Invest in connectors says Clay Shirky

Clay Shirkey, author of Here Comes Everybody, spoke at the RSA in London on March 18 2008. One of the topics he touched on, in response to a question, was social exclusion, and the issue of how to engage and connect people.
This was, he said, a depressing thread of social research - but he had some insights into what would help.
He said that research by Duncan Watts suggested that social density, the social clustering that gives you access to social capital - by which you can get loans or help - has much to do with like-with-like clustering.
If you want to increase social capital and tackle exclusion you need to support people who make connections.
"What we end up with are small groups of people who are very similar, and there are only a handful of individuals in any given society who brigdge those gaps .
"If I wanted to set up a programme to address social exclusion I would not try to address the bulk of the group because most of those resources would go to waste, because most of the people that people know are other people like them.
"I would fund the people who are bridging the structural - I would find the people who knows someone in in council housing and someone who is living over in Belgravia. I wouldn't fund the people in Belgravia or the people in council housing to just get together and talk to one other. I would find the people who are naturally bridging that gap somehow. I would give them the tools specifically designed for the connection or social bridging function that's different from just what that everyday user might have.
"What we found in every social system we looked at is that the imbalance of participation means that a few people are responsible for most of the social systemic connectivity, and concentrating on those people, on the outliers rather than on the average actually can improve the system as a whole
"I think you could move more information, awareness, empathy, sympathy or what have you across those otherwise relatively unbridged gaps by funding the natural bridgers and strengthening them rather than trying to build new ones from scratch".

RSA event http://tinyurl.com/35qxa3
Audio file http://tinyurl.com/3a9ete
Report at Designing for Civil Society http://tinyurl.com/2zkshq

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• clayshirky