Cooperativeness
Cooperativeness is an act of being morally upright to do the best to play a part in a mutual agreement. It requires that each ought to take the moral responsibility to be the best he or she can to accomplish an agreed sense of sharing, either overtly or covertly, so as to gain from the social capital. He believes that each party can reap mutual benefits if they cooperate and share the common belief that works towards a common goal of helping one another. However, there are certain incidences where although every agent plays his or her part in the group agreement, the overall group does not and. According to Putnam (163), the fact that individual parties that make a group fail to cooperate do not suggest any form of not knowing or irrational behavior. This is based on certain game theories that have exposed certain examples to explain the specific scenarios that constitute failures of cooperation. They are the tragedy of commons, a public good, the logic of collective action, the prisoners’ dilemma.
A typical example is the Middle East conflict. According to the feuding parties’ stance, Palestinians and Israelis all have refused to cooperate in the sharing of resources available in the region. The fact that the two parties have divergent views in the sharing of resources is making the process of cooperation quite difficult. The tragedy of commons theory, in this case, is that Palestinians and Israelis share the same territories, where they should be able to the resources available. However, Palestinians view the land they live in as occupied by invaders, where they are forced to abide by the military watch. Israelis on the other hand continues to build settlements in these lands under conflict.
In this case, every party would have benefited if they cooperated. However because there is lack of tangible mutual commitment to cooperation, each party has the freedom to ride free, and each of them wants the other party to give up so as to remain with the whole share of the resources available in the region.
Trust
Trust is the ability to take risks, where the two parties in agreement act in separate perspectives so they are able to benefit from the shared ideas or issues, with the knowledge that each knows that an action taken in this complex relationship is likely to affect each party either equally or at different levels. From a sociological perspective, trust is viewed as individual’s property, where they are likely to feel and value the other party in relation to the needs and goal or aspiration of justified equal benefit. Another perspective of trust is in the view that it is a collective attribute, which enables the parties involved to choose to believe in each other’s ability to deliver their part of the process. This in fact is an important aspect; especially where there is a public good to be shared so as social system is maintained. This is in line with Putnam’s argument that, communities in Northern Italy have succeeded in the development of trust that has subsequently facilitated the growth of democracy. According to Putnam (65), the use of force to reinforce trust is quite expensive as and such initiatives are not likely to succeed. In this case, some people have proposed the use of third party to reinforce trust. However, a third party would need to exclusively non-partisan and trust-worthy to the two parties.
In the Palestinian-Israeli war, the United Nations is the third party. However, historical facts show that the United Nations gave the Jewish people the land, initially occupied by Palestinians so that they could work and live peacefully together as one unit. It is noted that the land is hosts the Holy City of Jerusalem, which is surrounded by Muslim dominant Palestinians. To make issues more complex, most of the portions of the land that Israelis acquired through force from the Palestinians are holy places for the Muslim Arabs of the Palestinians. This kind of interrelationship between Palestinians, Israelis, and the third party is very complex. Palestinians have no trust in the third party as the body the can bring lasting solutions to the problems. According to Putnam, third-party intervention can only work if they are trustworthy and no party believes they are inclined in favor of another party. He however concludes that even if the third party was trusted at initial stages, there is no guarantee that it will defect as time goes by (Putnam 165).
Collectivism
Collectivism is a social aspect of a society that form a network of interrelationships, with the norms and practices intended to help them coordinate for resultant mutual benefits. Putman gives a diverse view of collectivism in terms of being ready to participate in various groups or organizations as these social alliances enforce trust through the spread between the networks. This is seen in many rotating credit associations which shows how tensions or difficulties associated with credit organizations are eliminated through collectivism as social capital, hence building mutual understanding between the group members. In my society, women groups have come together in order to make use of social capital as security for getting financial assistance from organizations. This helps them even in cases where physical asset is needed for security for a loan facility. In effect, those with social capital have the possibility of acquiring more than those who lack social capital.
The interconnections between the concepts
In the Middle East conflict, every party would be successful in their pursuance of different and common goals if they trusted each other enough to allow them corporate. In situations where mutual understandings of collectivism work, there is no fear of one party reneging in its pursuance. However, as things stand now, the Middle East crisis is a clear manifestation of what is comprised of the connection between these principles. For example, any agreement to share the available resources through cooperation would be important in ensuring what trust between the two parties is considered in the negotiation for a mutual goal.
However, so far the cooperation link between the two parties is jeopardized by the ‘inclining’ third party, the United Nations. In other words, the link between the two parties is supposed to be associated with their collective responsibility to cultivate trust and cooperation. Through this, the use of force, either by the two fighting parties, or between the two parties and the intermediary, that is the United Nations. However, Putnam argues that the third party to solve the problem is associated with its level of trustworthiness and collective nature of the abstract conflicts.
Works Cited
Putnam, Robert. “Social Capital and Institutional Success.” Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton, University Press, 1993: 163-185