the disengagement disease

In my circles, the last couple weeks since the Trump Administration took office have been incredibly demoralizing. As someone who works in the world of environmental justice, it’s devastating to see environmental and equity-based programs explicitly under attack by the federal government. As we recover from this week’s federal funding freeze whiplash, everyone seems to be holding their breath.

What’s most shocking about the anti-climate policies of the Trump Administration is that they deviate from the consensus opinion that global warming is real and happening. 70% of Americans believe climate change is happening, so how did we get a federal government that is actively working to accelerate warming?

I think the reasons are not informational, but rather political. We can all believe in climate change, but if we can’t get people to care about it or organize into a coalition that prioritizes it, then we end up with well… what we’ve got.

Anecdotally, this all makes sense. The people in my life can collectively agree on the problems on the world, but they feel powerless to do anything about them. When I look at my peers, I see a political disengagement problem.

Lately I’ve been writing a lot about civil society and the types of spaces in cities where we tend to gather. There are many aspects to consider when it comes to civic space (accessibility, cost, ownership, and programming to name a few) and they all impact the ways that people build social networks and interact with their communities.

Before we dive into this question, let’s talk about some definitions. To start, “civic engagement” is pretty poorly defined, but I interpret it as capturing activities that fall in two buckets: (1) participation in activities that are explicitly political and/or related to the functioning of the government (e.g. voting, serving on town council, reading the news) and (2) participation in organized group activities that strengthen non-work and non-family ties (e.g. going to church, joining a union, being on a kickball team, volunteering).

I know, this sounds like a pretty big umbrella. And there is a wide gap between things that are clearly more “civic” and “engaged” than others. But I think it’s also helpful to define civic engagement by thinking about what it’s not. It’s not being on a Zoom call for work, it’s not shopping at Target, and it’s not making dinner at home. And I don’t know about you, but I’m doing those things kind of a lot, which leaves very little space for civic engagement.

And according to the research, I’m not alone. The issue of declining civic engagement in the U.S. has been a hot topic for the past 30 years, ever since Robert Putnam published the influential book Bowling Alone. This book claimed that American civic life was in precipitous decline and this would have negative effects for the functioning of our democracy (no comment on the current state of our democracy).

The folks at the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University seem to agree with Putnam. They found that 20 - 29 year olds in the 2000s were less civically engaged than their peers in the 1970s across multiple forms of engagement, including voting, community projects, club attendance, and trusting others. Out of ten types of engagement that they studied, only one, volunteering, increased from the 1970s to now.

The researchers argue that the reason for decreased civic participation among 20 - 29 year olds is that “it is simply not possible for most young people to achieve economic and psychological autonomy as early as they once did.” I’m interested in the way that these researchers draw a connection between economic autonomy and civic engagement; they claim that if young adults struggle to hold down a steady job, they may be less likely to accomplish milestones that make them long-term “stakeholders” in their communities, such as owning property or sending their kids to local schools. In short, these researchers conclude that instability leads to disengagement.

Unfortunately, instability and disengagement also feed off each other: if we feel that our lives are precarious, we disinvest from political systems. If we don’t actively participate in civic life, it becomes weaker and less representative of our needs, making our lives more unstable and reducing the likelihood of future participation. This leaves everyone with a sense that politics don’t really matter and an makes the entire system quite anti-democratic.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

If we acknowledge that we are in a disengagement spiral, then how do we seed a countertrend? I think the key is in the mechanisms by which uncertain economic futures lead to low civic engagement. Is it a question of interest? Time? Access? I think if we start to better understand these mechanisms we can continue to work toward designing better opportunities and spaces for civic engagement. And hopefully, a political system that better represents our values.

Bennett

City Speak #40