The business of apocalypse: Robert Putnam and diversity

Abstract

The work of political scientist Robert Putnam on social capital and community values and their relationship to ‘diversity’, or racialised difference, has been heavily popularised, feeding into the current genre of apocalyptic cultural commentary. It has also been taken up at the highest government levels in both the US and the UK as containing the answer to multifarious social and cultural problems. The basic lesson that emerges from Putnam’s research is that high levels of diversity currently have a negative impact on levels of social capital. It is an approach that, as argued here, displays serious methodological and analytical shortcomings.