alone. The collapse and revival of American community. RD Putnam.
> New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000, pp.544, US$26. ISBN: 0 684 83283 6.
> Carles Muntaner and John Lynch
>
> Full text at: http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/31/1/261
>
> -------------------------
>
> For whom the ball rolls
> Pollitt, Katha. The Nation. New York: Apr 15, 1996.Vol.262, Iss. 15;  pg.
> 9, 1 pgs
>
> Abstract (Document Summary)
> Pollitt comments on Robert Putnam, whose article "Bowling Alone: America's
> Declining Social Capital" has gotten him a great deal of attention. Putnam
> argues that declining memberships in civic institutions have led to a
> weakened civil society.
>
> The only things I like about bowling are the shoes and the beer. Maybe
> that's why I can't get excited about Robert Putnam, the Harvard political
> scientist whose slender article "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social
> Capital" in the January 1995 Journal of Democracy, has spawned more
> commentary than Hamlet, including a profile in People, and brought him
> tete-a-tete with President Clinton, whose State of the Union address he
> helped inspire. Putnam argues that declining membership in such venerable
> civic institutions as bowling leagues, the P.T.A., the League of Women
> Voters, the Boy Scouts, the Elks and the Shriners is an index of a
> weakened "civil society," the zone of social engagement between the family
> and the state. Why should you care about the leagues? Because, says
> Putnam, they bowl for thee: A weak civil society means less "trust" in
> each other, and that means a less vigorous democracy, as evidenced in
> declining electoral turnouts.
>
> It's the sort of thesis academics and pundits adore, a big woolly argument
> that's been pre-reduced to a soundbite of genius. Bowling alone--it's
> wistful, comical, nostalgic, sad, a tiny haiku of post-industrial
> loneliness. Right-wingers like Francis Fukuyama and George Will like it
> because it can be twisted to support their absurd contention that
> philanthropy has been strangled by big government. Clintonians and
> communitarians like it because it moralizes a middle-class, apolitical
> civic-mindedness that recognizes no hard class or race inequalities
> shaping individual choice: We are all equally able to volunteer for the
> Red Cross, as we are all equally able to vote. Putnam's prime culprit in
> the decline of civic America--television--is similarly beyond the reach of
> structural change. It's as though America were all one big leafy suburb,
> in which the gladhanders and do-gooders had been bewitched by the evil
> blue light of Seinfeld and Friends.
>
> At least Putnam doesn't blame working mothers. Still, the discussion
> around "Bowling Alone" is peculiar in a number of ways. How many of those
> who praise its thesis fit either half of his theory, I wonder: Is Bill
> Bradley a Shriner? Does The Washington Post's David Broder bake cookies
> for the P.T.A.? If not, is the boob tube to blame? As Theda Skocpol noted
> in her politely devastating rejoinder to Putnam's follow-up article, "The
> Strange Disappearance of Civic America," in The American Prospect (Winter
> 1996), Putnam seems to place both the burden of civic engagement and
> responsibility for its collapse on the non-elite classes. Tenured
> professors may be too busy to sing in a choir (Putnam's former avocation):
> The rest of us are just couch potatoes.
>
> Although Putnam is careful to disclaim nostalgia for the fifties, his
> picture of healthy civic life is remarkably, well, square. I've been a
> woman all my life, but I've never heard of the Federation of Women's
> Clubs. And what politically minded female, in 1996, would join the bland
> and matronly League of Women Voters, when she could volunteer with Planned
> Parenthood or NOW or Concerned Women of America, and shape the debate
> instead of merely keeping it polite? It's probably going too far to argue
> that the decline of the Boy Scouts is directly related to its barring of
> gay and nonbelieving lads. But should it really surprise us that such a
> stodgy organization has a hard time finding volunteers?
>
> Or take those bowling leagues. Putnam treats these as if they arose merely
> from the appetite of individuals for fellowship and tenpins. But in fact
> they came out of specific forms of working-class and lower-middle class
> life: stable blue-collar or office employment (businesses and unions often
> started and sponsored teams) that fostered group solidarity, a marital
> ethos that permitted husbands plenty of boys' nights out, a lack of
> cultural and entertainment alternatives. It would be amazing if league
> bowling survived the passing of the way of life that brought it into
> being, nor am I so sure we need mourn it. People still bowl, after all. In
> fact they bowl more than ever, although they consume less beer and pizza,
> which is why league decline bothers the owners of bowling alleys. And
> despite Putnam's title, they don't bowl alone. They bowl with friends, on
> dates, with their kids, with other families. The bowling story could be
> told as one of happy progress: from a drink-sodden night of spouse
> avoidance with the same old faces from work to temperate and spontaneous
> fun with one's intimate fends and relations.
>
> No, the whole theory is seriously out of touch with the complexities of
> contemporary life. If church membership is down (good news in my book),
> it's hardly because people are staying home to watch TV. More likely,
> organized religion doesn't speak to their spiritual needs the way (for
> example) self-help programs do. Putnam dismisses the twelve-step movement
> much too quickly. At the very least, its popularity calls the
> TV-time-drain theory into question. I know people who've gone to A.A.
> every day, for years. As for building social capital, my own brief
> experience with Alanon more than fifteen years ago is still my touchstone
> of ordinary human decency and kindness. What's that if not "trust"? My
> membership in the P.T.A., by contrast, is motivated mostly by mistrust: As
> another parent put it, we join the P.T.A. to keep our kids from being
> shafted by the school system.
>
> Putnam's theory may not explain much about the way we live now, but its
> warm reception speaks volumes. The bigfoot journalists and academic
> superstars, opinion manufacturers and wise men of both parties are
> worried, and it isn't about bowling or Boy Scouts. It's about that loss of
> "trust," a continuum that begins with one's neighbor and ends with the two
> parties, government, authority. It makes sense for the political and
> opinion elites to feel this trust--for them, the system works. It's made
> them rich and famous. But how much faith can a rational and disinterested
> person have in the set-up that's produced our current crop of leaders?
>
> Love your neighbor if you can, but forget civic trust. What we need is
> more civic skepticism. Especially about people who want you to do their
> bowling for them.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Please respond to Social Determinants of Health <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent by:        Social Determinants of Health <[log in to unmask]>
> To:     [log in to unmask]
> cc:
>
> Subject:        Re: [SDOH] "Social Capital" vs. "Neomaterialist"
> Interpretations of Health
> Inequalities
>
> This is interesting. But it's also true that the effect of social capital
> on
> health depends on (1) how social capital is conceived & measured; (2) the
> level
> of analysis.
>
> At the individual level, it is fairly well established that having some
> close
> friends or family members is good for health (recall Wilkinson's advice).
> Social support is particularly beneficial in times of stress, when
> diagnosed
> with a serious illness, when recovering from surgery, etc. Some might
> argue
> that social support is not the same as social capital. Others see it as a
> type
> of social capital.
>
> At a more structural level, Rob Sampson (chair of my department) and Jeff
> Morenoff have some interesting research showing how "collective efficacy"
> partly mediates the effects of poverty and inequality on health. For
> example,
> in a neighbourhood setting, collective efficacy is the shared belief that
> you
> and your neighbours could come together and help each other out in times
> of
> crisis (e.g., if the city wants to build a highway through your
> neighbourhood
> and you and your neighbours don't want that, could you come together and
> stop
> it?). Perhaps not surprisingly, higher income communities have higher
> levels of
> collective efficacy, and this partly explains why these communities have
> less
> street crime and better health. Conversely, poverty and deprivation tend
> to
> harm the collective efficacy of a community, making it more vulnerable to
> things like violent crime (not necessarily perpetrated by people who live
> in
> that community). Granted, a poor community's lack of collective efficacy
> is
> often due to a realistic assessment of the barriers it faces.
>
> But, here's the trick: poor communities with higher collective efficacy
> have
> lower crime and better health than poor communities with lower collective
> efficacy (but the former still don't fare as well as rich communities).
> One
> implication might be that by building strong communities with lots of
> trust and
> social support, you can create the conditions for people to come together
> and
> demand better access to material resources, public services, etc.
> Eventually,
> if all goes well, resources will be more evenly distributed to these
> communities, and they will benefit from BOTH higher collective efficacy
> and
> better material conditions.
>
> To be clear, I think material conditions are by far the most important
> social
> determinant of health. But one of the ways they improve or harm people's
> health
> is by raising or lowering their levels of social capital. Conversely,
> social
> capital can be mobilized to seek broader structural changes and improve
> health
> - and I see people like Dennis Raphael, Chrystal Ocean, and several others
> on
> this list doing just that. :-)
>
> A few useful references (a google search will reveal more):
>
> Israel, Barbara A; et al. 2002. "The relationship between social support,
> stress, and health among women on Detroit's East Side." Health Educ Behav
> 29(3): 342-60.
>
> Uchino, Bert. 2005. Social Support and Physical Health: Understanding the
> Health
> Consequences of Relationships. New Haven: Yale U Press.
>
> Kawachi, I, BP Kennedy, K Lochner and D Prothrow-Stith. 1997. "Social
> capital,
> income inequality, and mortality." American Journal of Public Health
> 87(9):
> 1491-1498.
>
> Morenoff, Jeffrey. 2003. "Neighborhood mechanisms and the spatial dynamics
> of
> birth weight." American Journal of Sociology, 108 (5): 976-1017.
>
> Sampson, Robert J., Stephen Raudenbush, and Felton Earls. 1997.
> "Neighborhoods
> and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy." Science
> 277:
> 918-24.
>
> (I think all these studies were conducted in the US. But there is evidence
> that
> many of the same processes also occur elsewhere - for example, Sampson's
> collective efficacy model holds up in Sweden and Indonesia).
>
> Best,
>
> Jeff
>
>
> --
> Jeff Denis
> PhD Student
> Department of Sociology
> Harvard University
>
> "The principle of organizing our society for the benefit of all the people
> and
> not for a privileged few - that is still here and that is a principle to
> which
> we adhere." - Tommy C. Douglas
>
>
>
> Quoting Dennis Raphael <[log in to unmask]>:
>
> > "Social Capital" vs. "Neomaterialist" Interpretations of Health
> > Inequalities
> >
> > Christine Lindström and Martin Lindström
> >
> > The effects of social capital, income inequality, and absolute per
> capita
> > income were investigated in an ecological analysis of 23 rich and poor
> > countries. Trust was chosen as an indicator of social capital, and GNP
> > (gross
> > national product) per capita and Gini index measured absolute and
> relative
> > income, respectively. These independent variables were analyzed in a
> > linear
> > regression model with the dependent variables adult mortality rate
> (25-64
> > years), life expectancy, and infant mortality rate (IMR). Separate
> > analyses
> > were performed for poor and rich countries as well as all countries
> > combined.
> > Social capital (trust) showed no significant association with the three
> > health
> > outcomes. A particularly strong relationship was found between Gini
> index
> > and IMR for rich countries, and GNP per capita and life expectancy for
> all
> > countries. In the group of poor countries, GNP per capita and Gini index
> > in the
> > same model were associated with IMR.
> >
> > The results contradict the suggested impact of social capital on health,
> > and
> > instead support the notion that economic factors such as absolute income
> > and
> > relative income distribution are of importance.
> >
> > International Journal of Health Services, Volume 36, Number 4, Pages
> > 679-696, 2006
> >
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