Category: Series: Big Sort (Book Discussion)
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The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart
Index The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing us Apart Geography vs. Demography The Psychology of the Tribe Post-Materialism Seeds of the New Partisanship Economic Consequences Segmenting Religion Advertising Lifestyle Idea Segregation Unsorting? Final Thoughts
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Big Sort: Final Thoughts
(Link to Part 11) As we wrap up this series on Bill Bishop's The Big Sort, I'll have to say that I think he makes a pretty convincing case that sorting has happened. One of the questions I have is whether or not this sorting indicates a significant cultural shift or whether it is part…
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Big Sort: Unsorting?
(Link to Part 10) Over the last half-century, we've witnessed a sorting phenomenon in American life. As noted in an earlier post, gathering like-minded people tends to intensify and make individuals' views more extreme. Sorting intensifies group norms and values, which draws in more like-minded people who give stronger reinforcement to norms and values. If…
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Big Sort: Idea Segregation
(Link to Part 9) In chapters 10 and 11 of The Big Sort, Bill Bishop delves into the political consequences of sorting. Forty years ago, various community-oriented organizations and groups included people from a broad range of backgrounds and views, such as the Elks, Masons, Eastern Star, and veterans' groups. Mainline denominations could be added…
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Big Sort: Lifestyle
(Link to Part 8) In the early twentieth century, sociologist Emil Durkheim described traditional culture as “mechanical solidarity.” Like pieces of a machine, the parts were interchangeable. Everyone did similar work, shared similar values, and lived in stable, relatively isolated communities. Bill Bishop draws on the image of the Borg from Star Trek: The Next…
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Big Sort: Advertising
(Link to Part 7) Advertising is another area of life affected by the sorting phenomenon. In The Big Sort, Bill Bishop writes that until the 1950s, most advertising for consumer products was through mass advertising. This applied to political campaigning as well. But by the summer of 2006, advertising and campaigning had become exercises in…
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Big Sort: Segmenting Religion
(Link to Part 6) Bill Bishop writes in The Big Sort: American Churches today are more culturally and politically segregated than our neighborhoods. This happened partially because we prefer to worship in like-minded congregations. But churches also grew more homogeneous because ministers took what was learned nearly a century ago by Christian missionaries trying to…
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Big Sort: Economic Consequences
(Link to Part 5) The U. S. A. has been undergoing decades of urbanization. First, the migration was into densely populated urban areas. Then folks began migrating to the suburbs, some by “white flight” as white upper and middle-class families left ahead of the in-migration of ethnic minorities. In The Big Sort, Bill Bishop sees…
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Big Sort: Seeds of the New Partisanship
(Link to Part 4) In the fall of 1974, a war broke out in Kanawha County, West Virginia. Not a shooting war exactly, but certainly a major conflict. Schools were shut down, and people went to jail for conspiracy to blow up school buses and burn down schools. The issue? Textbooks. Fundamentalist pastor Marvin Horan…
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Big Sort: Post-Materialism
(Link to Part 3) Earlier in this Big Sort series, we noted Bill Bishop’s observation that the first half of the twentieth century had been about economic specialization and the second half about social specialization. What drove this social specialization? Bishop calls it post-materialism. He writes: The new politics was molded by post-materialist realities. Tradition,…