Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Mark R. Warren is Associate Professor in the School of Education at Harvard University.

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"Mark Warren's comprehensive case study of the Industrial Areas Foundation is a major contribution to the growing literature on coalition politics. Indeed, it is the best empirical study ever written on multiracial collaboration to address social inequality. Featuring careful and systematic analysis of rich data on local organizing, Dry Bones Rattling will be ancinfluential book and is must reading for those committed to revitalizing American democracy through interracial political cooperation."--William Julius Wilson, Harvard University

"Dry Bones Rattling is timely, important, and inspiring. Timely, because this study of the most successful faith-based movement for social justice in America appears just as faith-based social initiatives have reached the top of the national political agenda. Important, because it is a deeply grounded contribution to the rapidly growing field of social capital theory. Inspiring, because by showing how civic malaise has been reversed in some of the nation's most impoverished, ethnically divided settings, this book should raise the aspirations of democratic reformers. Must reading for social theorists and civic activists."--Robert Putnam, Harvard University, author of Making Democracy Work

"Mark Warren has written a comprehensive and insightful analysis of a profoundly important community-based movement. I have seen how the Industrial Areas Foundation organizations this book examines have revitalized communities across America, both physically and spiritually. In San Antonio, the city I know best, I watched Communities Organized for Public Service empower poor neighborhoods and give voice to their concerns. Capable new leaders emerged and the city entered a new era of citizen democracy. Dry Bones Rattling provides a compelling eyewitness account of the transformations these organizations bring, showing us a sacred force rooted in human dignity at work."--Henry Cisneros, Chairman and CEO of American CityVista

"Dry Bones Rattling is an important addition to the literature on community organizations, populist politics, and--more than anything--religion-based politics."--James Morone, Brown University

"Original scholarship built on strong ethnographic work, Warren's book is among the best of the outstanding scholarship on the dilemmas of American democracy that has emerged in recent years. As such it will be highly useful to specialists on grassroots movements and on the intersection of religion and politics in American life, as well as broadly useful to political scientists and political sociologists. This is excellent scholarly work on an important political phenomenon that until now has eluded adequate scholarly attention."--Richard L. Wood, University of New Mexico, author of Faith in Action

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DRY BONES RATTLING

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Preface..............................................................................................ixIntroduction: Dry Bones Rattling.....................................................................31. Community Building and Political Renewal..........................................................152. A Theology of Organizing: From Alinskyto the Modern IAF...........................................403. Beyond Local Organizing: Statewide Power and a Regional Network...................................724. Bridging Communities across Racial Lines..........................................................985. Deepening Multiracial Collaboration...............................................................1246. Effective Power: Campaigning for Community-Based Policy Initiatives...............................1627. Congregational Bases for Political Action.........................................................1918. Leadership Development: Participation and Authority in Consensual Democracies.....................2119. Conclusion: Restoring Faith in Politics...........................................................239Notes................................................................................................265Index................................................................................................309

Chapter One

This chapter argues that the key to reinvigorating democracy in the United States can be found in efforts to engage people in politics through their participation in the stable institutions of community life. It draws from recent scholarly work on social capital to help us understand why a strong community foundation is necessary for a vibrant political life. Yet I argue that strong communities can often be isolated and politically weak. Or they can be narrowly protectionist, working against the interests of communities different from their own. Therefore, the chapter elaborates a framework for understanding the challenges to be faced in building social capital in a way that promotes multiracial cooperation and generates effective power in the political arena. The chapter then summarizes the key elements of the strategy developed by the IAF to meet these challenges, and ends with a discussion of how the network located alternative resources to generate civic and political participation at a time when other organizations found participation waning.

Social Capital and Democracy

American democracy has suffered during the last half of the twentieth century as our political institutions have become disconnected from strong community-based organizations, which, in turn, have weakened. Robert Putnam has shown that America's stock of social capital, that is, "features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit," has suffered a dramatic decline in the United States, weakening our democracy. Putnam has emphasized the decline of social capital in almost all forms of associational and group life. But I think we need to be particularly concerned with the decline of the more stable institutions of community life which used to play a particularly important role in sustaining an active democracy through connections to our political system.

Americans participated in politics at much higher levels when political parties served to connect people to government at least in part through community-based organizations. Parties used to compete to get people out to vote through their local branch organizations. A candidate's election depended upon the ability of the party's local branches to mobilize in neighborhoods and through a rich array of social and cultural organizations. This model of political mobilization reached its height in the late-nineteenth-century urban North, where parties fought highly competitive elections. As Michael McGerr has shown, local party organizations interpenetrated with a dense network of social organizations, like fraternal associations, volunteer fire departments, Catholic parishes, and local business associations. Political campaigns typically included marches and local fairs where bands played and people socialized. In the thirties labor unions became another organized institutional base for the expansion of democratic participation to immigrant workers. Through their unions, and through ties maintained by such institutions as churches, fraternal orders, and veteran's associations, workers made a significant impact on the Democratic Party, some of its urban political machines, and on the national political system.

Since the sixties, the connections between electoral politics and community institutions have frayed as elections have become candidate-centered, rather than party-centered, affairs. With the rise of television, candidates have had a means to reach the electorate without going through local party organizations. The expense of television advertising has forced candidates to rely upon fund-raising. To supplement big donors, direct mail technology has provided a means to collect money from citizens, again without going through party organizations. Consequently, while political parties still play an important role in elections as nominating and fundraising vehicles, their local party organizations have atrophied as mobilizing vehicles.

Along with political parties, America used to have a rich network of locally rooted, but nationally federated, organizations that also connected people to government. As Theda Skocpol has shown, organizations like the PTA and the American Legion played important roles in constructing some of America's most successful social policies, but have faced sharp declines recently. These community based institutions structured the engagement of people in political action around a range of issues. They represented a place where people could meet and develop relationships with each other out of which emerged a sense of common purpose and programmatic plans of action. Higher levels of federation allowed local chapters to influence state and federal policy. At the turn of the century, federations of locally rooted women's clubs (including the forerunner to the PTA) initiated and won passage of some of America's first social welfare legislation to protect mothers and their children, even at a time when women did not have the right to vote. The American Legion helped create the GI Bill.

By the early nineties, many Americans reported both that they felt the social fabric of their communities had seriously frayed and that they were alienated from our political system. Scholars of social capital have stressed the connection between these two phenomena. They point out that, historically, the United States has relied upon a rich tradition of civic life to support democracy, a connection first noted by Alexis de Tocqueville in his study of nineteenth-century America. Tocqueville, a French aristocrat, came to the United States in the 1830s to determine why American society supported a democratic form of government while his native France was so easily controlled by a central political authority. The key to democracy in America, according to Tocqueville, could be found in a set of social and political institutions—voluntary associations, town meetings, a free press, churches—that sustained cooperative activity and self-government. Associational life in the small towns that Tocqueville studied accomplished two key things. It developed in citizens a "habit of participation" that spread across social institutions and political life. Moreover, participation in associations developed in people a sense of "self-interest rightly understood," that is, an understanding that an individual's well-being was intimately connected to the health of the whole community. Lacking associational life, people in France pursued their private business, leaving politics in the hands of a central authority. Through civic associations in America, people came to see the importance of working for the public good, and developed a habit of participating in self-government to achieve it.

Robert Putnam makes a strong case that America has suffered a serious erosion in social capital since the fifties. Putnam documents the declining participation of Americans in a broad array of associations and forms of group life. For example, participation in parent-teacher associations (PTAs) has dropped from more than 12 million in 1964 to about 7 million. Membership in the national Federation of Women's Clubs is down by more than half since 1964, while membership in the League of Women Voters is off 42 percent since 1969. Male-dominated fraternal organizations have suffered too, with the Lions off by 12 percent since 1983, Elks down 18 percent since 1979, the Shriners down 27 percent, Masons down 39 percent, and Jaycees off 44 percent. Volunteers for the Boy Scouts are down by 26 percent since 1970, while the Red Cross has lost 61 percent of its volunteers since 1970. Using survey data, Putnam shows that total associational group membership has dropped by roughly one-quarter since 1974. He has also been careful to document the decline in more informal social connectedness as well. For example, between 1974 and 1998 the number of times Americans spent a social evening with a neighbor declined by one-third. Putnam captures America's declining social capital in the metaphor of "bowling alone," observing that league bowling has decreased by 40 percent even though the number of bowlers has increased by 10 percent.

Putnam's thesis has provoked a broad debate about the state of civic America and the causes of changing patterns of civic participation. Little of the debate, however, has focused on the decline in the stable institutions of local community life that Tocqueville recognized were so key to democratic processes. These institutions provide a venue for face-to-face democracy in the context of long-term attachments to fellow citizens. Overlapping patterns of participation in congregations, PTAs, fraternal orders, and community centers create a web of relationships and civic action in support of families and communities. Understanding the importance of these forms of social capital helps to shed light on the debate over Putnam's thesis.

For example, some scholars suggest that America has experienced the rise of new forms of group activity since the sixties. Robert Wuthnow documents the tremendous growth of the small-group movement, suggesting that fully 40 percent of Americans now participate in small groups that provide support or caring. The range of these groups is quite large, including Bible study groups, Alcoholics Anonymous, and hobby clubs. Small groups do offer face-to-face relationships that support the social connectedness so important to social capital. And small groups can encourage broader civic participation: Wuthnow reports that many participants become more interested in social or political issues through these groups. Nevertheless, small groups are, by definition, narrowly constituted. They are seldom rooted in, or concerned about the well-being of any particular community. In other words, this new social capital has not replaced the stable institutions of community life that declined. As Wuthnow concludes, "some small groups merely provide occasions for individuals to focus on themselves in the presence of others. The social contract binding members together asserts only the weakest of obligations.... We can imagine that [these small groups] really substitute for families, neighborhoods, and broader community attachments that may demand lifelong commitments, when, in fact, they do not."

While small groups have proliferated below local community institutions, national social movements and advocacy groups have sprouted "above" them. Since the sixties, there has been an explosion of such organizations, including feminist groups like the National Organization for Women (NOW), environmental groups like the Sierra Club, and a wide variety of organizations committed to the concerns of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, gays and lesbians, etc. The American Association of Retired Persons, the largest of these organizations, had 33 million members by 1993. Debra Minkoff argues that such groups make important contributions to democracy. They link people who are isolated in local communities, and they raise the concerns of previously marginalized people so as to broaden the inclusiveness of the public sphere. Nevertheless, there is little evidence that such advocacy groups generate or sustain high levels of participation. Most of their members exist simply on mailing lists. They participate by donating money or perhaps by writing letters. Dominated by staff based in Washington or state capitals, few have active local chapters where large numbers of people work together.

Even if the country has experienced the growth of smaller groups and national networks, we have indeed suffered losses in the stable institutions that structured local communities in which people live and raise their families. In my view, neither small groups nor national social movements, whatever their contributions, have helped to restore the community foundations for democracy. If we want to revitalize democracy in America, then we need to find ways to build social capital at the level of local community institutions.

But building such social capital may not be sufficient, if those community institutions remain detached from our political system. What has been largely overlooked in the debates about social capital is the growing disconnection between politics and what remains of American community life, a still significant resource. The political efficacy of turn-of-the-century political parties and twentieth-century cross-class federations both promoted civic participation and benefited from it. By concentrating exclusively on the decline in social capital, we ignore how our older forms of social capital were effective, in part, because they were coupled to politics and government.

A Framework for Analysis

Revitalizing democracy, then, requires community building, but also something more: creating institutional links between stronger communities and our political system. In the following section, I present a four-part framework that can help specify the necessary components of the process of building social capital to revitalize democracy. I will elaborate the following points: First, the process of building social capital needs to start with the institutional life that still exists in local communities. These institutions structure cooperative relationships and bear traditions and values in which people express their commitment to community. Second, since these institutions and the social fabric of communities are weak, an effective strategy is needed to develop cooperative ties and enhance the leadership capacity of community members. Third, strong local communities can be isolated, inward looking, even antidemocratic. In order to develop broader identities and a commitment to the common good, we need a strategy to bridge social capital across communities, especially those divided by race. Finally, building strong communities with diverse connections may not matter if they lack the power to shape their own development. Effective power requires mediating institutions capable of intervening successfully in politics and government.

Grounding Democratic Revitalization in Community Institutions

A necessary starting point for building social capital lies in the institutions that still exist in local communities. The logic of the concept of social capital itself suggests that it will be difficult to get people to cooperate with each other from scratch. Existing institutions incorporate networks of citizens who share some level of initial trust and cooperative ties. Moreover, institutions embody the traditions and values that can sustain community life. A commitment to community, and the motivation to care for it, rarely exist in the abstract. Communities and their institutions share a history through which people develop particular traditions that bind them together and motivate them to act.

Debates about social capital have often ignored its institutional foundations. Some studies, including Putnam's groundbreaking Making Democracy Work, treat social capital as a set of universal cultural phenomena, that is, trust and habits of cooperation that move in and out of various institutional forms through history. Yet, people learn to trust and cooperate with others in particular social arrangements. They cooperate in specific institutional settings, or within less formally organized social settings, for specific purposes. Social capital loses its meaning the further it becomes removed from specific kinds of institutions, like churches, schools, or even unions.

A recognition that social capital forms for specific purposes reveals that all community institutions may not be equal in their potential contribution to democracy. Some, in fact, may be antidemocratic. The Michigan militia represents an obvious case here. Most forms of community institutions are not so inherently contrary to democratic norms; many provide a potential basis for democratic action. But, that does not mean they all contribute as readily, or as much.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from DRY BONES RATTLINGby Mark R. Warren Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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