Engaging Niche Identities for Mass Engagement

We continue the examination of the post-materialist shift, and the emergence of increasingly niche subcultures, that we began in The World Is a Lot Like the Internet. In this episode, we examine its implications for projects of political transformation. Relying heavily on Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, we examine how traditional organizing strategies assume a level of social cohesion that has largely vanished, based as they are on mobilizing people who are already organized into structures like community churches and labor unions--entities that have experienced decades of declining participation. We search for political projects that have taken a psychographically targeted, participatory approach--an approach characteristic of the post-materialist shift--and find only very depressing cases. Arnold, therefore, proposes a collaborative effort to take what marketers know and apply it to revolution.