Kruse Kronicle

The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart

Index

• The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing us Apart
• Geography vs. Demography
• The Psychology of the Tribe
• Post-Materialism
• Seeds of the New Partisanship
• Economic Consequences
  
• Segmenting Religion
• Advertising
• Lifestyle
• Idea Segregation
• Unsorting?
• Final Thoughts

Big Sort: Final Thoughts

(Link to Part 11)

As we wrap up this series on Bill Bishop's The Big Sort, I'll have to say that I think he makes a pretty convincing case that sorting has happened. One of the questions I have is whether or not this sorting indicates a significant cultural shift or whether it is part of some cyclical process that we will cycle out of.

If you are familiar with the work of William Strauss and Neil Howe, then you know that they see a recurring cycle of four cultural "seasons" replaying themselves over about eighty years. (See The Fourth Turning) First comes the High when there is great unity and conformity. Second, comes the Awakening, where people begin to shake off what has become a stale reality and explore their inner world. Third comes the Unraveling, where people become more and more individually focused, institutions and traditions crumble, and rancor over competing visions escalates. Fourth comes the Crisis that climaxes in some great secular event like a war or economic collapse that (usually) brings people together and results in a High. Strauss and Howe would say the most recent High was 1946-1964 (post-WW II), Awakening was 1964-1984, and Unraveling was 1984-2001(?). We are in a Crisis era that will continue into the next decade.

Bishop's notion of bipartisanship from 1948-1965, followed by a growing partisanship, dovetails perfectly with Strauss and Howe's schema. I don't know whether there is a four-cycle pattern, but I do think there is a tendency for an emerging cultural pattern to spawn its antithesis. The writer of Ecclesiastes recognized that there is "A time to tear down and a time to build up," so I suspect some of what we are witnessing is the natural ebb and flow of generational shifts.

That said, I think there is something unique happening as well. Over the past century or so, we've witnessed the emergence of one post-materialist society after another; post-materialism is where the great majority of the population has moved beyond the quest for basic material needs. These societies tend to exhibit similar patterns of decaying social institutions, hyper-individualism, and fertility rates well below the replacement rate. There frequently seems to be cultural malaise and a quest for spirituality.

Conservative responses to post-materialism often blame the government and various political forces for not conserving, if not intentionally destroying, social institutions and traditions. The answer is less government and more personal freedom. Liberal responses tend to appeal to a need for joint efforts (i.e., government action) to resolve problems, especially equitable distribution of society's goods and amenities. Hence, individuals are free to become all they can be. The answer is more "joint action" so people can live more freely.

When we need food, shelter, and clothing for ourselves and our loved ones, we have a mission in life. Material need causes us to focus. But what about when our material needs are met? What is the meaning of our possessions, our work, our very lives? Christian ethics and theology have been forged over two thousand years in societies where material survival has been the all-consuming task of most people. Post-materialism presents a challenge and a spiritual crisis. Conservatives blaming big government for destroying institutions won't answer these questions, and neither will idealistic crusades against poverty or for the environment. In short, I do believe there is something more than a purely cyclical effect.

On the topic of consensus, the book doesn't sufficiently acknowledge that bipartisanship frequently doesn't create the rosiest of worlds either. Remember that 1948-1965 was a time of tremendous peer pressure and conformity. Men and women were locked into artificial roles. Minorities were locked out of society's major institutions and made invisible in the face of the great consensus. This era of great consensus also gave us the likes of Joseph McCarthy and the persecution of the nonconformists. Dissent is needed to correct excesses. Consensus for consensus' sake can be every bit as dangerous as partisanship.

Finally, as I read the book, I thought about the Church's role in all of this. I was particularly interested in the three elements Gordon Allport mentioned that needed to be present for opposing groups to engage each other (see previous post) constructively:

Mutual regard as equals.

One of the defining marks of the New Testament was that everyone was considered family – brothers, and sisters with God as the father. Much to the concern of the Roman authorities, this resulted in slave and free, Jew and Gentile, and man and woman, all worshiping together.

Regular pursuit of shared goals.

Greg Ogden studied the Greek word koinonia in the New Testament. We usually translate this as "fellowship. "Ogden learned that the New Testament never talks about fellowship or community for its own sake. Rather, in every instance, koinonia comes from participating together toward a common end.

Authentic engagement.

The early Christians had their problems, but one of their most compelling testimonies to the Roman Empire was how they loved and cared for one another.

The Church has embedded in its very DNA the means to heal division and heal strife. It has done it in times past. The question is whether or not it can come to terms with the post-materialism it has become captive to and rediscover its mission.

[Index]

Big Sort: Unsorting?

(Link to Part 10)

Over the last half-century, we've witnessed a sorting phenomenon in American life. As noted in an earlier post, gathering like-minded people tends to intensify and make individuals' views more extreme. Sorting intensifies group norms and values, which draws in more like-minded people who give stronger reinforcement to norms and values.

If sorting has been the problem, then would mixing be the solution? We mix people, they become acquainted with each other, they learn to appreciate differences, and then they all get along better. This has been the driving force behind so much of the diversity movement. Does it work?

In The Big Sort, Bill Bishop points to social psychology experiments that show that simply bringing differing groups (not even necessarily opposing groups) together creates competition and opposition. Robert Putnam, the author of Bowling Alone, concludes from a study of 31,000 people in 41 communities that diversity has social capital erodes with diversity, and people tend to have less to do with each other. (See here, and here, and also here.)  Simply mixing folks doesn't get it done.

Summarizing psychologist Gordon Allport's (writing in the 1950s) necessary conditions for bringing opposing groups together constructively, Bishop writes:

First, the social psychologist wrote, the groups had to see themselves as equals. Second, meetings between the groups should take place as regular pursuit of an ordinary and shared goal. And above all, Allport wrote, meetings should "avoid artificiality." It was best, Allport wrote, if the groups worked as a team, since "the deeper more genuine the association, the greater its effect." (285)

This was also the key finding of Putnam, that there had to be a common mission or point of unity that integrated people for diversity to be productive. When such unity existed, diversity became an advantage.

Another key point Bishop makes points to the work of an anthropologist named Max Gluckman, also writing in the 1950s, who believed that "Societies were successful and longstanding so long as they could devise mechanisms that kept simple conflicts from becoming cataclysmic." (295) This usually happened by developing patterns of relating that made individuals friends in one context and enemies (or at least opponents) in the next. "Societies that controlled disputes' are so organized into a series of groups and relationships, that people who are friends on one basis are enemies on another,' Gluckman wrote." (296-297)

So does Bishop see signs of community development that overcome the sorting effect? He seems to believe that emerging Churches are one venue. For the purpose of illustration, he identifies Bluer, an Emergent congregation in Minneapolis, as one place where people are getting beyond the narrow identities that have divided red and blue communities. I'm not in agreement with Bishop here.

Emergent congregations, from what I can observe, are overwhelmingly white, middle-class, twenty to thirty-somethings, and with a decided bent toward intellectual and artistic pursuits. That doesn't make them good or bad, but I don't think it makes them emblematic of a new post-partisan world. It makes them another niche into which folks have sorted themselves.

One of the examples that Putnam gave of an integrating institution is some (and "some" is the operative word) evangelical megachurches. In his study, he found large congregations with several nationalities and ethnic groups represented, with people of varying economic status, united by a common vision of being the church. The point isn't whether the vision is correct but rather the integrative power a common vision has.

In short, Bishop seems to realize that there needs to be some common value or vision that unites us and that there must be public venues where we partner with each based on these values and visions. I don't find many solutions offered, but I also don't think that was the purpose of his book. He is holding up a mirror to who we are now.

Some final thoughts on the book tomorrow.

[Continued] [Index]

Big Sort: Idea Segregation

(Link to Part 9)

In chapters 10 and 11 of The Big Sort, Bill Bishop delves into the political consequences of sorting. Forty years ago, various community-oriented organizations and groups included people from a broad range of backgrounds and views, such as the Elks, Masons, Eastern Star, and veterans' groups. Mainline denominations could be added to this list too. These entities declined with the collapse of faith in social institutions that began in the late 1960s. New groups with specific agendas started to take their place in the 1970s.

The real growth in organizations seemed to come from the conservative world in the 1970s because, as Bishop notes, conservatives had become all but excluded from "mainstream" political organizations and think tanks. Groups like the Heritage Foundation, John M. Olin Foundation, the Federalist Society, the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and the American Legislative Exchange Council all emerged to give voice to conservative ideas. In the meantime, the left was creating Common Cause, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The advantage the conservatives developed was that many voters perceived that establishment ideas had failed to address pressing problems, and the intensity of dissatisfaction with these "liberal" ideas was strong.

Since at least the 1970s, there has been a strong tendency by both extremes to attribute the ascendancy of their adversary's views to political gurus and think tanks that masterfully manipulate and deceive the public. In the 1990s, the Clintons could talk about the "vast right-wing conspiracy," while conservatives saw James Carville, and other Democratic operatives, skillfully deceiving the public. Fast forward a few years, and it is the puppet master George Soros creating a "vast left-wing" conspiracy while Svenagli-like Karl Rove mesmerizes people into divisive camps.

Fifty years ago, people shared relatively similar ideological filters and then quibbled about specific policies offered by candidates. Over time, ideological differences have grown in depth and intensity, sorting us into echo chambers. Bishop writes:

People certainly change parties when their beliefs conflict with party platforms or leaders. But Layman and Carsey have found the opposite happening as well. People are changing their minds to align with their parties' positions. "Even on issues as divisive and emotion-laden as abortion and racial equality," they wrote, "there is evidence of individuals bringing their attitudes into line with their party ties." People don't methodically take an inventory of their political beliefs and then cast about for the political party that best matches their ideology. … Party membership is not simply an affiliation. It's a screen that filters and shapes the way people perceive the world. Again, politics is working both top-down, as people pick up and follow signals from party activists, and bottom-up, as people pick majorities in legislative districts push elected official to the extremes. (231)

Further, he writes:

Today the division in the country isn't about part allegiance. It's about how we choose to live. And as the parties have come to represent lifestyle – and as lifestyle has defined communities – everything seems divisible, Republican or Democratic. (232)

Bishop demonstrates how this sorting process has worked to bump moderate politicians from Congress in this graph (page 247):

There are a variety of interesting details in these two chapters concerning how sorting has affected politics. I won't recount them all here. One of note was Bishop's observation about the Democrats' perception that, in 2004 and 2006, Republicans were winning over voters on values issues. A closer analysis does not confirm this. What appears to have happened is that Republicans better segmented their constituencies and fired up the intensity of support. I suspect Obama learned this lesson and that, along with the timely collapse of the financial markets, this propelled him to victory.

Something I've noted concerning the sorting effect is how people receive this book's storyline. You need to know that Bishop considers himself an Austin, TX, liberal. When the book first came out last spring, liberals I encountered tended to praise it and used it as evidence of the need for a new bipartisan era being touted by Obama. Conservatives tended to see the present political order as the natural way of the world and preferred to hold to the idea of a "vast left-wing conspiracy" as the source of discord. Now that Obama is president, everything has switched. For liberals who know of the sorting idea they've come to reject the thesis. To them, Obama's election signals a return to the natural order of things with a few right-wing nut cases running around. While some conservatives I know have awakened to a parallel world of liberals and see Bishop's analysis as insightful. Even the "The Big Sort" is affected by the big sort.

[Continued] [Index]

Big Sort: Lifestyle

(Link to Part 8)

In the early twentieth century, sociologist Emil Durkheim described traditional culture as “mechanical solidarity.” Like pieces of a machine, the parts were interchangeable. Everyone did similar work, shared similar values, and lived in stable, relatively isolated communities. Bill Bishop draws on the image of the Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Each member is part of a collective that is cybernetically connected to all the others.

In The Big Sort, Bill Bishop writes:

“… 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 a division of labor.”(215-216)

Durkheim predicted this transition to organic solidarity would create a general sense of emptiness and disorientation. He called this “anomie.” People would seek out new ways to orient their lives. Some later sociologists, like Daniel Bell, expected that corporations would become the focal point of integrating life, but with the collapse of trust in institutions in the late 1960s, that idea was abandoned. Instead, we have seen with the advent of greater freedom and greater resources that people are sorting themselves into like-minded communities to create the mechanical solidarity they have lost. Bishop observes, “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 seek ways to rejoin the horde.” (217)

Bishop spends Chapter 9 highlighting several ways this impetus to find like-minded communities has evidenced itself. He analyzes how Oregon politics has moved from being a state with widespread identification with environmental issues to a state of heavily Democratic, more educated, and environmentally conscious cities, with a heavily Republican, less educated, environmentalism-unfriendly rural population.

Bishop writes about population density and party affiliation. Places that vote heavily Republican tend to be the least densely populated areas, and those that vote Democrat are the most densely populated. Thirty years ago, the spatial arrangement was more balanced.

Then there is George Lakoff’s notion that parenting models divide by party affiliation. Republicans tend toward the “strict father” model (valuing respect, obedience, good manners, and good behavior), and Democrats toward the “nurturing parent” (valuing independence, self-reliance, curiosity, and being considerate). As recently as 1992, Bishop says there was little difference between parties on this issue. By 2004, how one answered these issues was a better indicator of party than income.

A study by Belgian demographer Ron Lesthaeghe is also mentioned. Lesthaeghe noted a trend in Western European nations, where post-materialism arrived first, of women to have fewer (if any children) and to have them later in life than in previous generations. Reproduction fell below replacement levels, more people lived as singles, and marriage became optional. Bishop writes:

The people in these changing, more fluid families were less concerned with traditional institutions, such as old-line church denominations (Episcopalian, Catholic) and civic clubs (Masons, Rotary). Gender roles were getting squishy, and people forgot to get married. They were less interested in material success and more interested in experiences and individual freedom. (214)

While Bishop doesn’t go into it in his book, this pattern repeats itself worldwide where widespread prosperity emerges. Bishop notes that in the U. S., the more a location resembles Western European nations in family formation, the more Democratic they vote.

One observation I would add concerns the topic of globalization. The world is becoming economically integrated. The fear of many is that this will destroy indigenous cultures, resulting in one bland, homogenous world culture. In fact, the opposite appears to be happening. With greater economic strength, people seem more intensely connected to their culture and sub-cultures. They begin to assert themselves, often leading to new cultural conflicts. Sorting may be on its way to becoming a global phenomenon.

[Continued] [Index]

Big Sort: Advertising

(Link to Part 7)

Advertising is another area of life affected by the sorting phenomenon. In The Big Sort, Bill Bishop writes that until the 1950s, most advertising for consumer products was through mass advertising. This applied to political campaigning as well. But by the summer of 2006, advertising and campaigning had become exercises in social segmentation and niche marketing.

“Between 1898 and 1902, in a massive wave of mergers, 2,653 firms consolidated into just 269.” (185) Large-scale corporate capitalism has arrived. The focus was on large-scale national advertising to develop brand loyalty. Advertising emphasizes product features and price. Politics followed a similar model of developing a national bandwagon approach to garner support.

Donald McGavran began writing about targeted models of evangelism in 1955, and a year later, an adman named Wendell Smith introduced the idea of “market segmentation.” The old model tried to bend demand to the supply the big national brands offered. The new Segmentation model meant determining the demand of smaller subgroups and orienting supply to that demand.

Bishop writes, “The assumption at the time was that a rich person was simply a poor person with money.” (186) But research began to show that people at different income levels have distinct purchasing patterns. The shift began to move away from price and features toward presenting the product in a way that would connect with different social-class identities. Stores began to focus on developing identities that were welcoming to particular demographics. This consumer behavior was undoubtedly connected with the emergence of an affluent middle class as the nation transitioned into post-materialism. (i.e., an era where basic material needs are no longer the central concern.) Thus was born the market research industry and its endless quest to subdivide consumers by various demographic variables. Aided by computer technology, advertising departments could make ever more precise delineations.

Americans became a nation of “hunter and gatherer” communities unified by common interests and identities. While marketing experts knew that consumers are drawn to materials that hone in on their likes and dislikes, beginning in the 1990s, a growing number of people became increasingly uncomfortable with trade-offs. Not only did they want information targeted at them, but they did not want to hear about alternative points of view. They did not want to compromise with other people’s concerns. Thus, information sources that screened out “static” they didn’t want to hear have emerged as preferred information channels.

Bishop writes:

Advertisers, however, were, like pastors in the church growth movement simply following their consumers – and Americans were sorting themselves into more homogeneous groups without any help from Madison Avenue. Marketers didn’t make these groups, but they did take advantage of them. (190-191)

People have increasingly made economic (and political) decisions based on lifestyle identities. As a result, psychographics has replaced demographics. This segmenting has deeply touched church life as well. Bishop writes:

The Hartford Institute’s David Roozen searched for the secret of church growth in a survey of more than 11,000 Protestant congregations in 2000. He found that churches with a defined “niche” grew faster than those with broader, more general missions. (Segmenting worked with religion as well as with Tide detergent.) Churches with a variety of programs (mass customization) grew faster too. But the most important feature of growing churches, Roozen found, was absence of conflict. Marketers, ministers, and, soon, politicians learned that people wanted both conformity in interests and agreement in opinions. They wanted the society they lived in to be just like the cars they bought – customized. (194)

[Continued] [Index]

Big Sort: Segmenting Religion

(Link to Part 6)

Bill Bishop writes in The Big Sort:

American Churches today are more culturally and politically segregated than our neighborhoods. This happened partially because we prefer to worship in like-minded congregations. But churches also grew more homogeneous because ministers took what was learned nearly a century ago by Christian missionaries trying to overcome the caste system and language barriers in India and applied those lessons to the American villages appearing on the subdivided plains outside the central cities – neighborhoods where the castes consisted of taste, culture, lifestyle, and, in the end, political belief.

The strategy was as simple as like attracts like. The new and crowded megachurches were built on the most fundamental of human needs: finding safety within the tribe. … (159)

Bishop relates a narrative that begins with 20th Century Church growth guru Donald McGavran. McGavran was a Disciples of Christ missionary who held degrees from Yale and Columbia University and spent most of his years in India. While the missions he participated in often offered wonderful social services, he wasn't saving many souls. He began applying anthropological/sociological insights to church evangelism in a culture deeply divided by economic class and caste, and he was successful. Upon returning to the United States in the 1950s, McGavran became convinced that his insights were needed to deepen and grow the American Church. He was widely ignored.

The 1950s and early 1960s were the pinnacle of bi-partisan homogeneity. McGavran's insights seemed pointless in a culture unified behind Public Protestantism (Church as a means of cultural transformation and cohesion), and Private Protestantism (Church as a means of saving souls and transforming individuals) were marginalized. But as we have seen, the cultural consensus began to break apart around 1965. Many became disillusioned with societal institutions, including the Mainline churches, and the previously isolated Private Protestants became sufficiently distressed that, after decades of exile, they began to make themselves known in the public square.

Suddenly McGavran's ideas came into vogue. Drawing on aspects of McGavran's teaching, notable pastors like Saddleback's Rick Warren began employing McGavran's insights to develop and grow his Church. In Purpose Driven Church you will find Saddleback Sam and Saddleback Samantha described. These are fictional characters that exhibit lifestyle traits that would be typical of the people Saddleback wants to reach. This couple is to be kept firmly in mind in developing and executing every bit of work Saddleback does. This is, of course, borrowed directly from market segmentation efforts in the marketing world. Others predated Warren in this strategy, and countless others have followed, but without a doubt, it has created many well-attended Churches.

Bishop writes:

Members of the "disappearing middle" objected to McGavran's tactics. To some, the goal of the Church was the diversity (a Public Protestant virtue), not growth (Private Protestantism as defined by the Great Commission.) "The church is called by Christ to be a transformer of culture," wrote Robert Evans, a theologian at Hartford Seminary Foundation. "I can find no emphasis in the New Testament on a self-conscious strategy for growth." Jesus' kingdom was a feast, and those "at a table would be Samaritans and Jerusalemites, Pharisees and slaves, harlots understood the image correctly, the greatest breaking down of homogenous units we will ever know." (171)

The disappearing middle kept disappearing over the last forty years, and congregations in Mainline denominations began succumbing to the same segmenting principles. Many now gather around a collection of social justice causes (with politically left solutions), gay inclusion, or being green. Many of these congregations and their denominations hold themselves out to be ecumenical and seek diversity. Yet, the only partners they seek are those who share these values and a similar politically left orientation toward societal transformation. Ironically, embracing "ecumenism" and "diversity" has become one more social segment around which to create a politically left-homogenous community. And not being politically left means (in their eyes) you are opposed to God's mission of societal transformation.

"Churches were once built around a geographic community, [Martin] Marty said. Now they are constructed around similar lifestyles." (173) Bishop points to Martin Luther King's observation that 11 o'clock on Sunday morning is the most racially segregated hour of the week and declares that now it is also the most politically segregated as well. He isn't suggesting that most people look for a political position held by the congregation, but instead, they are looking for a church that comports well with their lifestyle, and political views correlate highly with lifestyle factors.

Bishop cites Eddie Gibbs in noting that North America never fully understood McCavran's views. Bishop writes, "Whereas McGavran was a missionary building bridges from castes or villages to Christ, today's churches define tribes in the same way people are attracted to different sections of a shopping mall." (179) Bishop also notes political scientist James Gimpel's observations:

"I find very little evidence that churches are really transforming their congregations … It's rather quite the reverse. Ministers depend on pleasing a particular congregation for their longevity. The last thing they want to do is offend those people or try to transform their viewpoint … It's conformity all the way." (180)

Bishop closes Chapter 7:

"The church needed to be birthed within … indigenous cultures and take on that indigenous expression," Eddie Gibbs told me. "It was a missional principle, and when it came to the U. S., it became a marketing principle: how to gather more people like us. [Churches] picked up the tactical parts, but I'm not sure they understood the deeper mission implications. And they didn't really address the cultural implications, because mission morphed into marketing." (182)

I might phrase Gibbs's last observation a little differently. The Church competes in a marketplace of idolatries and communities based on those idolatries. The Church has no choice but to "market" itself in the world … not in the false sense of equating marketing with advertising, but rather in the sense of being cognizant about the market and being strategic within the market. To do this well, you must be crystal clear about the "product" you are promoting. If the product is Kingdom communities where there is "neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, and male and female," then a marketing strategy that segments the Church and intensifies divisions isn't going to be successful. The Church has had no choice but to market, but the American Church (both Public and Private versions) has not understood the product it was to bring to market.

[Continued] [Index]

Big Sort: Economic Consequences

(Link to Part 5)

The U. S. A. has been undergoing decades of urbanization. First, the migration was into densely populated urban areas. Then folks began migrating to the suburbs, some by “white flight” as white upper and middle-class families left ahead of the in-migration of ethnic minorities. In The Big Sort, Bill Bishop sees a new type of migration in recent years. People are sorting according to types of cities. Here are some of the sorting features.

Education

The number of people earning a college degree has been steadily increasing. While cities have always had disproportionately higher numbers of college-educated folks compared to rural areas, the percentage of folks who were college educated from one city to the next was not radically different. In 1970, 11.2% of the population had a college degree. For Austin, TX, it was 17%, and for Cleveland, it was 4%. Certainly, a disparity but nothing like 2004 when the percentages were 45% for Austin and 14% for Cleveland. There are sixty-two metro areas where less than 17% have a college education and thirty-two where 34% have a college education. When you look at the concentration of young adults with college degrees, the sorting effect is even more striking from one city to the next. Not surprisingly, those cities with high-tech industries have been the magnates for the college-educated.

Race

Whites have left the older factory cities of the North and Midwest, as well as the largest metro areas like L. A., Chicago, and Philly, and headed for high-tech cities like Atlanta, Phoenix, Austin, Seattle, and Minneapolis, or retirement/recreational cities like Las Vegas, West Palm Beach, Orlando, and Tampa. Blacks have moved to cities with strong black communities like Atlanta, Washington, New York, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Fort Lauderdale, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. “Only 9 out of 320 cities lost black residents.”

Age

“In 1990, young people were evenly distributed among the nation’s 320 cities. By 2000, twenty- to thirty-four-year-olds were concentrated in just a score of cities. … Eighty percent of the non-Hispanic whites ages twenty to thirty-four who moved during the 1990s relocated to the twenty-one highest in technology and patent production. “ (133)

Ideas

Bishop examines patents filed per capita for metropolitan areas. High-tech cities have seen 100-200% increases in patents filed from the 1970s to the 1990s. Meanwhile, Cleveland saw a decrease of 14% and Pittsburgh 27%.

Wages

As you might guess, high-tech cities have seen greater wage increases than low-tech cities.

Occupation

“Instead of people moving to corporations, corporations had begun moving to where pools of talent were deepening.” (135) The iterative effect of high-tech corporations concentrating in one area leads creative-class workers to locate in the area, which draws more high-tech corporations.

The result is that people are sorting into two general categories of cities:

High-Tech Cities (Compared to Low-Tech Cities)

More interested in other cultures and places
More likely to “try anything once”
More likely to engage in individualistic activities
More optimistic
More interested in politics
Volunteering increasing, but less than in low-tech cities
Church attendance decreasing
Community projects decreasing
Club membership decreasing

Low-Tech Cities (Compared to High-Tech Cities)

More likely to attend church
Club membership decreasing, but less than in high-tech cities
Community projects increasing
Volunteering increasing
More active participation in clubs, churches, volunteer services, and civic projects
More supportive of traditional authority
More family oriented
More feelings of isolation
More feelings of economic vulnerability
More sedentary
Higher levels of stress
Political interest decreasing
More social activities with other people (143)

What does all this mean in terms of worldviews and politics?

… Bob Cushing and I divided the U.S. metro areas into five groups with descending levels of high-tech and patent production and then compared how these groups of cities voted in the six presidential elections from 1980 to 2000. In the earliest election, all the city groups voted much the same. The twenty-one high-tech areas were slightly more Democratic than the nation as a whole. Suburban cities adjacent to these high-tech areas (places such as Boulder outside of Denver, Orange County outside Los Angeles, and Galveston outside Houston) were slightly more Republican than the national average. But in 1980, the vote in all these areas approximate how the nation voted as a whole.

As time passed, voting patterns in the city groups diverged. The high-tech group tilted increasingly Democratic, so that by 2000, these twenty-one cities were voting Democratic, at a rate 17 percent about the national average. (Take out the Texas tech cities – Austin, Houston, and Dallas – and the remaining eighteen metro areas were voting Democratic at a rate 21 percent about the national average.) The cities adjacent to the high-tech hubs flipped altogether, turning strongly Democratic as group. (This was true even with the inclusion of still-Republican Orange County.) The low-tech cities and rural America grew increasingly Republican. … (154)

[Continued] [Index]

Big Sort: Seeds of the New Partisanship

(Link to Part 4)

In the fall of 1974, a war broke out in Kanawha County, West Virginia. Not a shooting war exactly, but certainly a major conflict. Schools were shut down, and people went to jail for conspiracy to blow up school buses and burn down schools. The issue? Textbooks.

Fundamentalist pastor Marvin Horan led a crusade against what he saw as the local school district's attempts to use anti-American and anti-religious schoolbooks. Scholars researching the events discovered that there was more to this conflict than met the eye. Those who favored the new schoolbooks broadly shared similar views on a lengthy checklist of issues ranging from education, social services, the role of government, national security, and school prayer. Those that opposed the textbooks shared opposing views. The most telling finding? When asked to rank a list of values, those that favored the textbooks ranked the importance of a "saved, eternal life" at the bottom, and those that opposed the books ranked it at the top.

Bill Bishop uses this incident in The Big Sort to illustrate the emergence of the new partisanship. He writes about Martin Marty's observation on how America became divided between two types of Protestantism.

Private Protestants promoted individual salvation and promised that personal morality would be rewarded in the next life. On the other side of that great divide was "Public Protestantism," a conviction that the way to God required the transformation of society. The latter laid the foundation for Democratic liberalism. The former provided the moral footing and rationale for Republican conservatism. (110)

Bishop sees the Kanawha County episode as an initial flashpoint of Private Protestants re-entering the arena to battle with what they saw as their oppressive dismissive treatment at the hand of the dominant culture, with the Mainline denominations as its handmaiden, and its New Deals, New Frontiers, and Great Societies. Values, particularly religious values, emerged as the dividing line for partisan identification. As that division intensified over the years, people in our highly mobile society began to seek out (consciously or not) others who shared their views on life and sorted according to those values.

Bishop points out that conservative political activists didn't create the Kanawha uprising, but they did see an opportunity. They could create a potent political force by marrying this new activist distrust of intrusive government by Private Protestants with small-government, free-market advocates. The rest is pretty much history. I think one of Bishop's most important observations on this topic is as follows:

Democrats tend to blame the division of Jerry Falwell, Rush Limbaugh, the Heritage Foundation, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Karl Rove. Republicans tend to blame it on the 1960s, welfare, drugs, Jimmy Carter and Bill and Hillary Clinton. Looking back at the split between Public and Private Protestants and the Kanawha County textbook strike, one can see that the divide Francia uncovered wasn't foisted on Americans in a conspiracy of the right or the left. The conservative movement of the 1980s and 1990s was successful because it orchestrated – then amplified – the politics emerging from communities as different as Orange County, California, and Kanawha County, West Virginia. Polarization did not come from politicians or the media. Indeed, according to Francia, "elites may be responding to the polarization that exists within the electorate rather than the other way around." It's just that in the past three decades, Republicans responded better than Democrats. (126-127)

A final side observation. Bishop points out that regular churchgoers vote conservative in large majorities in the U. S., but it is not only in America that we have seen the alignment of regular churchgoers with conservative politics. Bishop says studies show that every industrialized nation shows the same phenomenon. However, in highly agrarian societies, the relationship is reversed. Bishop answers Thomas Frank's book, What's the Matter With Kansas? In the 1890s, Kansas was agrarian. Today it is not. Bishop does not explain the relationship, but I would expect that agrarian societies (using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs) are more preoccupied with economic outcomes, while industrialized post-materialist societies are focused on identity and values.

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Big Sort: Post-Materialism

(Link to Part 3)

Earlier in this Big Sort series, we noted Bill Bishop’s observation that the first half of the twentieth century had been about economic specialization and the second half about social specialization. What drove this social specialization? Bishop calls it post-materialism. He writes:

The new politics was molded by post-materialist realities. Tradition, economic class and occupation, religious denomination, civic structures, and party politics – the ways of life that had molded the country over the previous century – were losing significance. The new society was more about personal taste and worldview than public policy. It was as much or more concerned with self-expression and belief as with social class and economics. (104)

While many people identified with either of the two major political parties in the 1950s, there was such a bipartisan ethos that it made little difference. (Both parties recruited Eisenhower to run for president.) Barely half of the electorate knew what “liberal” or “conservative” meant in the political arena. The era from 1948 to 1965 was the least partisan era of the modern Congress, according to Bishop.

Beginning in 1965, people began disassociating from both major political parties, a trend that accelerated into the 1970s. This abandonment of politics was part of a larger disillusionment with social institutions, including volunteer organizations and the Church. There was a bipartisan anti-government feeling fomenting on the back of civil rights issues, the Vietnam War, and political corruption. The old glue that had held the civic order together was crumbling.

Simultaneous to these events, Americans were becoming more affluent. As matters relating to basic material needs began to recede in importance, other concerns became more prominent. Using a Maslow Hierarchy of Needs framework, more attention shifted toward esteem and self-actualization at the top of the pyramid.

A new ethos of political identification began emerging based more on self-expression and identity than on public policy. In the next post, we will see how Bishop characterizes this emergence, but now I want to make two observations.

First, Bishop’s analysis that 1948 to 1965 was a time of minimal partisanship in terms of actual policy sits well with other analyses of the era. However, reflecting on how such an ethos was created is essential. As Bishop points out, not everyone, including contemporaries of that era, saw this state of affairs as healthy. Remember that this was the era of Joseph McCarthy, the suppression of minority ethnic voices, and rigid gender roles. To be honest, this was the dark side of Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation” (born 1901-1924), who assumed the reins of power during this era. They could mobilize the masses toward big ideas (including big corporations, big government, big denominations, etc.) through rigid standardization of beliefs and behaviors enforced by peer pressure and group solidarity. The inclination to think and act as one is a dual-edged sword. If you buy Strauss and Howe’s model of a repeating cycle of four generational archetypes, then the generation born about 1981-2001 (sometimes called the “Millennials” or “Gen Y”) will exhibit similar tendencies.

Second, I know that the idea of post-materialism is not without controversy. Yet the more I study the changes of the past fifty years, the more persuaded I become of this thesis. It has enormous implications for the life of the Church. Most of recorded human history (including the biblical context) has transpired in societies where there was a tiny minority with great wealth and the masses living at, or barely above, subsistence. That context has shaped our values, traditions, and institutions in countless ways. How do we live amid widespread affluence?

Nations that have achieved widespread affluence seem to follow a similar path toward the collapse of social institutions, fertility rates well below replacement rate, physical and health problems stemming from sedentary lives, and other maladies. Yes, there are always likely to be “the poor” in some relative sense, but poverty in terms of people living at subsistence is likely to become an increasingly small problem. Assuming that this affluence becomes a completely globalized phenomenon over the next century or two, what will it mean to Christian discipleship? I think we are in the early stages of wrestling with these questions.

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Big Sort: The Psychology of the Tribe

(Link to Part 2)

In The Big Sort, people have geographically sorted themselves into like-minded communities over the past fifty years. What are the social-psychological consequences of such a phenomenon?

Bishop presents something called the “Risky Shit” effect. People have an innate need to find safety in groups. He reviews studies like the one where subjects are asked to consider options when a competent chess player draws the top-ranked competitor for his chess match. He has a choice between a risky move that, if successful, will result in certain victory but, if unsuccessful, will result in certain defeat, or he could adopt a more conventional strategy. At what odds of success should the player take the risky option? (i. e., 10%?, 20%?, 30%? …)

Studies consistently point out that after discussing the issue, the group will choose a riskier approach than the average of the individuals privately reported answers before interacting. When the scenario is revisited from the standpoint of the chess champion, subjects privately take a conservative approach but, after group discussion, take a more traditional approach than the average of the individuals. Either way, subjects became more extreme in the direction of the average group opinion. You got group polarization.

Bishop writes:

Social psychologists have proposed several theories to explain group polarization. Two have survived scrutiny. The first holds that people in single-minded groups are privy to a large pool of ideas and arguments supporting the dominant position of the group. If there are good arguments in favor of the group’s inclination, everyone hears them, and hears them often. Moreover, as the group talks about these ideas and arguments, individuals feel more strongly about them. People are more committed to a position once they voice it. The second theory holds that people are constantly comparing their beliefs and actions to those of the group. When a person learns that others in the group share his or her general beliefs, he or she finds it socially advantageous to adopt a position slightly more extreme than the group average. It’s a safe way to stand out from the crowd. It brings notice and even approbation. (69)

Bishop doesn’t explicitly raise the issue, but I would add that single-minded groups create shared narratives complete with heroes, villains, and storylines about the underlying forces driving events. This narrative becomes the lens through which all information is received (or rejected) and interpreted. 

The consequences of homogenized regions are significant. For instance, with political parties, when one party becomes dominant in the community, those in the minority drop out of community involvement and may physically remove themselves from the community. The majority is decreasingly exposed to any contrary views. They become more committed and radical in their views. Often, a higher percentage of people vote in homogenous areas than in contested areas simply because it gives them feelings of solidarity with the group. Thomas Jefferson wrote 200 years ago that social isolation is the seedbed of extremism, and social science is proving him right.

Other studies Bishop writes about showed that when it comes to news reporting, people simply “… don’t believe what they see or hear if it runs counter to their existing beliefs.” (75) Even if both sides of an issue are presented, people only give credence to the information that matches their views. This inclination is called confirmation bias; people only look for information confirming their views. One researcher “… found that voters watch debates to reinforce what they already believe,” not to learn about issues. (75)

Thus, we end up with a baffled American public. So many of us live in our own echo chambers that when events don’t conform to our narrative and shared community experience, we conclude there must be some conspiracy or some minority radical element at work. “No one we know thinks like that, and we’re normal.”

My experience has been that sometimes people become aware that they live in an echo chamber and are no longer in congruence with the community. They leave that community to find another that accepts them and makes them comfortable. They declare they no longer live in a narrow-minded echo chamber like the one they escaped. In reality, they’ve just swapped echo chambers and the only reason they don’t realize they are in a new one is because everything around them now tells them their perspective is “normal.” In the Church world, I see this with mainliners who join evangelical mega-churches, evangelicals who become emergent, and a host of other switches. I see it with politics and other aspects of life as well.

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Big Sort: Geography vs. Demography

(Link to Part 1)

Bill Bishop opens his book The Big Sort, illustrating how counties have become more politically homogeneous. However, he points out that people generally didn't choose to move where they did based on political criteria. They tended to move to places where they felt comfortable, and their identity was reinforced. People with common lifestyles and identities tend to vote in similar ways. Therefore, although choices were not political, they had important political consequences.

Studying counties that had once been competitive voting districts, Bishop noticed an interesting pattern. Once a county began to tip one direction or the other, the rate of change seemed to accelerate. As homogeneity toward one view began to develop, people who shared emerging dominant views moved in, and those with the minority view may have left.

Of particular interest is his observation that geography (i.e., where you live) matters more than other demographic data when predicting people's viewpoints. Bishop writes:

… The standard way to calculate public opinion is to take a group – Evangelicals, the rich, the young – and then describe how this supposedly homogeneous group thinks or votes across the nation. People who go to church once a week or who describe themselves as Evangelicals are thought to be stand-up Republicans and early supporters of the war in Iraq. Nationally, that is absolutely true. But Evangelicals living in counties that voted heavily for Kerry in 2004 are an entirely different breed from those living in Republican landslide counties. According to our analysis of the Pew Research Center's polls, less than half of the weekly churchgoers and self-described Evangelicals in heavily Democratic counties supported the war in Iraq in 2004. In heavily Republican counties, however, this same demographic group supported the war three to one.

Regardless of demographic category – age, gender, religion, occupation – Pew found a difference in support for the war based on geography. Labor union members were against the war in Democratic counties but for it in Republican counties. (Nearly 30 percentage points separated union members in strong Democratic counties versus strong Republican counties.) Women were against the war in Democratic but for it in Republican counties (a difference of 23 percentage points.) The partisanship of place overpowered the categories that researcher normally use to describe durable voting blocks. (48)

Looking at the counties that had lopsided vote margins in 2004 and working backward over the past sixty years, Bishop wanted to know if anything else had changed about the demographics other than political preferences.

Education –Democratic landslide counties saw a disproportionate increase in the percentage of the population with a college degree or higher.

Religion – Republican landslide counties had above-average increases in church membership.

…from 1971 to 2000, the number of church members increased 33.8 percent in Democratic landslide counties. In the same period, the number of church members jumped 54.4 percent in Republican landslide counties. From 1990 to 2000,Democratic counties lost churchgoers, a while Republican counties continued gaining. (51-51)

Immigrants – In 2000, 21% of the population in Democratic landslide counties was foreign-born American versus 5% in Republican counties.

Race – The white population was nearly equally divided across the four county groups (Democrat competitive and non-competitive; Republican competitive and non-competitive) in 1970. By 2000, 30% of whites lived in Republican landslide counties, and 18% lived in Democrat landslide counties.

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The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing us Apart

Today I'm initiating a series of posts on The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing us Apart. This book was published last year by journalist Bill Bishop and relies heavily on statistical analysis provided by retired University of Texas sociologist Robert G. Cushing. Their conclusions are somewhat controversial, but I believe they are on to something.

Bishop begins the book by reviewing presidential elections over the last sixty years. Some elections have been competitive (i.e., a victory margin of less than 10%), and others have not. Each election after 1984 has been competitive, including the 2008 election. But when we dig deeper into these competitive elections, we notice something different at the local level.

Competitiveness within counties has changed significantly. Comparing two very close elections, 1976 (2.1% margin) and 2004 (2.5% margin), the number of counties that went in a landslide (20%+ margin) for either candidate rose from 26.8% to 48.3%. Here are the maps they use to illustrate their point (Source: thebigsort.com)

Some critics maintain that this is not necessarily a sign of some significant cultural impetus to sort. Two objections are usually raised.

First, some claim the map above is largely a result of gerrymandering. But as Bishop correctly points out, the purpose of gerrymandering is rarely to create supermajorities in a given district. Rather, the usual aim is to siphon off votes from an area with a majority and move them to a less competitive neighboring district. Gerrymandering should have worked counter to the sorting effect.

Second, some folks, particularly on the left, see a vast right-wing conspiracy imposed by a cabal of think tanks and political operatives over the past forty years to create division and win through divisiveness. While conspiracy theories are often comforting to minority views, and Bishop doesn't deny the desire by some conservatives to achieve such an end, conspiracy has not been the issue. Rather, the conservative party has done a far better job of tapping into the divisions that have been emerging and exploiting them.

Instead, Bishop suggests:

The first half of the twentieth century was an experiment in economic specialization, as craft production gave way to assembly lines; cabinetmakers became lathe operators or door assemblers. The second half of the century brought social specialization, the displacement of mass media culture by media, organizations, and associations that were both more segmented and more homogeneous. (37)

While Bishop doesn't directly make a claim, I suspect that people who are deeply partisan on the left or right resist this interpretative model. When Clinton was president, the left saw the natural order of things playing out, while the right saw a cabal of maniacal deceivers in power. Over the previous eight years, shoes were on the other feet. Now the shoes have switched back again. I find Bishop's analysis more plausible.

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