Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T14:00:12.782Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THINKING ABOUT ROBERT PUTNAM'S ANALYSIS OF DIVERSITY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2009

Martin Kilson
Martin Kilson*
Affiliation:
Department of Government, Harvard University
*
Professor Martin Kilson, Department of Government, Harvard University, Knafel Hall – E304, Cambridge, MA 02138.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The article evaluates Robert Putnam's discussion of two differing concepts of the role of the diversity perspective toward inter-ethnic/inter-racial relationships in American society since the 1960s—namely, the “contact theory” and the “conflict theory.” The former was initially formulated by Harvard social psychologist Gordon Allport in The Nature of Prejudice (1954). Putnam's analysis—published in the comparative politics journal Scandinavian Political Studies (Vol. 30, No. 2, 2007)—favors the “conflict theory,” which holds that diversity sharpens “us-against-them” inter-ethnic/inter-racial interactions. Putnam's view opposes diversity-influenced public policies. By contrast, “contact theory” holds that diversity erodes “us-against-them” interactions and thus eventually democratizes such interactions, and thereby American society generally. “Contact theory” influenced the NAACP-led civil-rights movement's quest for desegregation public policies during the 1950s, 1960s, and onward.

Keywords

Robert PutnamContact TheoryConflict TheoryDesegregationDiversity
Type
STATE OF THE DISCIPLINE
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , Fall 2009 , pp. 293 - 308
Copyright
Copyright © W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Allport, Gordon (1954). The Nature of Prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Blackmon, Douglass (2008). Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert (1961). Who Governs?: Democracy and Power in an American City. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Dickerson, Dennis (1986). Out of the Crucible: Black Steelworkers in Western Pennsylvania, 1875–1980. Albany: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Gordon, Milton (1964). Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origin. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gosnell, Harold Foote (1935). Machine Politics: Chicago Model. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Higham, John (1955). Strangers in the Land. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Hollingshead, August (1949). Elmtown's Youth: The Impact of Social Classes on Adolescence. New York: J. Wiley.Google Scholar
Kilson, Martin (forthcoming). The Making of Black Intellectuals: Studies on the African-American Intelligentsia. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.Google Scholar
Lipset, Seymour Martin (1979). The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Lynd, Robert and Lynd, Helen (1929). Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company.Google Scholar
Lynd, Robert and Lynd, Helen (1937). Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflicts. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mann, Arthur (1959). LaGuardia: A Fighter against His Times, 1882–1933. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott.Google Scholar
McKean, Dayton David (1940). The Boss: Inside the Hague Machine. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Mills, C. Wright (1951). White Collar: The American Middle Classes. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nelli, Humbert (1970). Italians in Chicago 1880–1930: A Study in Ethnic Mobility. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Oshinsky, David (1996). Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Painter, Nell (2006). Creating Black Americans. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Park, Robert (1921). Old World Traits Transported. New York: Harper and Brothers.Google Scholar
Perlo, Victor (1953). The Negro in Southern Agriculture. New York: International Publishers.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert (2007). “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-First Century.” Scandinavian Political Studies, 30(2): 137–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Riesman, David (1950). The Lonely Crowd. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Schermerhorn, R. A. (1949). These Our People: Minorities in American Culture. Boston: D. C. Heath.Google Scholar
Stouffer, Samuel (1949). The American Soldier. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, W. I. (1984 [1918]). The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Whyte, William (1993 [1943]). Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wirth, Louis (1997 [1928]). The Ghetto. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar