Join or Die film screening at Radically Rural
- October 11, 2024
- Community Development, Economic Development
On September 25th, Radically Rural hosted a public screening of the documentary called Join or Die to kick off its two-day summit in Keene. The film featured Jaffrey resident Bob Putnam, a landmark social scientist who popularized the term “social capital” and made the case that community is at the root of democracy. The story follows Putnam on his roller-coaster journey of learning how building community can help mend America’s frayed rural fabric. Black and white stop-motion illustrations accentuated with pops of neon added a contemporary visual twist and on-screen appearances by Hillary Clinton and Pete Buttigieg punctuated Putnam’s data analyses throughout the film.
As Putnam explains in his year 2000 book Bowling Alone, America as a whole is financially and materially successful, but the number of deep, quality social connections is declining. Further research revealed social cohesion forms the foundation on which thriving democracies are built, even more so than economic conditions. (Putnam granted that healthy economies provide increased resources for democracy than poor economies, but democracies prevail under these conditions only with strong social cohesion.) With strong social cohesion comes trust of your neighbor, your community, and the government.
One metric for social cohesion is club membership. Clubs – such as Rotary, Lions Club, Veterans of Foreign Wars – provide a venue for fostering such interaction. Significant decreases in club membership over time correlate with decreased trust in the functioning and running of the US government. As Americans have prospered over the last sixty years, increasingly individualistic attitudes have taken root and contributed to the erosion of social capital. This compromises not only the social webs of communities, but a foundational principle of the US government: democracy.
Lack of social cohesion also impacts the physical wellbeing of people as individuals. The Surgeon General reported that the US’s current epidemic of loneliness is as deadly as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Experiencing genuine social connections, however, reduces your risk of dying this year by half. Compelling? That was the verdict of the crowd at Keene’s Showroom for the screening.
Putnam’s response to these findings is this: Join a club, not only because it builds social capital, but because it’s good for you too. Clubs foster trust and encourage active participation, both of which are requirements of building healthy communities and healthy people. Building community requires work, but by honing those skills, you may very well save yourself – and your community.
The post-screening discussion covered topics such as the challenges in engaging disengaged citizens, examples of various marginalized groups that have succeeded in building community, and home-town anecdotes that reflect the reality of Putnam’s findings.
The screening’s attendees were from all over the country – Mississippi, Maryland, Nebraska– and despite many of them making long journeys to get to the New Hampshire Summit, the energy in the theater was palpable. If that was any indication of the days ahead, then it’s safe to say that Join or Die started Radically Rural with a bang.
