Differentiation and Robert Putnam's work

Dooyeweerd's understanding of the historical norm of differentiation has sometimes been criticized by those who would prefer to affirm a more traditional and less complex society. Darryl G. Hart appears to fall into the latter category, judging from his Recovering Mother Kirk. Indeed it is easy to fall into a certain nostalgia for premodern social patterns, especially when we are confronted with the ills of contemporary urban life.

However, it may be that Robert Putnam, a professor of government at Harvard, has provided needed empirical support for Dooyeweerd in his writings, particularly his Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).

Putnam's study of Italy is based on research taking place over the twenty years following the establishment of quasi-federal regional governments in that country in 1970. The new regional governments in the north, e.g., Emilia-Romagna, Toscana and Umbria proved to be most effective, while those in the south, e.g., Sicilia, Calabria and Campania were least effective.

Why? Well, not so coincidentally, the Italian north is the historic seat of the civic republics of the late middle ages, such as Florence, Genoa, Venice and Bologna. The south, on the other hand, was from Norman times ruled by various absolutist regimes well into the nineteenth century. Patterns of horizontal co-operation developed naturally in the former and not in the latter.

In the closing years of the twentieth century, northern Italians were still great joiners, joining everything from choral societies and amateur football clubs to charitable and civic organizations. The level of interpersonal trust is high in these regions. In the south, by contrast, the level of trust is low, and interpersonal relations tend to be governed by hierarchical and exploitative patron-client dynamics. Here the number of local newspapers and other civic formations is much lower than in the north.

Putnam concludes that centuries-old political cultures have contributed to the different performances of the regional governments and even to the economic gap between north and south. Social capital or its absence is all important to the vitality of a society. Writes Putnam:

Trust lubricates cooperation. The greater the level of trust within a community, the greater the likelihood of cooperation. And cooperation itself breeds trust (p. 171).

If Putnam's findings are correct -- and they do seem highly persuasive -- then they shatter two enduring stereotypes:

1) Economics drives politics. To the contrary, already existing civic traditions were far more significant than economic resources in facilitating both good government and economic prosperity. This seems to refute the likes of Marx, Ellul, Canadian philosopher George Grant, and the functionalists who were the early proponents of the European Union.

2) Traditional feudal societies are more communally-oriented than advanced industrial societies which tend to atomize people. By contrast, the most industrial region of Italy is by far the north, and it is precisely here that people are most likely to join revolving credit associations, art clubs and mutual aid societies. Southern Italians are far less likely to join any type of organization and, while family ties are strong -- perhaps a little too strong, in the views of some observers -- the level of social connectedness outside families is relatively weak.

Here is where the connection may lie to Dooyeweerd's differentiated society.

Dooyeweerd argues that, as a society moves from its earlier undifferentiated status to greater differentiation, increasing numbers of social functions come to be dispersed in a larger number of communal settings. This is one of the foundations for his theory of soevereiniteit in eigen kring or "sphere sovereignty." A reactionary conservatism may attempt to reverse this process, and this in part explains the allure of German national socialism and the various European fascisms in the interwar period.

I wonder whether Putnam's findings might be seen to lend needed empirical support to Dooyeweerd in this respect: vibrant communities are associated with differentiated societies rather than with undifferentiated societies, where a single kind of hierarchical relationship dominates the multiplicity of human activities. Thus any attempt to reverse the historical process of differentiation is misguided and, quite simply, reactionary.