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Social capital

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Politics and government

   Social capital is a core concept in business, economics, organizational
   behaviour, political science, and sociology, defined as the advantage
   created by a person's location in a structure of relationships. It
   explains how some people gain more success in a particular setting
   through their superior connections to other people. There are in fact a
   variety of inter-related definitions of this term, in popular
   literature, which has been described as "something of a cure-all"
   (Portes, 1998) for all the problems afflicting communities and
   societies today.

   While various aspects of the concept have been approached by all social
   science fields, some trace the modern usage of the term to Jane Jacobs
   in the 1960s. However, she did not explicitly define a term social
   capital but used it in an article with a reference to the value of
   networks. The first cohesive exposition of the term was by Pierre
   Bourdieu in 1972 (though clear formulation in his work can be traced to
   1984). James Coleman adopted Glenn Loury's 1977 definition in
   developing and popularizing the concept. Drawing on Coleman, Gary
   Becker (1996, ch. 1) distinguishes between individual i's personal
   capital and social capital, Si. Si is used analogously to the capital
   stock K from the neoclassical growth model in economics to explain
   interactions of Si with i's investment in social capital. In the late
   1990s, the concept became respectable, with the World Bank devoting a
   research programme to it and with its currency in Robert Putnam's 2000
   book, Bowling Alone.

Roots

   The concept that underlies social capital is old. Philosophers who
   emphasized the relation between pluralistic associational life and
   democracy implicitly used it as early as the 19th century. These
   theorists include James Madison (The Federalist), Alexis de Tocqueville
   (Democracy in America), and many authors in the dominant, pluralist
   tradition in American political science. In fact, John Dewey referred
   to "social capital" in School & Society in 1900 but he did not offer a
   definition of it.

   Some examples of social capital include churches, PTAs, Scouting,
   school boards, amateur sports leagues, fraternal organizations,
   internet networks, and even extreme groups like the KKK or white
   supremacist groups, although these groups create exclusionary social
   capital that can have negative effects.

   All these groups can help build and break societies because of their
   bridging/bonding behaviour. If the amount of human interaction
   increases, people are more likely to help one another and later become
   more politically involved.

   Recently there has been much discussion of email and online communities
   and whether they help build social capital. Some argue that they may
   bridge people together but do not bond them. Another interesting debate
   among political scientists has regarded whether email helps produce or
   diminish social capital within the workplace.

Definitions

   A problem with the term social capital is its widely differing
   definitions. Some political scientists use the term as identical the
   idea of civil society and trust. To others, social capital has a
   separate meaning.

   In The Forms of Capital (1986) Pierre Bourdieu distinguishes between
   three forms of capital: economic capital, cultural capital and social
   capital. He defines social capital as "the aggregate of the actual or
   potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network
   of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance
   and recognition." (Bourdieu, 1983:249)

   According to Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone and the concept's
   leading proponent (though not its originator), social capital "refers
   to the collective value of all ' social networks' and the inclinations
   that arise from these networks to do things for each other,". According
   to Putnam and his followers, social capital is a key component to
   building and maintaining democracy. Putnam says that social capital is
   declining in the United States. This is seen in lower levels of trust
   in government and lower levels of civic participation. Putnam also says
   that television and urban sprawl have had a significant role in making
   America far less connected.

   Nan Lin's concept of social capital has a more individualistic
   approach: "Investment in social relations with expected returns in the
   marketplace". This may subsume the concepts of some others such as
   Bourdieu, Coleman, Flap, Putnam and Eriksson (as noted in Lin, 2001).

   Francis Fukuyama described social capital as the existence of a certain
   (i.e. specific) set of informal values or norms shared among members of
   a group that permit cooperation among them.

   Patrick Hunout and The Social Capital Foundation have suggested that
   social capital is a set of attitudes and mental dispositions that
   favour cooperation within society, and that as such, it equals the
   spirit of community.

   Nahpiet and Ghoshal in their examination of the role of social capital
   in the creation of intellectual capital, suggest that social capital
   should be considered in terms of three clusters: structural, relational
   and cognitive. Carlos García Timón describes that the structural
   dimensions of social capital relate to an individual ability to make
   weak and strong ties to others within a system. The differences between
   weak and strong ties are explained by Granovetter (1973). The
   relational dimension focuses on the character of the connection between
   individuals. This is best characterized through trust of others and
   their cooperation and the identification an individual has within a
   network. Hazleton and Kennan (2000) added a third angle, that of
   communication. Communication is needed to access and use social capital
   through exchanging information, identify problems and solutions and
   manage conflict. According to Boisot (1995) and Boland and Tensaki
   (1995), meaningful communication requires at least some sharing context
   between the parties to such exchange.

   According to social capitalist Caira Nakasone, the ambiguity over the
   definition of Social Capital does not occur within the definition of
   “social” but in the doubt of “capital”. That is in the causal and more
   over “effective” nature of social networks which inhibits agreement
   over a concrete, measurable form of the theory

Original usage by Coleman and Bourdieu

   Bourdieu has been heralded as being the origin of contemporary usage of
   the term (Everingham, 2001). Bourdieu places the source of social
   capital, not just in social structure but in social connections. Social
   capital is to him, “the aggregate of actual or potential resources
   which are linked to the possession of...membership in a group”
   (Everingham, 2001). His treatment of the concept is instrumental,
   focusing on the advantages to possessors of social capital and the
   “deliberate construction of sociability for the purpose of creating
   this resource” (Portes, 1998).

   Coleman defined social capital functionally as “a variety of entities
   with two elements in common: they all consist of some aspect of social
   structure, and they facilitate certain actions of actors...within the
   structure” (in Portes, 1998) – that is, social capital is anything that
   facilitates individual or collective action. A functional definition of
   social capital does, however, make it impossible to separate what it is
   from what it does. Indeed, Portes states that Coleman included under
   the term the mechanisms that generated it, the consequences of
   possessing it and the "appropriable social organisation that provided
   the context for both sources and effects to materialise" (Portes,
   1998). The mechanisms that generated social capital were: networks of
   relationships; reciprocity; trust; and social norms. In Coleman’s
   conception, social capital is a neutral resource that facilitates any
   manner of action, but whether society is better off as a result depends
   entirely on the individual uses to which it is put (Foley & Edwards,
   1997).

   Bourdieu’s use of the term is narrower than Coleman’s, seeing the
   effect of social capital at an individual level only. But in his work
   he used the term to explain particular social phenomena, such as how
   some people of privilege managed to gain access to powerful positions
   through their social connections. So while he retains Coleman’s
   neutrality of the resources themselves, he shows how it can be used to
   create inequality.

Current usage

   David Halpern argues that the popularity of the term social capital
   with governments is because "for many policymakers the term captures
   the political zeitgeist of our time: it has a hard nosed economic feel
   while restating the importance of the social" and for researchers due
   to the broad range of outcomes that can be explained using social
   capital (Halpern 2005: 1-2)

   Although Putnam was at first careful to argue that social capital was a
   neutral term, stating “whether or not [the] shared are praiseworthy is,
   of course, entirely another matter” (Edwards & Foley, 1997), his work
   on American society has added moral and ethical value to the concept.
   He sees social capital as a producer of "civic engagement" and also a
   broad societal measure of communal health (Alessandrini, 2002). He also
   transforms social capital from a resource possessed by individuals to
   an attribute of collectives, focusing on norms and trust as producers
   of social capital to the exclusion of networks. This narrows the
   concept, however, and one should be cautious about ignoring the effect
   of social capital at an individual level, and especially disregarding
   the importance of networks of relationships as a prominent source of
   social capital.

   Edwards and Foley, as editors of a special edition of the American
   Behavioural Scientist on Social Capital, Civic Society and Contemporary
   Democracy note that the context dependency of social capital gives rise
   to at least two factors not evident in recent literature . First,
   social capital is not equally available to all, in much the same way
   that other forms of capital are differently available. Geographic and
   social isolation limit access to this resource. Second, not all social
   capital is created equal. The value of a specific source of social
   capital depends in no small part on the socio-economic position of the
   source with society. On top of this, Portes (1998) has identified four
   negative consequences of social capital: exclusion of outsiders; excess
   claims on group members; restrictions on individual freedom; and
   downward levelling norms. He believes that these consequences, and the
   unequal nature of access to social capital must be balanced against the
   optimistic view if social capital is to be useful as a tool for
   societal analysis and transformation.

Forms of capital

   The term " capital" is used by analogy with other forms of economic
   capital, as social capital is argued to have similar (although less
   measurable) benefits. However, the analogy with capital is misleading
   to the extent that, unlike traditional forms of capital, social capital
   is not depleted by use, but in fact depleted by non-use ("use it or
   lose it"). In this respect, it is similar to the now well-established
   economic concept of human capital.

   Sociologists Carl L. Bankston and Min Zhou point out that the concept
   of social capital is based on an imprecise metaphor. They observe that
   social capital does not consist of resources held by individuals or
   groups, but of processes of social interaction leading to constructive
   outcomes.

   However, social capital has also been defined as the resources
   available to one through the networks that they hold.

Bonding and bridging

   In his pioneering study, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of
   American Community (Simon & Schuster, 2000), Harvard political
   scientist Robert D. Putnam wrote: " Henry Ward Beecher's advice a
   century ago to 'multiply picnics' is not entirely ridiculous today. We
   should do this, ironically, not because it will be good for America —
   though it will be — but because it will be good for us." Putnam is not
   suggesting here that we must expand an already stable level of
   networking and civil interaction. He has found an overall decline in
   social capital in America over the past fifty years, a trend that may
   have significant implications for American society.

   Putnam speaks of two main components of the concept: bonding social
   capital and bridging social capital, the creation of which Putnam
   credits to Ross Gital and Avis Vidal. Bonding refers to the value
   assigned to social networks between homogeneous groups of people and
   Bridging refers to that of social networks between socially
   heterogeneous groups. Typical examples are that criminal gangs create
   bonding social capital, while choirs and bowling clubs (hence the
   title, as Putnam lamented their decline) create bridging social
   capital. Bridging social capital is argued to have a host of other
   benefits for societies, governments, individuals, and communities;
   Putnam likes to note that joining an organization cuts in half an
   individual's chance of dying within the next year.

   The distinction is useful in highlighting how social capital may not
   always be beneficial for society as a whole (though it is always an
   asset for those individuals and groups involved). Horizontal networks
   of individual citizens and groups that enhance community productivity
   and cohesion are said to be positive social capital assets whereas
   self-serving exclusive gangs and hierarchical patronage systems that
   operate at cross purposes to societal interests can be thought of as
   negative social capital burdens on society.

Measurement

   There is no widely held consensus on how to measure social capital,
   which is one of its weaknesses. One can usually intuitively sense the
   level/amount of social capital present in a given relationship
   (regardless of type or scale), but quantitatively measuring it has
   proven somewhat complicated. This has resulted in different metrics for
   different functions. In measuring political social capital, it is
   common to take the sum of society’s membership of its groups. Groups
   with higher membership (such as political parties) contribute more to
   the amount of capital than groups with lower membership, although many
   groups with low membership (such as communities) still add up to be
   significant. While it may seem that this is limited by population, this
   need not be the case as people join multiple groups. In a study done by
   Yankee City (1963), a community of 17,000 people was found to have over
   22,000 different groups.

   The level of cohesion of a group also affects its social capital. For
   example, while the US Army may be capable of storming the Capitol, the
   Kleenex corporation would have a much more difficult time, as it isn’t
   nearly as cohesive. However, again, there is no true quantitative way
   of determining the level of cohesiveness. It is entirely subjective.
   How a group relates to the rest of society also affects social capital,
   but in a different manner. Strong internal ties can in some cases
   weaken the group’s capital in cases where the group is geared towards
   crime, distrust, intolerance, violence or hatred towards other. The Ku
   Klux Klan and the Mafia are examples of these kinds of organizations.

Social capital and civil society

   A number of authors , give definitions of civil society that refer to
   voluntary associations and organisations outside the market and state.
   This definition is very close to that of the third sector, which
   consists of "private organisations that are formed and sustained by
   groups of people acting voluntarily and without seeking personal profit
   to provide benefits for themselves or for others". According to such
   authors as Walzer, Alessandrini, Newtown, Stolle and Rochon, Foley and
   Edwards, and Walters, it is through civil society, or more accurately,
   the third sector, that individuals are able to establish and maintain
   relational networks. These voluntary associations also connect people
   with each other, build trust and reciprocity through informal, loosely
   structured associations, and consolidate society through altruism
   without obligation. It is "this range of activities, services and
   associations produced by... civil society" (Alessandrini, 2002) that
   constitutes the sources of social capital.

   If civil society, then, is taken to be synonymous with the third sector
   then the question it seems is not 'how important is social capital to
   the production of a civil society?' but 'how important is civil society
   to the production of social capital?'. Not only have the authors above
   documented how civil society produces sources of social capital, but in
   Lyons work "Third Sector" (2001), social capital does not appear in any
   guise under either the factors that enable or those that stimulate the
   growth of the third sector, and Onyx (2000) describes how social
   capital depends on an already functioning community.

   However, a truer definition of civil society is different though not
   wholly distinct from the third sector. Lyons goes some way to
   addressing this by introducing a somewhat Marxist interpretation of
   civil society, where civil society is "the space for free association,
   where people could meet and form groups to pursue their enthusiasm,
   express their values and assist others". This is a "vibrant space, full
   of argument and disputation about matters of greatest import to its
   citizens", resembling the polis of Athens more than the organisations
   of the third sector. This also implies "elements of the enlightenment
   use of the term civil society" including decency, respect, good manners
   and kindness to fellow beings.

   The idea that creating social capital (i.e. creating networks) will
   strengthen civil society underlies current Australian social policy
   aimed at bridging deepening social divisions. The goal is to
   reintegrate those marginalised from the rewards of the economic system
   into "the community". However, according to Onyx (2000), while the
   explicit aim of this policy is inclusion, its effects are exclusionary:

     The excluded are those who cannot keep pace with the rising
     standards of success: those who are having difficulty meeting the
     expectations that everyone should be able to look after themselves.
     ...the prevailing politics of community has an ideological dimension
     – of a bias towards social order rather than social justice — which
     legitimates the growing disparities in wealth and hardens public
     sentiment towards those most disadvantaged by the new economic
     conditions.

     Within a social justice perspective, the character traits of the
     disadvantaged would not be seen as so much of a problem as would the
     character traits being fostered in members of the community by an
     increasingly competitive and unjust society.

     It is not reasonable to expect those most social isolated to
     [connect] themselves any more than it is reasonable to expect an
     acutely ill person to resolve their illness with better exercise.

     The community promoted through the dominant politics of community
     comprises isolated individuals who have to struggle harder and
     harder just to look after themselves. The main ‘social glue’
     promoted is ‘downward envy’: negative communal sentiment directed at
     those who fail to match up. And as values of self-reliance and
     individual enterprise become more and more highly prized, the human
     attributes which connect us to others (especially to those less
     favourably positioned than ourselves) are being edged out. This is
     the great paradox of the politics of community. Full of rhetoric of
     community — of the need to cultivate "interdependence",
     "connectedness" and "reciprocity" — in practice it seems to have the
     opposite effect.

   Foley and Edwards (1997) believe that "political systems...are
   important determinants of both the character of civil society and of
   the uses to which whatever social capital exists might be put".
   Alessandrini (2002) agrees, saying, "in Australia in particular,
   neo-liberalism has been recast as economic rationalism and identified
   by several theorists and commentators as a danger to society at large
   because of the use to which they are putting social capital to work".

   The resurgence of interest in "social capital" as a remedy for the
   cause of today’s social problems draws directly on the assumption that
   these problems lie in the weakening of civil society. However this
   ignores the arguments of many theorists who believe that social capital
   leads to exclusion rather than to a stronger civil society. In
   international development, Ben Fine and John Harriss have been heavily
   critical of the inappropriate adoption of social capital as a supposed
   panacea (promoting civil society organisations and NGOs, for example,
   as agents of developemnt) for the inequalities generated by neoliberal
   economic development.

   An abundance of social capital is seen as being almost a necessary
   condition for modern liberal democracy. A low level of social capital
   leads to an excessively rigid and unresponsive political system and
   high levels of corruption, in the political system and in the region as
   a whole. Formal public institutions require social capital in order to
   function properly, and while it is possible to have too much social
   capital (resulting in rapid changes and excessive regulation), it is
   decidedly worse to have too little.

   The concept of social capital in a Chinese social context has been
   closely linked with the concept of guanxi.

Social capital and education

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