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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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The Big
Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart by
Bill Bishop |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Isolation Bill
Bishop’s new book, The Big
Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart,
explores the author’s premise that the myriad ways in which we join with
like-minded folks leads to a breakdown in tolerance and national consensus. Packed
with the evidence of vast research, The Big
Sort leads even the most skeptical readers toward an agreement with the
perils that the author raises. Here’s an excerpt, from the end of Chapter 9,
“Lifestyle,” pp. 215-217: Back to the Horde One of the fundamental
questions of sociology asks how societies are held together. Emile Durkheim,
a founder of modern sociology, wrote near the end of the nineteenth century
about a change in the way societies were glued together. Preindustrial
peoples were united in "mechanical solidarity," according to
Durkheim. Everyone did the same work and had the same beliefs. They were
interchangeable. Durkheim described the members of these traditional
societies as "repetitions ... rather like the rings of an
earthworm," and called this grouping a "horde."23 In television parlance, these
societies were somewhat like the Borg, the race flying about in cube-shaped
spacecraft in the series Star Trek: The Next Generation. The Borg's
power is that every individual member contains all the knowledge, skills, and
morality of the whole. New members are "assimilated" into the Borg
collective with brutal and total efficacy. (As the Borg say, "Resistance
is futile.") Mechanical solidarity is
complete with the Borg in a way that could 'never be found outside
television. But recall that Americans lived on Borg-like "islands"
in the nineteenth century, the isolated towns circumscribed by shared work,
a common church, and traditional families. Industrial society flooded these
islands, and the division of labor in modern mass production systems
separated people. They no longer lived according to tradition or lineage, but
by their place in the labor market. According to Durkheim, industrial society
was held together through "organic solidarity," the interdependence
of people through an economic system based on the division of labor. The glue
that would bond society, he predicted, would be an industrial economy built
on workplace specialization that demanded connection and cooperation among
occupations.24 The new system uprooted a way
of life that had existed for centuries. Industrial society stripped away old
boundaries and gave people unprecedented freedom from tradition. The problem
with this new mode of life, Durkheim wrote, was that "unlimited desires
are insatiable by definition and insatiability is rightly considered a sign
of morbidity."" Durkheim called the sense of emptiness and disorientation
brought on by industrial life "anomie" and he traced its effects in
rising rates of suicide. Durkheim believed that anomie would be quelled as
modern workplace structures took the place of the Borg-like village. The
corporation would be the institutional structure that would provide people
with a common purpose, what Daniel Bell described as a "sense of kindredness"
through work." The interdependence required in the modern workplace
would replace the sense of place and belonging found in the totality of the
village. The
past half century tells a different story. As we've lost trust in traditional
institutions, the tenuous bonds of the workplace have proved insufficient to
satisfy people's need for belonging. In response, we have found ways to re-create
Durkheim's "mechanical solidarity" in increasingly like-minded
neighborhoods, churches, social clubs, and voluntary organizations.
"People want to associate or form communities with others who share the
same values," J. Walker Smith, president of the market research firm
Yankelovich Partners, told me. "The reassurance that people find in more
homogeneous, like-minded communities may be one sort of psychological
response to the anxiety of living in a broader social and political
environment that is increasingly riven with scandals and betrayals of
faith." Americans lost their sense of a nation by accident in the
sweeping economic and cultural shifts that took place after the mid-1960s.
And by instinct they have sought out modern-day recreations of the
nineteenth-century "island communities" in where and how they live.
"Do people fundamentally end up going to live where people who look
like them live?" asked G. Evans Witt, CEO of Princeton Survey Research
Associates. "Yes, pretty much. But it's not look, it's act like them,
think like them." Americans
still depend on organic solidarity in their economic lives, in their mixed
and mixed-up workplaces. But in their social, religious, and political lives,
they are seeking ways to rejoin the horde. If you’re
looking to read a thoughtful book about polarization and its consequences, The Big
Sort is the right choice for you. Steve
Hopkins, October 20, 2008 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the November 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The Big Sort.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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