The production of social capital in US counties

A growing belief exists that social capital contributes to economic growth of communities. In this paper, we identify inputs into the production of social capital at the level of US counties, using an array of individual and community factors that are theoretically important determinants of social capital. We use data from the Bureau of the Census, County Business Patterns, USA Counties on CD, National Center for Charitable Statistics, and the Regional Economic Information System for two time periods. Ethnic homogeneity, income inequality, attachment to place, education, age, and female labor force participation are strongly associated with levels of social capital across US counties.     

Measuring social capital accumulation in rural development

Using a theoretical framework, the study proposes an index that can measure the social capital of local action group (LAG) projects. The index is founded on four indicators: number of ties, bridging social capital, recognition, and diversity, which are aggregated into one social capital index. The index has been tested in LAG-Djursland, Denmark, and the study further investigates whether the organisational affiliation, project financing, and LAG co-financing can explain the degree of social capital accumulation. Furthermore, the author has tested if there are connections between motivation for pursuing development projects similar to those implemented previously and the degree of social capital. The paper concludes that there are indications that projects hosted by municipalities tend to show the most social capital, there is no connection between the amount of project financing and social capital, and a high level of motivation leads to increased social capital.     

Social capital and innovation dynamics in district-based local systems

The idea behind this paper is that social capital (SC) is interpreted as a component of an investment, which implies entangled private and public benefits. Within a theoretical framework that considers SC as the public component of the impure public good R&D we show that the ‘civic culture’ of the district in which a firm is located is not a sufficient incentive for the firm to increase its investment in SC, because SC/networking dynamics might positively and complementarily evolve only if the opportunity cost of investing in innovation is sufficiently low. Consequently, we focus our attention on a specialised biomedical industrial district characterised by a strong pattern of innovative activity. We observe that R&D and networking/social capital arise as complementary driving forces of innovation outputs. When the empirical evidence confirms that this complementarity plays a key role, policy efforts should be targeted toward both market and non-market characteristics, rather than solely to the production of local public goods or innovation inputs as independent elements of firm performance. This is very important in terms of policy effectiveness. In fact, we argue that SC/networking dynamics might positively evolve only if the private opportunity cost of investing in R&D innovation is sufficiently low. Nevertheless, this exogenous economic incentive works as long as complementarity, as defined here, holds.     

Entrepreneurial human capital accumulation and the growth of rural businesses: a four-country survey in mountainous and lagging areas of the European union

The paper presents the processes of entrepreneurial human capital accumulation and its impact on rural business growth. Data are derived from four surveys on rural businesses in mountainous and less favoured areas in Southern Europe. Formal pathways of entrepreneurial human capital accumulation refer to education and training, while informal pathways include the cognitive processes of work and managerial experience acquisition and the non-cognitive processes of being raised within an entrepreneurial family environment and/or being raised in the area within which the business is later set-up. The studies reveal that there is a variety of processes of entrepreneurial human capital and knowledge accumulation that are case study specific. Human capital accumulation processes related to education and training or to work and managerial experience still plays the prime role in predicting successful businesses. Results indicate the need for decentralised, flexible and selective entrepreneurial human capital accumulation support programmes that take into account local idiosyncrasies and needs.     

Multi‐sited accumulation of capital: Cape Verdean returnees and small‐scale business

In recent years, policymakers have portrayed return migration as positive for development. In both migrant sending and migrant receiving countries, policymakers expect the transfer of economic, cultural and social capital by returnees to stimulate economic growth. Inherent in these assumptions is the idea of a unidirectional flow of capital from northern countries of immigration to the countries of return. The objective of this article is to contest this idea of a one‐way transfer of capital through a case study of Cape Verdean returnee business owners. To what extent have they accumulated their various forms of capital before emigration, during their sojourn abroad or after return? In this article, I examine the returnees' multi‐sited accumulation of capital and how it corresponds to the resources they need to run a sustainable business. In addition, I analyse how they adapt capital accumulated abroad to the conditions in Cape Verde.     

Where everybody knows your name: the role of social capital in resettlement after an employee relocation

This exploratory research investigates the process of adaptation that follows the intra-national migration of families moved for a professional employee's job. The research suggests the existence of ‘relocation enclaves’ or areas of residence that are densely populated by relocated families. Qualitative interviews with wives relocated for their husband's jobs reveal the importance of building social capital to rebuild families' lives and the positive role that relocation enclaves can play in offering that social capital. Additionally, findings suggest that, contrary to Putnam's proposition that an influx of relocated families into a community would contribute to the erosion of community connections, relocated women are highly active in their new communities and they invest time and inject new ideas into local schools and organizations.     

The social capital crash in the periphery:: An analysis of the current predicament in sub-Saharan Africa

Purpose: The current literature on social capital, especially among sociologists and political scientists, is characterized by a focus on its “civic” nature and consequently on the role that virtuous behavior plays in fostering democracy and national development. Robert Putnam’s book on the significance of the civic tradition in understanding Italy’s political history has set the tone for a new genre of literature on development. It is now being replicated, for example in the international development community, where the search for answers to the question of what explains a society’s progress continues. Efforts to operationalize social capital in order to achieve quantitative measures of its impact are also made in these circles.The notion that social capital is made up of a common currency of civicness, however, is both ethnocentric and misleading for policy or governance purposes. Social capital being manifest in the presence of trust and the existence of social networks and operationalized in collective action, which implies the confidence in sharing information and risks with others, may arise for reasons other than those associated with solving public problems arising from the competitive private interests of autonomous individuals, which is the prevailing assumption of the rational choice-based theory that now dominates the literature. There are at least three other reasons for the formation of social capital if the concern is analyzing its role in developing country contexts. The first is class solidarity growing out of a common sense of being exploited. This has historically been viewed as a cause for collective action. The second is the “moral economy” argument put forward by James Scott: people whose traditional values are being threatened by modernization get together to defend these values. The third is cooperation that emanates from the presence of strong communal ties, which help foster the development of a para-public realm, often in conflict with the norms underpinning the civic public realm. In short, there are several competing currencies of social capital that influence people’s readiness to engage in collective action.Which of these types of collective action people prefer and the extent to which they engage in any one of them is very much determined by the history of previous efforts to form social capital. Whether these efforts were successful or not will have an impact on the strategies that individuals choose next time around. Investments in social capital, therefore, are driven by the same considerations that influence behavior and choice in the financial marketplace. Social capital is based on the notion that something is being obtained in return for a gesture of goodwill. It takes a reciprocal effort to sustain it. If mutuality is lost, so is the trust that was being built with the initial act of goodwill. Trust, once destroyed, is difficult to rebuild; hence the significance not only of forming such capital, but also its ruin. Above all, social capital is by nature exclusive, i.e. it cannot incorporate everybody. It is often being fostered in the context of conflict. In short, social capital is not easily engineered by outsiders. It has to grow organically from the social dynamics that characterizes society.The purpose of this paper is to provide an alternative explanation of the societal predicament of sub-Saharan African countries to those that have relied primarily on economic and/or structural variables. Using social capital as the dependent variable, it examines what forces produce social capital, what type of it prevails, and which group in society is more inclined towards one type rather than others. Empirical data were collected in Tanzania in 1990 from four different groups—commercial farmers, village farmers, peri-urban entrepreneurs and women groups—all of which are viewed as important players outside the state.Methods: The study shows that commercial farmers are the only group of respondents who display a civic approach towards solving problems facing them. They are driven to collective action by a genuine concern with policy issues and the need to deal with them in a rational fashion. They demonstrate an internal strength that is unparalleled in the other groups. Women groups show great internal solidarity, but their motive for joint action is largely driven by moral economy considerations, that is, the desire to protect or enhance traditional values. Moreover, their activities tend to be confined to very elementary livelihood issues and thus have little impact on the nature of the public realm. Village farmers, and to a lesser extent, peri-urban entrepreneurs, are primarily motivated by communal considerations, but unlike the other two groups, they display much less trust in each other. There is a serious crisis of confidence in the value of collective action among both village farmers and peri-urban entrepreneurs, but this does not mean that they are transcending communal loyalties in favor of some other type of collective action. On the contrary, they refrain from any collective action and prefer to act on their own to solve problems, many of which cannot be dealt with on such a basis.In explaining this loss in social capital that is so prevalent among groups that could play a crucial role in national development it is necessary to understand the political legacy that they are coping with. Policies that took away the spirit of self-reliance and self-help that was so prominent before and at independence among groups at both national and local levels by emphasizing the need for a centralized control of resource allocation and thus the preemption of voluntary action are according to respondents largely responsible for the destruction of social capital in Tanzania. The loss in Tanzania is a double one. It is not only the formal institutions which have collapsed but so have the informal networks that in many other countries may serve as a substitute to facilitate collective action. It is clear that the loss of trust in the Tanzanian countryside and its urban fringes has produced a general decline in social capital both at the micro and macro level. Individuals do not trust their neighbors to engage in solving many problems that are of a common nature. They instead rely on their own limited resources, typically what may be possible to mobilize within a narrow family setting. These resources are typically inadequate and problems of a common and public nature in the field of health, education and infrastructure remain unsolved. At the societal level there is a more generalized loss of social capital, which expresses itself in terms of a broad suspicion towards government as well as other modernizing institutions. Religious institutions which are often viewed as alternative trustworthy institutions and thus potentially of value for local development purposes have lost much of their public role. Instead, people flock to the “new” churches, often evangelical or prophetic institutions where salvation is being sought in an escapist manner. In sum, the negative externalities produced by the loss of trust in institutions and among people in Tanzania are very serious and are likely to be at the root of the country’s predicament as the only country in the world which without experiencing war, epidemics or a financial crash has plunged from being economically relatively well-off to being one of the world’s five poorest nations.Results: This study has important policy implications for what kind of “interventions” outside agencies or domestic actors in Tanzania may take. It is clear that the only group with enough internal strength to make a difference are the commercial farmers, who articulate a very “civic” outlook and reflect the type of rational calculations that we associate with game theoretic reasoning. Even if augmented with other members of the middle class, however, this group is quite small and it is difficult to see that it can carry the burdens of their country on their shoulders alone. Furthermore, if they were to become politically more active, they may easily be tainted by the “patrimonial” type of politics that still dominates Tanzania (and many other countries). Nonetheless, the commercial farmers have a potentially important contribution to make to economic development in the country. The marginalization of women means that human and social capital in the country is being wasted or misused. Greater efforts must be made to enhance the access that women have to public resources and to participation in public affairs.The loss of trust in both formal and informal institutions means that Tanzania poses an interesting challenge in terms of where to start rebuilding social capital. Accepting that it will not be an easy task, it may be that the weakness of informal networks provides an opportunity for giving priority attention to building up formal institutions that can make a difference. The judiciary is a case in point. Its upper echelons are already quite reliable and trusted, but its lower level judges are still easily corrupted and often operating in a manner that is detrimental to the cause of rule of law. To ensure a fairer resource allocation it may also be necessary to consider establishing alternative mechanisms to those controlled by the executive, because government operations tend to be based solely on patronage considerations. The model of autonomous development funds that is now being promoted in various African countries that supplement government expenditures is of special relevance in the current situation in countries like Tanzania.Conclusion: In conclusion, this paper draws attention to the need for acknowledging that games that people play are not only explained in conventional prisoner dilemma terms but need to be extended to consideration of games where the basis for choice is not only cognition but affection. Games based on affection tend to be exclusively zero-sum games, which ruin social capital much more quickly than cognitive games that offer the prospect of a positive-sum end to the game. Much of Africa’s societal predicament, therefore, can be explained with reference not only to social capital in general terms but also to the particular type of social capital that prevails and the type of “game” it gives rise to as people interact to deal with issues facing them as common problems. Especially problematic in Africa is that affective games are very inefficient in resolving disputes within groups or organizations. The notion of tit-for-tat that can be turned into a positive-sum game in the context of cognition-based or rational types of prisoners’ dilemma situations typically leads to either confrontation or withdrawal in the case of affective games. The tit-for-tat remains a pure zero-sum game where “retreat-for-tat” is often preferred as a way of avoiding embarrassment. As political scientists and sociologists are striving to strengthen the theoretical core of their respective disciplines, the presence of games that are played on a different bases than those conventionally modeled in game theory provides a challenge that at least those who are interested in comparative studies cannot escape.     

The Voice Effect of Unions: Evidence from the US

Union voice is part responsible for the increased provision of fringe benefits to union workers and is particularly responsible for the redistribution of benefits towards the preferences of the average union worker. Family friendly benefits are valued more by females so union voice should increase the likelihood that provision of family friendly benefits increases in female dominated union workplaces. Individual level data from the US is used to examine whether union voice exists in this capacity. The paper’s results suggest that female dominated workplaces do tend to have increased access to most family friendly benefits, serving as further evidence that union voice exists in the US.     

Beijing: a media capital in the making

In the two decades since 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization, the commercialization of the Chinese media has become a significant force. With the increasing demand for original content and a possible “cultural trade deficit” in media content, there has been much discussion about agglomeration and clustering. Beijing, as the national media centre of China, has witnessed the process of media agglomeration while facing the problem of cultural export during the commercialization of the media. Michael Curtin's idea of media capital, which sees it as absorbing media resources and personnel and exporting media products transnationally, provides a dynamic perspective on understanding media agglomeration and dispersion under different political social and cultural circumstances. Hence, the question of whether Beijing will transform into a transnational media capital is worth studying in order to observe and comprehend China's media industry in transition. Drawing on Michael Curtin's three media capital trajectories, this paper interprets tensions and challenges generated in the process of media industry agglomeration and growth in Beijing. Emphasis is placed on the third trajectory, socio-cultural variation.     

The slaving capital of the world: Liverpool and national opinion in the age of abolition

Cultural Power, Resistance and Pluralism: Colonial Guyana, 1838–1900. Brian L. Moore. Kingston, Jamaica: The Press, University of the West Indies, 1995. xiii, 376pp. £12.50. ISBN 976–640–006–7     

The growth of capital cities in the world economic system

In this article we examine several determinants of the population growth of national capital cities. Two competing explanations are outlined: The first views state participation in the economy as the major determinant of capital city population growth, while the second position views world‐system position as the major determinant of capital city growth. Results of three analyses of cross‐national data suggest more support for the world‐system position than for the state intervention position.     

Networks of capital,networks for migration: political–economic integration and the changing geography of Mexico–US migration

While economic globalization has altered the geography of international migration and introduced an array of new sources and destinations, our understanding of the specific mechanisms that link economic globalization to migration remains limited. In this article, I attempt to extend previous research by undertaking an empirical case study of Mexican migration to the USA. Using a unique dataset, I construct multivariate models to test whether, in the context of economic integration, occupations channel migration between similar sectors of the Mexican and US economies. I focus on the food‐processing sector because of its role in the geographic dispersal of Mexican immigration. The results show a strong channelling of Mexican immigration along an occupational line linking the Mexican and US food‐processing sectors. The implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which ushered in a period of intensive political and economic integration, strengthened this occupational channel. By seeing the changing geography of Mexico–US migration in the context of economic globalization, this study casts light on the micro‐level foundations of the globalization–migration nexus.     

“9·11”后的美欧清真寺与穆斯林移民问题

在全球化过程中，尤其是“9·11”后，美欧穆斯林移民问题日渐凸现，既影响了美国的反恐战略和国土安全，也制约着欧盟一体化进程；美欧清真寺在穆斯林移民问题形成中扮演了不可或缺的角色，成为穆斯林移民宗教信仰与文化持守的精神家园，也成为这些社会边缘人摆脱物质生存挤压的缓冲地带，还成为美欧关于阿拉伯-伊斯兰国家战略决策的晴雨表，甚至成为全球化进程中异质文明间或对话或冲突的感应场；在全球治理的过程中，美欧清真寺为缓解西方与伊斯兰世界的紧张关系发挥了特殊作用。     

The Organizational Construction of Hegemonic Masculinity: The Case of the US Navy

This article examines the construction of hegemonic masculinity within the US Navy. Based on life history interviews with 27 male officers, this study explores alternative discourses and identities of officers from three different communities in the Navy: aviation, surface warfare, and the supply corps. Definitions of masculinity are relationally constructed through associations of difference: aviators tend to draw upon themes of autonomy and risk taking; surface warfare officers draw upon themes of perseverance and endurance; and supply officers draw upon themes of technical rationality. Further, these masculinities depend upon various contrasting definitions of femininity. Finally, this article explores a series of contradictions that threaten the secure construction of masculinity within this military culture.     

The Easterlin paradox and the decline of social capital: An integrated explanation

During the most recent decades people in the US have reported both a stagnant or even declining subjective well-being, as Easterlin (Easterlin, R.A., 1974. Does economic growth improve the human lot? Some empirical evidence. In: David, P.A., Melvin, W.R. (Eds.), Nations and Households in Economic Growth. Academic Press, New York, pp. 89–125) originally observed, and deterioration in their social and family ties, as Putnam (Putnam, R.D. (2000). Bowling Alone. Simon&Schuster, New York) has claimed. The paper proposes an integrated explanation of these two stylised facts by extending the analysis of the relative income explanation of the Easterlin paradox to social relationships as enjoyable ends of choice. Drawing on the evidence-based results of psychology, the paper constructs a model whose premises are (i) that individuals produce social relationships by means of relational ability, (ii) that this ability is primarily shaped during infancy, and (iii) that commercial pressure on children to consume in competition with others may displace the enjoyment of social relationships. The model is thus also able to explain the case of rich countries, like Sweden, that devote relatively more human and material resources than the US to children and adolescents, and that experience both increasing subjective well-being and improving social capital.