It's Time To 'Re-Villagize' Your World
A Q&A with Author Seth Kaplan, Part I
Dear Granola readers,
Happy May to all of you! I’m excited to share the below interview with Seth Kaplan, author of Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society One Zip Code at a Time.
I have had the great privilege of meeting Seth and receiving his excellent advice over the past couple years. His book is full of crucial insights into the dilemmas and goals we so often discuss on this Substack: questions of community involvement, neighborly care, and the reinvigoration of third spaces. Below, we discuss his book, his own community, and his vision for associational renewal.
On May 10 at 11:30 (EST), Seth and I will discuss his book and work in greater depth — you can sign up for that Zoom event at the link below:
The interview below is just Part One of Two — stay tuned for further discussion next week!
Cheers,
Gracy
Q: You’ve worked on the issue of fragile states for decades, examining the key ingredients that influence “violent conflict and government collapse in some of the most fragile states on the planet.” In your work with the World Bank, U.S. Department of State, and others, what did you learn about fragile states?
In my travels and studies, the most important lesson I’ve learned is how much relationships and the social institutions that support them matter to the health and trajectory of any society. When there are stronger ties and institutions bonding people with one another, those people have a higher capacity to solve problems peaceably, promote wealth creation, and address deep-seated challenges. When these are lacking, places are more likely to be unstable and poor, yielding recurring bouts of violence, capricious government, and widespread corruption.
However, if you shift your gaze from the national dynamics in a “fragile state” to the local dynamics, you often get a completely different picture. How can this be? While relationships between groups at the national level may be fragile, ties at the local level within communities are often strong. With extensive family and interfamily networks, and an abundance of local institutions—religious and secular, economic and social—people’s ties and sense of obligation to one another are completely different in some of these fragile states than in many American neighborhoods today.
Q:You also suggest that many of these countries are surprisingly strong and healthy. How have your personal experiences affirmed this?
I have long enjoyed working in fragile states because despite the difficult conditions the people are simply much warmer, their relationships much thicker than what I have experienced in countless neighborhoods here in the US. There is a sense of togetherness, of mutual obligation, that pervades local life. This sense of responsibility and caring envelops every social bond and interaction within communities, and it leads to an extension of warmth to guests.
In Cairo, for example, a family I barely knew once took me in for three days as I recuperated from heat sickness. In Northern Nigeria, after I traveled ten hours from Lagos to Kano to visit a friend only to discover that he was away (this was before most people in the region had phones), his roommate, whom I had never met, immediately offered me a place to stay and help getting around the city. And, in Mumbai, India, a family let me stay with them for a week despite the scarcity of water, which flowed so irregularly that the family conserved it in as many buckets as they could.
Q: Why did you begin looking at American society? And when you turned your attention and expertise toward the United States, what did you notice?
I turned to the U.S. because, familiar with my professional expertise, more and more people started asking me in 2015-2016 whether America is also a fragile state. They were shaken by what they were seeing during the presidential elections, and they wondered what was wrong with the country. Of course, given that I was regularly traveling to places in political turmoil such as Nigeria, Sri Lanka and Colombia, I did not think we were a fragile state. America has a stable government, reasonably well functioning institutions, a dynamic business sector, advanced technology, and receives more immigrants than any other country.
But shifting my gaze homeward did leave me deeply unsettled. In America, a bystander who witnesses a stranger being violently attacked on the street may be more likely to film the incident and post it on social media than they are to help or intervene. Awash in material wealth, we’ve been freed from obligations to help our neighbors, give back to our community, or even (in many cases) care for members of our own family—and we resist joining any group or association that might create such obligations. In a culture that prioritizes “me” over “we” and personal liberty over collective well-being, it’s no wonder that when we do help others, that help is random, unstructured, and transactional—and mostly offered on terms that are convenient for us.
How could I reconcile these two impressions? My research eventually led me to believe that what America has is a fragile society, and that the heart of our social decay is not something national but something local, with effects showing up downstream in our politics. The less we are connected to one another—embedded in institutions that support us and those around us in our daily lives—the more destructive our social problems are likely to be. We can see this both through our experiences and through social science data. And these problems are very place specific. Some parts of our country continue to have vital social networks and institutions, but many do not—and this dichotomy explains how differently we are experiencing this era across the country.
“My research eventually led me to believe that what America has is a fragile society,
and that the heart of our social decay is not something national but something local,
with effects showing up downstream in our politics.”
Q: You write, “The social decay we are experiencing in neighborhoods across America is unlike anything I have seen elsewhere—in even the poorest places.” How do you think we got to this point, as a society?
Americans are some of the most depressed, anxious, addicted, alienated, and untethered people in the world. We are more connected now than ever through phones, social media, and Zoom, yet the fact that loneliness and depression continue to rise indicates that virtual, unstructured relationships are no substitute for what we once had—and what every person needs to thrive.
Over the last two generations, America has moved from a “townshipped” society, in which neighbors regularly communicated and collaborated with each other, to a “networked” one where we communicate with each other impersonally and often transactionally—that is, usually when we need something—via group texts and social media posts. Marc Dunkelman describes a weakening of “middle-ring relationships.” What does he mean by that? We are less likely to have personal connections with neighbors on our street, teachers in our kids’ schools, our local pastor or rabbi, or leaders in our community.
Those trends have only accelerated in the last half century. In 1970, 30 percent of Americans interacted with their neighbors frequently. Today, that figure is just 20 percent. Similarly, the amount of time Americans spend with friends has been decreasing while the time spent alone has been increasing.
“It seems safe to assume that the decline of our social lives is a worrisome development. Spending less time with friends is not a best practice by most standards, and it might contribute to other troubling social trends—isolation, worsening mental health (particularly among adolescents), rising aggressive behavior and violent crime,” economist Bryce Ward notes.
“[A]n increasing portion of the U.S. population now experiences isolation regularly,” writes Julianne Holt-Lunstad of Brigham Young University. She cites a study which found that in 2017, more than a quarter of the population lived alone, more than half of the population was unmarried, and that marriage rates and the number of children per household had declined since the previous census.
Q: How does the collapse of social ties and a rich institutional fabric impact young people?
I’m not the first to point out that the more time we spend on online, the less time we spend engaging with one another in the physical world. Psychologist Jean Twenge reports that the number of teenagers who meet their friends nearly every day has dropped by two-fifths since 2000. It is hardly a coincidence that the prevalence of loneliness among teenagers and young adults nearly doubled between 2012 and 2018, coinciding with an explosion in social media use.
This paradox reveals just how important face-to-face interactions are for our social and emotional development—another reason why neighborhoods matter. In-person socialization, especially among youth, is essential not only for developing strong attachments, but also for building an appreciation and acquiring the skills and comfort level necessary for forging deep relationships—what many youths seem to lack today.
If young people are spending more time scrolling through their smart phones rather than connecting with friends in the real world or participating in in-person activities in their neighborhood, it’s not because they are naturally lazy or inert. On the contrary, it is because they have been increasingly socialized to act this way. Having had little opportunity to experience the benefits that “real life” interactions can bring, the rewards of placeless, virtual life has become their horizon of happiness.
When youth are rushing recklessly in the wrong direction or passively languishing—a growing problem that experts have referred to as “failure to launch” syndrome—there is no app that will redirect them. On the contrary, they need in-person relationships and commitments to steer them towards a better path. Neighborhoods and local institutions are our first and foremost incubator because they embed us in those crucial relationships with various types of people, in real life, in ways that no technology can do.
Finally, our youth are America’s future voters and leaders. Socialization is key for developing mores essential to a healthy society—everything from civility to a sense of responsibility for others to respect for different opinions or beliefs—something that our society increasingly lacks. When face-to-face interactions are supplanted by the empty calories of text messages, Facebook feeds, and Zoom schooling, a different type of socialization process occurs. Relationships suffer, and the institutions and norms that encourage civility lose their influence.
Q: You write, “Although society works largely horizontally across space and relationships, most approaches to social reform are vertical in nature, emphasizing national, public, one-size-fits-all solutions (which in fact fit no one) rather than action that bolsters social dynamics place by place.” What does it look like to imagine and foster horizontal (or “sideways”) solutions, rather than vertical ones?
If the social matters as much as, or even more than, the material, then our way forward must start with relationships—especially those that works sideways between neighbors locally and across neighborhoods nationally.
In my work with fragile states, I have observed that neither action from the top down (government or foreign money and laws) nor from the bottom up (individuals or organizations working in isolation), do much to improve the situation on the ground. A more effective way to repair and revitalize fragile places is to work horizontally across the landscape to strengthen the interconnected web of institutions and relationships locale by locale while finding ways for each locale to work with each other better. Resources can help, of course, but without social cohesion, they are insufficient. Strong societies can always find resources, but divided societies with weak institutions will struggle, no matter how many resources they have.
This horizontal—or “sideways”—approach is influenced by politically neutral “systems thinking,” which is considered best practice in many sectors, including in health care, business, policing, and business. By examining all structural and institutional elements of a social system, as well as the interaction between them, systems thinking can be used to identify the root causes that underlie systemic failures.
“Strong societies can always find resources, but divided societies with
weak institutions will struggle, no matter how many resources they have.”
This approach also makes it easier to prevent problems rather than respond to them after they emerge, which is what we typically do now. And whether the target for social repair is a small town or a war-torn country halfway around the world, prevention is not only more effective; it is also far less expensive than problem-solving. Pathways for Peace, the joint 2018 United Nations World Bank report on preventing conflict that I worked on as senior advisor concludes, “for each US$1 invested in prevention, about US$16 is saved down the road.”
Q: In your chapter “Place (Actually) Matters,” you write that our society “has downplayed the importance of the physical neighborhood.” I’d love to hear how and why you’ve come to recognize place, neighborhood, and proximity as invaluable to human flourishing—and to the cultivation of healthy social spaces.
Although my personal and professional journeys have been undertaken with little awareness of how one influences the other, they have both led me to understand the importance of place-based communities to human flourishing. I explained the professional journey above. Here let me speak about my personal one.
Growing up in a middle-class suburb of New York City, I had relationships that were characterized by mistrust, stress, and frustration, leaving me with an overriding sense of insecurity. My parents divorced. My classmates bullied me. And while my material needs were always met, I frequently felt socially uncomfortable, even vulnerable. In my late twenties, seeking greater community, I connected to my Jewish roots, and found the sense of belonging I had been missing. Religious Orthodox Jewish practice requires adherents to observe the weekly Shabbat, during which driving is not permitted, compelling families to live within walking distance of their synagogue and each other, and to pray, eat, and celebrate together on sacred holidays.
Later, when my wife and I decided we wanted to live in a more closely-knit community than appeared possible in a large metropolis—New York City—we sought out smaller religious communities, eventually visiting half a dozen different places before settling on my current home. The high levels of openness, hospitality, and social trust in my own neighborhood today is the reason I chose to raise a family there, after I married and (mostly) put an end to my nomadic wanderings.
Whereas many Americans have only limited ties with their neighbors beyond a handful of friendships and the occasional conversation, my family has an intense and intimate relationship with our neighbors, community institutions, and the place in which we live in—Kemp Mill, just north of Washington, DC. In our neighborhood, there is an abundance of institutions and relationships for those in need. Local organizations are readily available to help, and community leaders regularly recommend people to seek out help when it appears the need is spiking (such as when the government shuts down and some people may see paychecks delayed). We are also more open about our problems, showing our vulnerability because of the higher levels of trust.
While my family has never had a crisis, we have faced many challenges. As my wife and I often recall to each other, we feel fortunate to have found a place where these were more manageable—both because more people were available to help and because we ourselves learned from the experiences of others. When my wife travels to help care for her mother, neighbors step in to take care of carpool and watching our children. When my young son fell on the cement in front of my house and ended up with a bloody chin, my wife grabbed him and ran off down the street to the closest nurse—three blocks away—without even letting me know. Our kids enjoy spontaneous opportunities to go next door or down the street to play at a nearby house in a way that is increasingly uncommon in our country. This is what a healthy social habitat looks like, and it’s something I believe every American can help foster, right where they are.
Q: What advice would you give to individuals or families who would like to support or volunteer with an organization that is supporting their fragile neighborhood? Where would you look first?
First, I would compliment the choice to focus on your immediate surroundings, to contribute in a tangible—even if tiny—way to a real place and to real people. Much of our charity and philanthropy involves passionlessly donating money to faraway charities with millions of people on their mailing lists or getting involved in national political causes with a large and vocal following online. If our goal is to find meaning, we aren’t just looking for ways to express what causes we care about; we are looking for recognition and belonging and a chance to contribute according to our unique experiences, skills, and personal passions. By strengthening our local identity and social ties, we can do what Mack McCarter, founder of the nonprofit group Community Renewal International, calls “re-villagize”: work to bring neighbors together and counter the various forces in contemporary society that work to pull them apart.
As for priorities, I would look for organizations supporting one of the five areas I focus on in the book—marriage/family, interfamily dynamics, community (social capital), schools, and the built landscape. These have the greatest impact on our neighborhood’s social health. Check out the choices and judge the quality of the work, while ensuring they have the right leaders and opportunities given your capacity. Think about the social habitat as an ecosystem and look for ways to make it flourish.
Volunteering is essential. Every small effort can start a chain reaction, whether it’s by organizing a parents’ group to support local kids, by mentoring a couple through a church, or by joining a group seeking more government investment in the local library and parks. Actively and consistently volunteering to strengthen a local organization is one of the most valuable—and rewarding—forms of social repair work.
Seth D. Kaplan is a leading expert on fragile states. He is a professorial lecturer in the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, senior adviser for the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT), and consultant to multilateral organizations such as the World Bank, US State Department, US Agency for International Development, and OECD as well as developing country governments and NGOs.
As a reminder, Seth and I will discuss the above ideas—and more—on Zoom in just over a week. Don’t miss it!
essays + news
The most beautiful libraries in the world.
Karen Swallow Prior considers the perils of our Information Age, and the antidotes offered locally: “Perhaps by knowing, not less, but more — more deeply — we can regain our agency and better fulfill the demands of justice. Agency and justice begin and end, after all, on the ground, bodily, in community and real relationships, in flesh and blood.”
Local seed production is one key to our food systems’ resilience—but it’s a daunting task, as “more than 60 percent of the global seed market is now controlled by four multinational companies.” Over at Modern Farmer, Daniel Walton profiles farmers seeking to bolster regional seed production.
Alexandra Moe urges readers to reawaken a beloved—and ancient—tradition: “To reap the full benefits of reading, we should be doing it out loud, all the time, with everyone we know.”
David Bacon chronicles the struggles of strawberry farmworkers to make a living wage.
food + drink
The best rhubarb dessert I have ever eaten. (Added a bit more sugar than called for.)
A springtime favorite: Fresh Mint Tea.
Is the interview available on youtube? I tried to search for it there, but didn't find it.