A Quick Backgrounder on Studying Civic Engagement
This picture drives at the operating logic of our work. There are all these opportunities for community, yet our focus is so limited. What might be revealed if we took a more expansive and inclusive view of civic participation?
Approaching civic engagement
What are our models for civic engagement and how do they relate current civic practices? There is a story, voiced as recently as in Jill Lepore’s 2018 view of American history to the present day, that American society, has turned inward or lost some characteristic of community. She discusses, in her analysis of the 2016 election, the erosion of engagement in political parties, in churches and soup pantries as key symptoms of what might be described as civic rot (not her words). As is usual for this familiar ‘take’, Lepore conceives of this erosion as a generational defect brought about by technology:
“At the time of the 2016 election, a majority of younger eligible voters got their news from Facebook’s News Feed, which had been launched in 2006. Not many of them — fewer than in any generation before them — believed in political parties, or churches, or public service. The mantra of the counterculture, “question authority,” had lost its meaning; few institutions any longer wielded authority. Sellers of data plans suggested that people could upload all of themselves onto the Internet, a self of selfies and posts, an abdication of community and of inquiry. Sellers of search engines suggested that all anything anyone needed to know could be found out with a click.”
— Lepore, Jill. These Truths: A History of the United States (p. 772). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.
On this account, the common refrain is that when we look at key indicators of civic engagement, our society has been facing a steady decline in participation. Between technology and modernity, liberal democracies have lost key social aptitudes and therefore a loss in civicness and civility.
Our interest is in understanding civic health, in exploring civic participation from a different perspective. Rather than in the terms of what has been lost, or in terms of what was previously the case, but rather by exposing and uncovering new energies of engagement. We’re not convinced all is lost. We’re more convinced we’re not looking both in the appropriate spaces and in appropriate ways. And our ambition is to reveal and explore textures and fibers of engagement to weave a more integrated picture of our social fabric.
So how is civic engagement normally discussed and understood?
Generally, we think about it in terms of voting and large formal community organization membership. Civic engagement in America tends to be some composite of when we voted, when we last went to church, and when we volunteer at the food bank.
The American National Elections Study, the largest US election study, focuses exclusively around voting oriented behaviour. Crowley’s continuum of civic engagement expands this model slightly to include community behavior-oriented such as ‘donations to charity’, ‘volunteering’ and sustained volunteer service. Keeter et al’s study on the civic and political health of the nation in 2002 identifies 19 core activities, that focus on electoral issues, political voice, and again include a civic component focused on fundraising and volunteerism. 66% of respondents reported never being contacted to donate or volunteer, and 60% had no recollection of volunteering in their household growing up. Moreover, 48% report no engagement to community and politics and only 16% reporting engagement in both fields. In ANES studies, during voting intent and validation studies, when asked for the best reason to vote, ⅓ responded their responsibility as a citizen, ⅓ said to express their views and only ¼ responded that “their vote, with others, can change political outcomes.
Simultaneously, and most famously with Putnam’s Bowling Alone, come reports of Americans engaging in informal social activities and replacing classic models of volunteerism, church, and party with other forms of social engagement in their generation of social capital. So we’ve known the normal model isn’t sufficient for some time.
Recent research and activity are seeking to expand this definition and in doing so, find new models of civic engagement and participation. A recent newsletter of ours focused on The Reimagining the Civic Commons Project as it looks at shared public spaces and civic assets as potential sites of investment and social cohesion in a series of demonstration cities. In Philadelphia, the city has launched its Rebuild program, financed primarily by the Philadelphia Beverage Tax and the Knight Foundation, again looking at neighborhood parks, recreation centers and libraries as loci for stronger community development. Other investments by the Knight Foundation in Philadelphia include the PHL Participatory Design Lab.
This is a start, but more needs to happen.
Where is this going?
We believe this speaks to the potential in broadening definitions of civic participation. When going to the park and checking in on the library are seen as civic activities, that opens the door to new ways to engage citizens and the opportunity to build new pathways for increased civic action.
We’re interested, then, in using a variety of qualitative methods, from participatory action research to design probes to multimedia investigations to help unpack and expand our understanding of civic participation.
Our hope is to build a better picture of what it means to be engaged and connected to our communities, and, along the way, find some novel points of intervention to improve the health and resilience of democratic projects.
References — for those interested:
Adler and Goggin, “What do we mean by ‘Civic Engagement’”. Journal of Transformative Education Vol. 3 №3, July 2005 236–253
Keeter et al, “The Civic and Political Health of the Nation: A Generational Portrait”, Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2002.
Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, 2000.
