After 11 September, there has been much discussion in Washington and the national media about a new spirit of civic pride within the USA.
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Many predicted that the public's rush to donate blood and give money in the days following the attacks heralded something new. Talk is of the emergence of a new 'Greatest Generation' and of an America that is once more united with a common purpose. It is eagerly anticipated that the old cynicism and mistrust will be replaced by a surge in volunteering and selfless civic participation.
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President George W Bush, for one, is confident that the new mood will change the nation for the better. Following 11 September, he predicted that 'many Americans, especially young Americans, are rethinking their career choices. They are being drawn to careers of service as police or firemen, emergency health workers, teachers, counsellors or in the military. And this is good for America' (1).
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Other sections of the government have similar expectations. AmeriCorps - one of the large federally backed volunteer programs - is running a series of patriotic advertisements in the hope of connecting to the new sense of civic renewal. Key Senators are tabling a bill to the Senate to quintuple the size of the AmeriCorps. And it is predicted that, in his forthcoming State of the Union address, President Bush will call for the major expansion of the national voluntary work service programmes that first came into being under President Clinton.
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But to date, the new spirit of volunteerism and social engagement is more anticipated than real. While many Americans have undoubtedly become more openly patriotic since 11 September, the evidence for a new civic culture in the nation is sketchy, to say the least.
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 | | The wave of recruits to the military and emergency services never materialised |
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In the days following the attacks, media commentators were quick to note that church attendance was up (see Blind faith, by Brendan O'Neill). In the same breath we were told that young people were flocking to join the military, the secret service and the emergency services.
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Others cite the president's popularity ratings as evidence that public attitudes have changed. Certainly President Bush's ratings have soared, with some polls showing that as many as 90 percent of Americans now approve of how he is handling his job; and approval ratings of Congress have also increased. But too much can be read into such ratings - some have even argued that they should be taken to mean that the American public's disengagement from politics, and distrust of the government, is a thing of the past.
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In fact, now that the dust is finally settling on the events of 11 September, it is clear that things have not changed quite in the way that many anticipated. The increase in church attendance was not sustained in the weeks that followed the attacks. The wave of recruits to both the military and the emergency services never materialised. And despite soaring approval ratings, voter turnout in the off-year elections in November 2001 were lower than comparable elections four years earlier.
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A new study published in January 2002 by Harvard professor Robert Putnam confirms that, while there is much talk about civic responsibility, the talk has not yet translated into a change in civic behaviour or actions. Robert Putnam, author of the influential book Bowling Alone, has studied civic disengagement for a number of years. Since the publication of Bowling Alone in 2000, he has interviewed thousands of Americans for a major study of America's civic habits.
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In the wake of the 11 September attacks, Putnam returned to five hundred of his interviewees to see how their lives had changed. As he explained on National Public Radio, 'In our research, we don't find that people are more likely to join groups now than they were a year ago, or more likely even to attend public meetings now than they were a year ago' (2). Volunteer-based organisations and charities confirm Putnam's findings. While a few organisations experienced a slight increase in enquiries post-11 September, there has been no dramatic change in the numbers of people who are actually getting involved in charitable work.
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| | America's last Greatest Generation was not created by bombs and fear |
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In many respects, far from heralding something new, 11 September merely provided a new vehicle through which very familiar public cynicism and distrust of government can now be exercised. In Washington DC, for example, there is a major row developing about how the authorities handled the anthrax attacks. The federal government is accused of being both incompetent and racist in the way it counselled those exposed to the virus. In New York, Manhattan residents living near Ground Zero are equally cynical about government officials who assure them that the air is not dangerous and the water is safe to drink.
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Yet while there is no real evidence of a new burst of civic enthusiasm and participation, politicians and pundits have eagerly anticipated such a development. And this is not the first time in recent memory that such a discussion has taken place. In the weeks following the mess of the last presidential election in November 2000, we were told that the nation was experiencing a great civic lesson, and were reassured that public interest in public life and civic participation was bound to escalate as a result.
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When every tragedy or screw-up is greeted as something that will 'pull people together' and 'get them involved in something', there is clearly something odd happening. Genuine civic participation and solidarity only happens if such a sentiment emerges spontaneously. People pull together and get involved in things when they share a positive passion for a shared goal. The spirit of the London Blitz or America's last Greatest Generation, which came out of the Second World War, was not created simply by bombs and fear. It expressed the fact that people believed in something - at least to some degree - and were prepared to make sacrifices accordingly.
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Government volunteer programs and AmeriCorps patriotic ads are unlikely to recreate such a spirit. Indeed, the fact that civil participation is so self-consciously discussed and anticipated means that it is likely to fail. When the only thing that can throw people together and supposedly create a sense of community is a major and frightening terrorist attack, it becomes clear what is really missing in the present discussion: something within US society itself that can genuinely and positively tie people to one another.
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Read on:
spiked-issue: After 11 September
(1) Presidential address to the nation on homeland security, November 8 2001 , Atlanta, Georgia
(2) NPR Morning Edition, January 11 2002
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