The FINANCIAL — Every culture has a wide variety of traits that can describe it, and every week this column discusses which traits can be gleaned from GORBI data.
The FINANCIAL — Every culture has a wide variety of traits that can describe it, and every week this column discusses which traits can be gleaned from GORBI data. Usually these traits are affirmative, but this week we’ll be looking to see of what and whom Georgians disapprove in an attempt to find some overarching trends. The primary concept we’ll discuss is an old sociological favorite: social capital.
In the most recent wave of the European Values Survey, Georgian Opinion Research Business International asked respondents questions meant to gauge their aversion to certain activities or peoples. We first presented a list various groups of people to respondents and asked them to “sort out any that [they] would not like to have as neighbors?”
Unacceptable Neighbours |
|
Christians |
4% |
Large families |
7% |
Right wing extremists |
14% |
Left wing extremists |
16% |
Jews |
18% |
Different race |
23% |
Immigrants |
28% |
Gypsies |
34% |
Muslims |
39% |
People who have AIDS |
69% |
Emotionally unstable |
74% |
Ex Criminals |
81% |
Heavy drinkers |
84% |
Homosexuals |
87% |
Drug addicts |
91% |
Not surprisingly, almost no one said they were averse to Christians (4%) or large families (7%) as neighbors, if only because finding such a neighborhood in Georgia would be like capturing a unicorn. Your Georgian neighbors also don’t care too much about your extreme political views, your race, or immigrant status. Even when naming specific “outsider” groups, Georgians were generally accepting: most did not have a problem living near Jews (18%), Gypsies (34%), or Muslims (39%).
Georgians seem the most opposed to living near alcoholics, criminals, and drug addicts, which is common in most places. Less commonly, Georgians have a strong aversion to homosexual neighbors, over whom Georgians would apparently choose criminals and the emotionally unstable – in fact, everyone but drug addicts. For the most part, though, it’s personal behavior that precludes Georgians from welcoming new neighbors.
We also asked respondents their attitudes toward a variety of controversial actions. We read them a list of these possible actions and asked them, on a 1-10 scale, whether the action could always be justified (10), never be justified (1), or something in between.
Topping the charts on this list is divorce: Georgians were relatively accepting of the concept, placing it squarely in the “sometimes justifiable” range (4). Even abortion scored relatively high in justifiability with a 3. Every other action was less justifiable, the majority falling below a 2. Before you think that Georgians are all stuffed shirts, let me quickly describe a general tendency in “justifiability” questions.
Justifiability |
|
Divorce |
4.0 |
In-vitro fertilization |
4.0 |
Abortion |
3.0 |
Euthanasia |
2.4 |
Falsely claiming state benefits |
2.1 |
Cheating on taxes |
2.1 |
Avoiding fares |
1.9 |
Human embryo experiments |
1.8 |
Having casual sex |
1.7 |
Adultery |
1.6 |
Death penalty |
1.6 |
Accepting bribes |
1.5 |
Genetic manipulation of food |
1.5 |
Prostitution |
1.2 |
Suicide |
1.2 |
Smoking Marijuana |
1.1 |
Homosexuality |
1.1 |
When asking questions like this, low scores are typical regardless of country. On a 1-10 scale, it’s quite rare for an even slightly controversial topic to score above a 5 or 6, there are always groups who say “that’s just not right.” Because of this, these numbers can only serve as a relative description: I had a good laugh when I saw the justifiability of “avoiding fare on public transport.” Georgians said, in total, that it was virtually unacceptable (1.9). Taking the bus every day, I can promise you that more than a small fraction of people “strategize” their payments, waiting until they see a yellow shirt to swipe their card.
So, looking at two actions can tell you which is relatively more justifiable, but let’s see what happens when we try and group some together.
Social Capital — If you’re not familiar with the concept, social capital is a sociological description of the benefits derived from a person’s network of friends, family, colleagues, larger society, etc. Some political philosophers have separated this into two types: “bridging” and “bonding” capital. Bonding social capital is the sum of the relationships with one’s own in-group (ethnicity, religion, gang, or neighborhood), whereas bridging capital consists of networks that develop outside of one’s closest groups, such as between minority Azeris and Georgians, Megrelis and Gurulis, or even between Georgian Dreamers and UNM devotees.
These proposed delineations vary based on the frame of the discussion, and even by the political philosopher doing the talking. However, the central concept is this: bonding social capital is more important and pervasive in societies where everyone has to “fend for themselves,” whereas the bridging type is more prevalent in societies where people collect in larger groups, and generally trust their government and society to do right by them. Even though it’s only a tiny data point, I’d like to use this justifiability scale to posit which sort of social capital has developed in Georgia.
Let’s divide all the actions that can affect the strength of someone’s social capital into two groups: actions that harm bridging social capital (tax evasion, manipulating benefits, free-riding), and actions that harm your closer relationships or personal reputation (casual sex, adultery, bribery). We can see that Georgians are consistently more willing to exploit the larger society for benefit, but find it less tasteful to damage their reputation with their closer relations. This data is consistent with the idea that societies will rely much more heavily on bonding social capital if the government and institutions have failed to provide necessary services in recent history.
As a final admission, this is not very strong support for social capital, it’s meant only to discuss these concepts in a Georgian frame. While social capital is a well-known concept, no one has yet found a universally recognized way to measure or scientifically test this ambiguous model, not even GORBI.
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