Individualism revisited: Moral worldviews and civic engagement
Introduction
Scholars have long been interested in understanding why certain people but not others participate in civic action. Research on this question tends to focus on factors such as organizations, social networks, leadership skills, and biographical availability to distinguish civic activists from non-activists (for example, see Beyerlein and Hipp, 2006b, McAdam, 1986, Passy, 2001, Verba et al., 1995). Although there are some exceptions, culture has generally taken a backseat in research on differential participation. We believe there is much to be gained from bringing culture to bear on the question of individual variation in civic action. In this article, we evaluate the role that distinct cultural worldviews play in explaining involvement in different types of civic engagement.
Several scholars have emphasized the importance of cultural understandings for mobilizing public-spirited action. Perhaps most prominently, Bellah and colleagues (1985) raised concerns that a growing culture of individualism (defined as a focus on the self as the source of moral authority) would weaken commitment to civic engagement in the United States. Yet these ideas have not been explored systematically, as extant work has instead generally focused more on how networks, practices, habits, and skills play a role in making civic participation possible. Though open to the idea that different moral commitments could lead to different styles of civic engagement, contemporary cultural sociologists rarely consider the role culture might play in differentially encouraging people to take civic action (Campbell, 1996, Smith, 2003, Smitch, 2010, Vaisey, 2009). We therefore know little about whether there are such differences.
Although we do not doubt that individualist moral sources can motivate and sustain public commitment, we do question whether individualism is equally capable of motivating and sustaining it. After all, Bellah and colleagues (1985) argued that increased individualism would weaken public commitment, not eliminate it. Although ethnographic research (e.g., Lichterman, 1995, Lichterman, 1996) has shown that traditional civic and religious moral commitments are not necessary conditions for civic engagement, such studies cannot rule out the possibility that different “moral cosmologies” (Davis and Robinson, 2006) differ in their sufficiency as predictors of public-spirited action. The goal of this paper is to reopen the empirical investigation on the link between cultural worldviews—here defined as general orientations toward moral evaluation (Vaisey and Lizardo, 2010, pp. 1595–1596)—and civic engagement. Specifically, we examine whether—after accounting for dispositional, organizational, and relational factors of civic engagement, as well as demographic characteristics—substantively different moral worldviews can help explain why certain people but not others are engaged in more “bridging” or public-spirited volunteerism and more “bonding” or in-group-focused volunteerism. Our results show that individualism, in fact, does generally lower the probability of both types of volunteerism, even when controlling for other important factors.
Important differences are also found between two different types of non-individualist moral worldviews. We find evidence that civic morality encourages volunteering that helps people in the larger community, while religious morality fosters caring for people in one's own religious community. In the conclusion, we consider the implications of our findings for understanding the cultural dimensions of civic engagement. We also discuss the insights that our findings might provide for discussions about general declines of social capital in the United States—especially the substantial drop in efforts focused on helping communities—that Putnam (2000) and others have emphasized given the growing individualism of recent birth cohorts.
Section snippets
Can culture motivate?
Investigating the role that cultural worldviews play in civic engagement requires an appropriate theoretical framework for understanding the role of culture in action. Though this is not the place for an elaborate account, it is reasonable to say that scholars have differed over whether to conceptualize culture as primarily about the ends or means of action (see Vaisey, 2010). In Swidler's (1986, p. 274) classic paper, she explicitly rejects what she regards as the Weberian–Parsonian view that
Hypotheses
Based on the arguments in Habits of the Heart and the finding that those with a modernist/individualist worldview are less likely to support communitarian policies (Davis and Robinson, 2006) and to derive a sense of community from their relations with others (Ryle and Robinson, 2006), we predict the following: Hypothesis 1 Net of other important factors, an individualist moral worldview will be associated with a significantly lower probability of civic engagement than either a civic or religious worldview.
Data
The data we use to test these hypotheses come from the 2002 Religion and Public Activism Survey (RAPAS). The 2002 RAPAS was a telephone survey representing English-speaking Americans 18 years of age and older who resided in households in the United States—conducted by FGI Research Inc., a national survey research firm based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The survey was conducted from April to July 2002 using a random-digit-dial method, employing a sample of randomly generated telephone numbers
Analytic strategy
We used logistic regression to analyze the five different dichotomous civic engagement variables discussed above. For each civic engagement outcome, we ran two logistic regression models. The first model entered the moral worldview variables along with only the demographic measures. This constituted our baseline model. In the second model, we added measures for the three factors that prior research has established as consistent and significant predictors of civic engagement: altruistic
Results
The first four columns in Table 2 display results for multivariate models predicting our two types of non-religious-based “bridging” or public-spirited civic engagement.13 Looking at Model 1 in this table, we see that, controlling for demographics factors alone,
Discussion
Our analyses are consistent with the argument that moral worldviews do have robust effects on participation in different types of volunteer efforts and that these effects are generally not reducible to demographic characteristics or dispositional, organizational, or relational factors associated with civic engagement. On the one hand, relative to both a sense of personal fulfillment and religious duty, a sense of civic responsibility significantly differentiated people who were engaged in more
Supplemental analysis
Given the finding that different moral worldviews are associated with differential participation in different types of volunteerism, and given Bellah and colleagues’ (1985) concerns about increases in individualism, it seems reasonable to ask whether or not changes in such worldviews might be important for accounting for downward trends in civic engagement. Putnam (2000) argues that declines in social capital have come about as a result of “cohort replacement”—the death of more civic-minded
Conclusion
This paper empirically tested the claim—made most prominently in the sociological classic, Habits of the Heart (Bellah et al., 1985)—that individualism is less able to promote civic engagement than other types of moral worldviews. In general, our results were consistent with Bellah and colleagues’ (1985) predictions about individualism though we also theorized and found important differences between civic and religious moral worldviews. Like Lichterman, 1995, Lichterman, 1996, we do not find
Acknowledgements
For helpful comments on previous drafts, we thank Andrew Perrin and Christian Smith. We presented a previous version of this article at the 2006 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Montréal, Quebec, Canada.
Kraig Beyerlein is an assistant professor in the Sociology Department at the University of Notre Dame. He is also a faculty fellow at the Center for the Study of Religion and Society, a faculty affiliate at the Center for the Study of Social Movements and Social Change, and a faculty fellow at the Kroc Institute for International Peace. His research and teaching covers the areas of collective behavior/social movements, civic engagement/voluntarism, social networks and the sociology of religion.
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Kraig Beyerlein is an assistant professor in the Sociology Department at the University of Notre Dame. He is also a faculty fellow at the Center for the Study of Religion and Society, a faculty affiliate at the Center for the Study of Social Movements and Social Change, and a faculty fellow at the Kroc Institute for International Peace. His research and teaching covers the areas of collective behavior/social movements, civic engagement/voluntarism, social networks and the sociology of religion. He has published in such journals as Journal for Scientific Study of Religion, Mobilization, Social Forces, and Social Problems.
Stephen Vaisey is an associate professor of sociology and senior fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. The main goal of his current research is to understand the varieties, origins, and consequences of different worldviews. Other research of his has also addressed 1970s communes, religion and marijuana use, educational overqualification, gene-environment interactions, and the relationship between poverty and educational aspirations. He has published in such journals as American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Sociological Theory, and Annual Review of Sociology.
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Order of authorship is alphabetical to denote equal contribution.