Political Culture, Social Capital, and The Arts

Undergraduate / Graduate

Many analysts like Robert Putnam hold that bowling alone signals a decline in social capital, with major consequences for trust and legitimacy of the political system. But new work finds that certain arts and cultural activities are rising, especially among the young, in many countries. This course reviews core related concepts--political culture, social capital, legitimacy-and how they change with these new developments. We lay out new concepts and related methods, such as a grammar of scenes, measured for 40,000+ U.S. zip codes. Scenes, nightlife, design, the internet, and entertainment emerge as critical drivers of the post-industrial/knowledge society. Older primordial conflicts over class, race, and gender are transformed with these new issues, which spark new social movements and political tensions. The course has two halves: first to read and discuss major works and complete a mid-term exam, second to continue as a seminar where the main requirement is writing a paper.