Not the OP, but I guess an argument against globalisation could be made (and has been made by many) from the perspective of better robustness/resilience of a less centralized/less interconnected system, avoidance of single points of failure, maintaining higher diversity of opinions, etc. etc.
The basic finding of the studies detailed in that book are that globalization, and particularly multiculturalism within communities have very negative effects on the happiness and community participation of those involved. Diversity and multiculturalism are generally considered axiomatically good by the left and these studies were done by leftist to prove that value. They found exactly the opposite, and they've been replicated many times, again by leftists, hoping to find a different result but to no avail.
Putnam's book has always seemed hilarious to me -- all of the obvious blunders are evidenced in the title alone.
As if it's impossible to have "social intercourse" in a bowling alley without paying a league $20 and blocking out your Tuesday nights.
You can see the same fallacy at work when greek organizations bemoan the "death of socialization" on campuses where frat/sorority membership goes into decline. But of course, people somehow (got knows how! /s) manage to have social lives, volunteer and give back, etc. without paying Alpha Omega Inc. a few grand a year.
The same thing has happened writ large is society -- to the extent that you can find "decline" in the data, it's more than explained by a growth of new forms of involvement that 20 year old metrics don't properly capture (e.g., if you ignore hacker spaces, maker communities, online mentoring communities, and open source development, HN looks pretty desolate as far as "social intercourse" and volunteering go. But of course anyone who knows WTF they're talking about will roll their eyes if you use the lack of posts about Boy Scouts as an indicator of the social decline of HN's front page).
> and these studies were done by leftist to prove that value. They found exactly the opposite, and they've been replicated many times, again by leftists, hoping to find a different result but to no avail.
1. The studies discussed by Putnam doesn't demonstrate any of this, and these aren't even Putnam's core claims.
He demonizes VIDEO GAMES and women working more than multi-culturalism.
2. To the extent that Putnam does present evidence for his claims (which isn't nearly often enough), there's been no shortage of evidence-based refutation. The wikipedia article even has a "criticism" section, which outlines the main arguments.
Basically, if Putnam's data is to be believed, open source developers (and thousands of other people who are doing something other than volunteering with out-dated orgs) are politically disengaged and insular loners who give nothing back to society.
If your hypothesis was correct, shouldn't these lily-white small towns in Pennsylvania and West Virginia be paragons of social connectedness and happiness, instead of the epicenter of the opioid epidemic?
The problem with jumping to the conclusion that "multiculturalism is bad" is that it seeds the idea that people who don't lookalike can't peacefully co-exist. Personally, I feel a far greater sense of community here in Silicon Valley than I did in the homogenous suburb I grew up in.
I guess one possibility is if you think there's something very good or important about your society, culture, or economy, that you don't want to see change. Globalization means all sorts of pressures to change. People elsewhere who become aware of some aspect of your ways that upsets them may start political campaigns against it, or people in your own community may become interested in moving elsewhere or adopting values or practices that are unfamiliar or previously disfavored in your community. Let's think of a few possible complaints:
"I want my indigenous community to keep speaking our language and practising our religion, but outsiders want us to stop."
"I want to keep having a local community based on farming, but outsiders are tempting our children to move away."
"I want to have the skills I grew up with stay economically relevant, but connecting to the wider economy is making it hard to compete because outsiders are selling similar things cheaper, and making us want new things we don't have an easy way to trade for."
"I want to keep my family learning the things that I think are important but outsiders are trying to teach them skills that are more relevant to a different way of life or set of professions, and trying to teach them a new set of tastes and cravings."
"I want to keep hunting baby seals/whaling/participating in blood sports/practising female circumcision/using corporal punishment on my children/performing animal sacrifices, but outsiders think that's backwards and barbaric and want to stigmatize or outlaw it."
"I want my children to stay in my religion, but other people are trying to evangelize them or deconvert them or expose them to media that mocks or argues against my religion."
"Attracting the attention of outsiders for how great our culture or land is brings all kinds of problems, like tourists who behave badly and inappropriately, or are violent to us, or want to move here and drive up land prices, or want to increase the level of economic activity or bring in extractive industries, or different governments fighting wars over our territory."
"I think my people have an important connection to our land, in a way that we don't have to other places and other people don't have to this place, for example because we know how and why the places here are holy, and that connection or awareness means it's important that we live here and that other people don't."
"My people aren't really that good at interacting with outsiders; our culture or education means that others take advantage of us easily by proposing bargains that aren't really good deals for us, and we don't know how to cope with the disruptions of rapid change, and we tend to get addicted to the drugs that other people bring us that we don't have a prior history with."
"These people say they like and care about us, but then they want to change everything about how we live!"
"My language is stigmatized as a 'dialect' and is useless anywhere else outside of my community. When other people come here they all want us to speak French/Chinese/Russian/English, yet when I go elsewhere people laugh at my attempts to use my own language. This asymmetry makes me feel cheated."
"My community has values I think are really important, like the way we think about family, but now that we're seeing all of these contrary examples in foreign media, people seem less sure of the importance of those values and less willing to act on them. The foreign media don't even always directly engage with our values; they may just subtly suggest that they're just not a big deal."
"We used to have lots of jobs here but at some point they all seemed to disappear. I don't even understand exactly how, but it must have to do with the larger economy. People are telling me that I have an opportunity to move somewhere else and find lots of work, but I was happier with how it was before when I didn't have to move elsewhere to find work."
"It feels like outsiders are manufacturing ethnic conflicts in my community and trying to divide us. In the past, we didn't have conflicts along the lines we do now."