Customer Reviews

Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life (Cambridge Cultural Social Studies)

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In this surprisingly readable study, Eliasoph has done several wonderful things. She has demonstrated anew the value of qualitative research (oft-maligned as 'soft' by those who should know better). She has recast alienation as a product, rather than a default mode. Most impressively, though, she has produced a devastating attack on Robert Putnam's theory of 'social capital.' Putnam argues that citizens learn the skills of democratic participation by joining groups. Eliasoph shows, convincingly, how the dynamics within groups vitiates any substantive political conversation, and even steers conversation to the lowest common denominator, rewarding blowhards. Fascinating, readable, endearing. Brava!

Nina Eliasoph describes the ways that volunteers get involved - or don't get involved - in political activity. Most volunteers, she notes, intentionally shy away from discussing the core political issues related to their volunteer efforts. She suggests that these volunteers have learned apathy in order to avoid the confrontation that public political debate might provoke. The volunteers she studied are willing to raise difficult issues in private, but not in public. Instead of finding - as might be expected - that joining groups helps people become activists, she finds the opposite. Group membership seems to blunt personal action. Eliasoph can be academic and repetitious, in that she uses multiple examples to make a single point. So, while respecting her research and her passion, we from getAbstract suggest this book is primarily aimed at political scientists and at readers who are truly concerned that more institutions should foster public debate and more of us should engage in it. The author is deeply worried about apathy's effect on democracy. The question is, do you care?