Afrasianet - Zakaria Shaheen - To be sure, the disintegration of Western societies has reached the point of descending into the unknown in terms of the social fabric defined as social capital. This applies to the Western model of life and tops the American model.
So what is the concept of social capital? How can it be monitored in the U.S. context? Has there been a change or decline in its indicators within American society? If so, what are the factors for this decline (disintegration) of social capital in the United States of America?
In the concept of social capital : The concept of social capital goes back to the history of sociological thought, and it comes from the sum of social theories that tried to understand the characteristics of human society, starting from the theory of nervousness in the science of urbanism according to Ibn Khaldun, to the theory of the social contract according to Hobbes.
It is believed that the American educational counselor (L. Hanifan) was the first to use the concept of social capital in 1916, and described the totality of moral values found in daily life; goodwill, empathy, and social contact between individuals, which in his view are elements of participation between people in a strong social unit.
Francisco Fukuyama defines social capital as an ability that arises from the spread of trust in society, or in certain parts of it, and can be embodied in the smallest social group, the family, and is also found in the largest group, the nation, and social capital differs from other forms of human capital, in terms of its formation and spread through cultural mechanisms, such as religion, historical customs, and common material and moral values.
In fact, the United States has a dense network of voluntary organizations than many other Western societies, such as churches, professional associations, charities, private schools, hospitals, and, of course, a very broad business sector.
The first to talk about these complex social pillars in American society was the French traveler (Alexis de Tocqueville), through a visit to America in the thirties of the nineteenth century, and according to Tocqueville: "Americans of all ages and inclinations constantly establish associations, and they have not only commercial and industrial companies, in which everyone participates, but they have a thousand other types of religious, moral, serious, or sterile institutions.
Despite this, the balance between individualism and collectivism has been significantly disturbed in American society, as the moral groups that make up American civil society, starting with the family, passing through neighborhoods, churches, and ending with the workplace, have deteriorated, and several indicators suggest that general social cohesion has clearly declined, and that trust rates have fallen to their lowest level.
Indicators of the disintegration of American social capital: Most recent studies have been interested in studying the problem of trust, due to the increasing uncertainty in social, political and economic relations, as the data showed a significant decline in social confidence in America, and this decline had important repercussions on democracy, and other repercussions on the economy, so the United States began to pay more than other Western countries in order to secure police protection, which puts more than 1% of its total population behind bars annually. It also pays more than Western European countries and Japan pay their lawyers and jurists, so that their citizens can prosecute some of them. Putnam has prepared data indicating a dramatic deterioration in American social cohesion since the early second half of the twentieth century: since the fifties, membership rates in voluntary associations have declined, the number of trade union members has decreased from 32.5% in 1960 to 15.8% in 1993, and many fraternal organizations such as lions, Elks, and Jaycees have been lost.More than half of its members, and similar declines have occurred in organizations such as Scouting, the American Red Cross, and others.
In one sociological study, the participant was asked how often he spent a social evening with a neighbor, and the answer to the question was: "more than once a year," dropping from 72% in 1960 to 61% in 1993. In another study, Americans were asked if they felt all individuals could be trusted, and the number of those who responded positively fell from 58 percent in 1960 to 37 percent in 1993.
Although this is the case, the factor of social trust has declined significantly, by noting the high rates of crime, as America recorded a significant rise as more than any developed country, and the wealthy were able to protect themselves from its direct effects by moving from popular suburbs to rich suburbs, or surrounding their homes and homes with walls that protect them, but the indirect effects of crime were more destructive to the sense of collective spirit than direct ones, as an incident occurred in Louisiana in 1992, when a man An American named Rodney Pairs for killing Japanese student Yoshihiro Hanori Yoshihiro Hattori, shot him when he stopped wrongly near the door of his house, and Hanori was on his way to attend a private party, and although the incident received great attention in Japan and America, the actual issue was a loss of trust in society, the owner of the house shows suspicion in dealing with the outside world, so much so that he is ready to shoot a boy living in the same neighborhood, and in another example of declining trust, he In recent years, most American companies have stopped writing letters of recommendation to their employees who want to move to other jobs, because employees who did not like the quality of the letters filed lawsuits against employers and won them, which was a reason for mistrust between companies and their former employees.
The significant deterioration in family life, which represents the smallest link of social cohesion, as a result of the sharp rise in divorce rates, and the increase in the number of families abandoned by fathers or mothers, and if we leave the family, we find more disintegration in broader gatherings, such as neighborhoods, churches and workplaces, but the most prominent deterioration in American social life is the disintegration of the family, as it had economic consequences, represented in high poverty rates, because it is associated with the presence of the mother as the sole breadwinner for the family. Where the concept of single mother prevailed and marriage became a secondary issue.
Sex outside marriage has produced children who do not know their parents, and the child may have had more than one father, while care homes for children who have not found anyone to care for them after the parents abandoned their care have produced a sick generation that finds only a corrupt society in front of it, which in turn also exposes it to corruption.
Putnam saw that the increased effectiveness of working women in the labor market was the reason for the decline in social capital, as millions of American women moved from home to paid work, and this was one of the reasons for the increase in average weekly working hours, and this women's movement led to a reduction in the energy needed to build social capital, as the largest decline in women's participation since 1970 was recorded, and many of them refrained from entering unions or gatherings, such as the League of Women Voters, the Federation of Women's Clubs, or the Red Cross. This, according to Putnam, led to an erosion of American social capital .
In 1965, the Civil Rights Act and the Electoral Act were issued, and these constitutional changes provided a moral and political basis, which established the roots of individualism, affected social networks, and in fact led to the weakening of the power of all groups, making cities less able to control pornography, and preventing public housing authorities from denying tenants with criminal tendencies or drug addicts access to housing. The use of courts as a means of settling religious disputes has also increased, which has weakened the capacity of large gatherings, thus the United States of America represents a paradoxical image of a society that lives on a huge wealth of social capital that was previously accumulated, which gives it a busy and dynamic life, while showing extremism in mistrust, and the spread of individualism that tends to isolate members of society from each other.
The Industrial Revolution destroyed professional unions, small towns, extended families, cottage industries, and farming communities at the end of the last century, and the removal of popular neighborhoods played a role in destroying many of the social networks that existed in the slums, where they were replaced by public housing units with many floors that lack a distinctive identity, although the old population systems are often based on Race or religion, they are a source of growing collective spirit among middle-class and poor Americans, so the continuous disintegration of social ties, from families and neighborhoods to civil society institutions, civil society organizations, and American economic institutions, resulting in one way or another from the factor of mistrust in American society, has led to a growing disintegration of American social capital.
And here education and culture can play an important role in the upbringing of children, so let's imagine how a child can think when he is told that you can choose your sex and you can marry a man as you are and also for a female, in other words, defending homosexuality and considering it a fundamental issue at the heart of Western culture.
Many empires have become morally bankrupt, such as Rome, and this has caused them to fall from within, and this is what we see clearly in America and the countries of the West as well. Instead of correcting this anomalous model, they not only encouraged it, but tried to impose it on other countries and peoples. This is an important factor for rapid downfall as it makes society divided within it between a supporter of homosexuality and a lack of values and a conservative willing to fight to defend its values, and this is what is happening today in America. There is an internal conflict pushed by the worker Moral and values, so that society has become divided against itself between this and that, and each pushes strongly in a direction opposite to the other, on the fact that the American state supports the bankrupt moral aspect, and this is a mistake that will pay a heavy price and a factor strongly added to the expected American fall.
One thinker diagnoses his vision of America: "I see in America the image of destruction, I imagine it in the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Japan, I see it sticks and executioner, I see it as the dog that gasps for prey, that it is like a crocodile smelling blood. America is the basis of evil, and the basis of destruction is the basis of the present fusion, whenever it lands in a place, it knows and realizes that there will be destruction. Because it has not yet reached some areas, we do not hear their names in the news, so as soon as you hear the name of a region or country in the news, trust that America has reached it. This America is like thousands that spread throughout the world . It landed in Afghanistan and wreaked havoc, it departed to Iraq and generated chaos, it landed in Lebanon, it spawned the parties, it looked at Sudan, it starved them, and in Palestine it fed the wolf to prey on women and children, not to mention what it does in Eastern Europe of uprisings by order of money and economic blockades on reluctant countries .
In fact,in less than forty years, our peoples have received waves of globalization that have swept many borders and brought down constructed walls. Then it received other waves of globalization that built borders where there were no borders and built walls where there were no walls. People hated globalization and held the West responsible for the disintegration, chaos, social injustice and racist sentiments.
The West no longer has the geopolitical status it has enjoyed throughout modern centuries. In just a few years, years of world peace unprecedented for the people of Europe and East Asia have deteriorated, Europe and the United States have deteriorated and far-right forces have risen around the world.
In addition to the societal collapse in the West, the American model in dealing with peoples has a special orientation, for example, genocide is a way of life in the Constitution and doctrine of America, and its consequences!
The world's minds go back nearly three centuries, when America decided to establish its state, and it was on the remains and blood of the American Indian people in a brutal and tragic genocide, as is happening now in Gaza.
He also recalled the annihilation of the Japanese people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear, and the attempt to exterminate Vietnam with chemical weapons, and contributed to planting Israel and consolidating its presence to be the policeman of the region, punishing those who raise the banner of disobedience, and beating those who deviate from the path of blind obedience.
Any hope for a steadily declining West