Putnam address: Irish community and family structures will deteriorate significantly unless we change how we work and handle immigration, a US academic has warned Fianna Fáil's parliamentary party.
Prof Robert Putnam, author of a seminal work on the effects of prosperity on social cohesion called Bowling Alone, said yesterday that the recent years of "extraordinary growth and change" meant Ireland was beginning to suffer from the loss of "social capital".
The concept of social capital holds that high participation by individuals in their families and communities is a major asset for a society. However, social capital theorists argue that the greater demands made on individuals by work in recent years have eroded this social capital, leading individuals to concentrate more on their own advancement and less on their families and communities.
After addressing the Fianna Fáil meeting, Prof Putnam said he had advised political leaders in Britain, the US and, most recently, Australia. "But there is no political leader anywhere in the world who has had the sustained interest in the issue of social capital as the Taoiseach."
He said polls in many countries showed that "people hunger for a sense of reconnection to their communities" and their families. The recent years of extraordinary growth and change in Ireland had meant we were also suffering from the loss of social capital. "It would be astonishing if this were not the case. It is a challenge of success"
This phenomenon would affect Ireland more than other countries, he said, because traditionally the Irish had a higher level of social capital than other countries. "Therefore as it begins to diminish, it has a greater impact" than in countries where it was never high in the first place." There was no "magic formula" to increase the amount of social capital in a society. However, he identified some areas where attention was needed.
The first was the role of the workplace and its effect on family and community life. He stressed he believed that two-career families were a good thing, but there should be much more flexibility in the workplace to allow people remain connected to their families and communities. He estimated that every 10 minutes of additional commuting time reduced an individual's community participation by 10 per cent.
Other areas where attention was required included rapid immigration. America had been enriched by the arrival of so many Irish immigrants in the past - it changed what it meant to be American. "It requires a conscious effort to provide a more capacious sense of we" in society, in a way that would include immigrant peoples.