Guest Post: Michael Hamill Remaley, Director of Communications, Russel Sage Foundation
As Russell Sage Foundation’s director of communications and leader of our independent book publishing unit’s publicity efforts, I occasionally have difficult conversations with our authors attempting to delicately reduce their expectations about the mass appeal of their books. Our authors are usually renowned in their specific fields of social science research, but their books are sometimes so dense with analysis and academic language that, realistically, their primary potential audience is the academic market. So a recent conversation I had with a scholar trying to convince him that his book DOES have great mass appeal was an odd one for me.
Social Commitments in a Depersonalized World examines interpersonal and group ties and proposes a new theory of social commitments, showing that three elements are essential for creating and sustaining alignments between individuals and groups – whether online, on the job or in communities:
multiple interactions
group activities
- ESPECIALLY: emotional attachment
The book is based on thorough social science research, but is written in a very accessible language that can be enjoyed by a broad audience.
This new book significantly advances our understanding of what it takes to form social commitments in the modern, depersonalized world that we live in, with major implications for communications professionals in all sectors.
But when I talked about marketing efforts with the book’s lead editor Edward J. Lawler (his co-editors are Shane R. Thye and Jeongkoo Yoon), I had to convince him that the book could have major appeal way beyond the academic, social science world.
Here’s why I told him the book has great appeal: As individuals’ ties to community organizations and the companies they work for weaken, many analysts worry that the fabric of our society is deteriorating. But there is a great deal of conversation occurring in the popular culture countering this idea saying that new social networks, especially those forming online, create important and possibly even stronger social bonds than those of the past.
Lawler, Thye, and Yoon discuss the problems of long-term social attachments becoming more fragile in a volatile economy where people increasingly form transactional associations not based on collective interest but on what will yield the most personal advantage in a society shaped by market logic. But, they assert, while person-to-group bonds may have become harder to sustain, they continue to play a vital role in maintaining healthy interactions in larger social groups from companies to communities.
Social Commitments in a Depersonalized World shows how:
Affiliations—particularly those that involve a profound emotional component—can transcend merely instrumental or transactional ties and can even transform these impersonal bonds into deeply personal ones.
Recurring collaboration with others to achieve common goals—along with shared responsibilities and equally valued importance within a group—promote positive and enduring feelings that enlarge a person’s experience of the group and the significance of their place within it.
Employees in organizations with strong person-to-group ties experience a more unified, collective identity. They tend to work more cost effectively, meet company expectations, and better regulate their own productivity and behavior.
It seems obvious to me that this research and has important implications for multiple sectors. With cultures pulling apart and crashing together like tectonic plates, much depends on our ability to work collectively across racial, cultural, and political divides. The new theory in Social Commitments in a Depersonalized World provides a way of thinking about how groups form and what it takes to sustain them in the modern world. And while the book is a serious academic treatment of the issues, it is an easy-reading 198 pages that a non-Ph.D. can understand and enjoy.
Apropos of the topic, I posted a note about the book on my Facebook page and friends from all over the map asked where they can get the book. So I’m feeling pretty confident that I was right about the book’s potential mass appeal (either that or my friends on Facebook are smarter than I generally give them credit!). It may not make it to the top of the New York Times best-seller list, but I am confident that it will be quite popular among those who want to better understand what it takes to build group identification in our modern world – which is a whole lot of people.
Click here for more information on the book, including purchasing information.
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