Social Capital and Participation in Community Improvement Activities by Elderly Residents in Small Towns and Rural Communities*

Abstract This study critically reviews theoretical concepts and measurements of social capital and tests hypotheses that elaborate how four dimensions of social capital (informal social ties, formal social ties, trust, and norms of collective action) and sense of community are related to participation in community improvement activities for elderly residents in small towns and rural communities. Mail surveys of 2,802 elders in 99 small towns and rural communities in Iowa reveal that many elders are actively involved in their community. Social capital and sense of community are very important in predicting elderly participation in community improvement activities, but they relate differently to elderly community involvement. Formal ties and sense of community have much stronger relationships with community involvement than informal ties and norms of collective action. Generalized trust is not significantly related to elderly community involvement.     

Social mobility and social capital in contemporary Britain

This paper seeks to contribute to social capital research by linking measures of formal and informal forms of social capital to social mobility trajectories and assessing their impact on social trust. Drawing on data from a recent national survey – Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion (2003/2004 ) – we analyse formal civic engagement and informal social connections. The latter data are obtained using, for the first time in a study in Britain, Lin's (2001 ) 'Position Generator' approach as a means to identify the volume, range and position of individuals' informal social contacts. The pattern of contacts suggests that access to social ties is strongly conditioned by mobility trajectory. We also show that civic engagement in formal associations is especially high among second-generation members of the service class. It is also shown that both class trajectory and possession of two types of social capital have significant impacts on trust. Among the social groups disadvantaged in terms of bridging social ties are not only those in lower classes but also women and members of minority ethnic groups.     

Civic Community in Small‐Town America: How Civic Welfare Is Influenced by Local Capitalism and Civic Engagement*

Abstract The aims of this paper are twofold: first, to gain a fuller understanding of factors that foster community cohesion and contribute to the residents' social and economic well‐being; and, second, to move beyond previous research that used larger spatial units such as states, counties, or aggregates of counties and to focus instead on American small towns (population 2,500–20,000). The data on small towns are drawn from public‐use files and from confidential microdata from various economic censuses. From these sources we construct measures of locally oriented firms, self‐employment, business establishments that serve as gathering places, and associations. The local capitalism and civic engagement variables generally perform as hypothesized; in some cases they are related quite strongly to civic welfare outcomes such as income levels, poverty rates, and nonmigration rates. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of working with place‐level data and suggest some strategies for subsequent work on small towns and other incorporated places.     

Changes in small town social capital and civic engagement

Small towns are often depicted as places with many interpersonal relationships and generalized trust, or high social capital. Social capital is a resource which towns can use to solve problems and improve the local quality of life. In this paper, I determined if social capital and civic engagements have declined in small towns in the U.S. Midwest as has happened more generally and tested likely explanations for the change. Quantitative analyses of data from the U.S. Census, other secondary sources, and a longitudinal study of residents of 99 small towns were conducted. Findings revealed that social capital has declined, but one type of civic engagement improved. Towns in counties with more small farms in 1990 had more bonding social capital and civic engagement in 2004 than other towns when other factors were controlled. The proportion of local businesses had no impact on civic engagement and was negatively associated with one kind of social capital. Mixed findings about how income impacted social capital and civic engagement indicated a complex relationship. The retirement of the so called “civic generation” had minimal impact on social capital and civic engagement.     

The Right to Aid: Perceptions and Practices of Justice in a Flood-Hazard Context in Jakarta,Indonesia

Regular floods impact negatively on the health and wellbeing of slum dwellers in Jakarta and it is understandable that the victims seek access to justice. Fieldwork in one of Jakarta's most flood-prone neighbourhoods, Bantaran Kali, reveals that riverbank settlers there access what they perceive to be justice by engaging in a number of different social networks that are neither formal nor informal—they feature in between civil society and the state. In this article I explore the network ties that are used by individual slum dwellers to access justice. I will show that in the context of extreme flood risk and related uncertainty, this form of social capital makes a significant difference to the community and to households, and with respect to individuals' resilience. By exploring this particular avenue of access to justice, I show that a sense of justice is achieved not through the formal agencies of government but by means of social networks in a space that fits uneasily in the dichotomy of state and non-state.     

Social capital and economic integration of migrants in urban China

Based on data from a 2005 survey conducted in Shanghai, China, this research examines the role of social capital in income inequality between rural migrants and urbanites. We find strong income return on social capital, in particular on social capital from strong ties. We also observe a great disparity in social capital possession between rural migrants and urban local residents. Although social capital from strong ties seems to be more important for rural migrants than for urbanites, local ties and high-status ties do not seem to benefit rural migrants. Hence, migrants not only suffer severe social capital deficits but also capital return deficits. Given the strong income returns on social capital and the substantial differences in access to and return on social capital between migrants and urban residents, social capital is consequently found to explain a large part of the income inequality between the two groups. Overall, our findings reveal macro-structural effects on the role of social capital in labor market stratification. In China, the lack of formal labor market mechanisms continues to create both a strong need for and opportunities for economic actions to be organized around informal channels via social relations. Yet, the long-standing institutional exclusion of migrants caused by the household registration system has resulted in pervasive social exclusion and discrimination which have substantially limited rural migrants’ accumulation and mobilization of social capital. Under these conditions, social capital reinforces the economic inequality between migrants and urban residents in China. Such empirical evidence adds to our understanding of the role of social capital in the economic integration of migrants and in shaping intergroup inequality in general.     

Community Resiliency in Declining Small Towns: Impact of Population Loss on Quality of Life over 20 Years

This analysis seeks to understand why some small towns have improved quality of life (QoL) over the past 20 years despite sizable population losses. Using a longitudinal data set of small towns in Iowa collected every 10 years since 1994, I measure the resiliency or vulnerability of declining towns based on change in subjective QoL, and then model the socioeconomic correlates along a resilient‐decline index. Community resiliency is enhanced by the process of creating bridging social capital, not the quantity available for use. By contrast, the quantity of both internal and external linking social capital promotes resiliency by linking residents to local and outside power structures, but the growth of these linkages has no impact. Bonding social capital indirectly helps resiliency by increasing internal linkages that foster local participation, but hinders it by decreasing external ones that limit access to outside resources. Jobs in goods‐producing industries like manufacturing directly promote resiliency by providing more secure employment, plus indirectly promote it by increasing bridging ties and external linkages. Growing poverty and income disparities make declining places more vulnerable by reducing QoL and external linkages. I discuss local strategies promoting resiliency and QoL.     

Participation in formal and informal volunteering: Implications for volunteer recruitment

This study examines factors influencing “formal” volunteering (that is, to an organization) and “informal” volunteering (that is, volunteering carried out individually outside of an organizational context) and the relationship between these two activities. We hypothesize that formal and informal volunteering activities are positively interrelated but that they are shaped by different types of personal resources: involvement in social networks increases the likelihood of both types of volunteering, but human capital increases the likelihood of formal volunteering rather than informal. The bivariate probit regression results emanating from the Independent Sector's “Giving and Volunteering in the United States, 2001” survey are generally supportive of the hypotheses. The findings suggest that nonprofit and public organizations that involve volunteers consider the pool of informal volunteers as a fertile ground for recruitment and find ways to better utilize older Americans in formal volunteering. The results also suggest that volunteer recruitment through organizational membership may be an effective strategy.     

Civic Engagement and Economic Opportunity Among Low-Income Individuals: An Asset-Based Approach

This study uses an asset-based approach to examine the ways social and human capital accessed through civic engagement may serve as a pathway toward economic opportunity for low-income individuals. Using a qualitative approach, this study draws on interviews with 31 low-income individuals who are civically engaged in a range of activities, including community organizing, giving money, informal engagement, religious participation, and volunteering. Findings contribute to the literature suggesting that study participants were often able to mobilize and deploy the social and human capital assets accumulated through different types of civic engagement into employment and education opportunities. However, embedded within social and human capital assets are also examples of the ways structural factors influenced whether study participants could transfer social and human capital assets acquired through civic engagement into economic opportunities.     

Individual Participation in Collective Action in the Context of a Caribbean Island State: Testing the Effects of Multiple Dimensions of Social Capital

This article presents the findings of a case study examining the relationship between social capital and individual participation in collective action on a Caribbean island recovering from devastation inflicted by Hurricanes Ivan and Emily. Using data drawn from 114 residential surveys on the island of Carriacou, Grenada, over the summer of 2006, we empirically test social capital as a predictor of individual participation in both formal and informal civic events. In addition, we further the theoretical development of the concept of social capital by independently testing the relationships between its multiple dimensions, specifically social networks; interpersonal trust; and norms of reciprocity. We find that associational membership and age are the two strongest predictors, while interpersonal trust, gender, and marital status are also significant. Our path analysis reveals that there is not a significant direct effect between associational membership and interpersonal trust, suggesting that the two dimensions may have independent, yet complementary, influences. This study sheds light on factors influencing citizen participation in “civic” forms of collective action in a developing region of the world, while demonstrating the multidimensional nature of social capital.     

'Bands of Fellowship': The Role of Personal Relationships and Social Networks Among Irish Migrants in New Zealand, 1861-1911

Utilising personal correspondence, this study explores the practical assistance and emotional benefit that newcomers derived from Irish expatriate kin and neighbourhood networks in New Zealand. These social networks frequently provided new arrivals with practical assistance relating to employment and accommodation, as well as enabling access to marital partners. Besides demonstrating the existence and operation of Irish migrant ties among correspondents, this study also explores the quality of these relationships. It is suggested that high levels of community solidarity rather than their absence, together with the 'cultural baggage' of migrants, may have had negative social consequences such as drunkenness and interpersonal conflict. Yet settlement abroad was not necessarily a crippling undertaking characterised by loneliness and maladjustment. Rather, the succour and support offered by informal expatriate ties helped alleviate feelings of dislocation and proved much more instructive than companionship provided by formal networks.     

Community Economic Development Strategies in Rural Washington: Toward a Synthesis of Natural and Social Capital*

Abstract Routes to economic development attract considerable attention in community and rural sociology. Social scientists draw increasingly on studies of social capital and environmental surroundings as they examine the factors that facilitate and inhibit economic development. However, few empirical analyses exist that analyze the impact of the combination of social infrastructure and natural capital on different forms of economic development such as on industrial recruitment and self‐development. Using data collected from six communities in Washington State, the interaction of a community's social infrastructure and natural capital on industrial recruitment and self‐development efforts is examined. Results suggest that while natural capital positively impacts a community's successful recruitment of outside industries, it is not significant for a community's level of self‐development. However, a community's social infrastructure, measured by the existence of active civic organizations, local businesses that support local community projects, community‐wide fund‐raising capacity, and extra‐local linkages to nearby communities, state, and national agencies, positively affects both industrial recruitment and self‐development. These findings illustrate the need for communities and local activists to carefully weigh their advantages and potential shortcomings when deciding on an economic development strategy.     

The causal effect of social capital on income: A new analytic strategy

This study identifies three groups of job seekers in terms of the channels used to search for jobs: the formal channel involving only official procedures to obtain a job, the informal channel using only social contacts to obtain a job, and the joint channel leveraging both social contacts and official procedures. The analysis of a national sample survey of China shows that joint channel users, due to their relatively higher level of social capital, not only make more job search attempts but also obtain higher income than formal channel users. Meanwhile, joint channel users, because of their relative advantages in both human capital and social capital, not only make more job attempts but also obtain higher income than informal channel users. The two comparisons offer a new strategy to test the causal role social capital plays in labour market success, regardless of whether social capital is exogenous or endogenous to human capital.     

‘Bands of Fellowship’: The Role of Personal Relationships and Social Networks Among Irish Migrants in New Zealand, 1861–1911

Utilising personal correspondence, this study explores the practical assistance and emotional benefit that newcomers derived from Irish expatriate kin and neighbourhood networks in New Zealand. These social networks frequently provided new arrivals with practical assistance relating to employment and accommodation, as well as enabling access to marital partners. Besides demonstrating the existence and operation of Irish migrant ties among correspondents, this study also explores the quality of these relationships. It is suggested that high levels of community solidarity rather than their absence, together with the ‘cultural baggage’ of migrants, may have had negative social consequences such as drunkenness and interpersonal conflict. Yet settlement abroad was not necessarily a crippling undertaking characterised by loneliness and maladjustment. Rather, the succour and support offered by informal expatriate ties helped alleviate feelings of dislocation and proved much more instructive than companionship provided by formal networks.     

Doing good when times are bad: volunteering behaviour in economic hard times

This paper examines how the 2008–9 recession has affected volunteering behaviours in the UK. Using a large survey dataset, we assess the recession effects on both formal volunteering and informal helping behaviours. Whilst both formal volunteering and informal helping have been in decline in the UK since 2008, the size of the decline is significantly larger for informal helping than for formal volunteering. The decline is more salient in regions that experienced a higher level of unemployment during the recession and also in socially and economically disadvantaged communities. However, we find that a growing number of people who personally experienced financial insecurity and hardship do not explain the decline. We argue that the decline has more to do with community‐level factors such as civic organizational infrastructure and cultural norms of trust and engagement than personal experiences of economic hardship.     

Community,Ethnicity, and Class in a Changing Rural California Town*

Abstract This study investigates how community is constructed, maintained, and contested among diverse residents of a rural town in California's Central Valley. Drawing on observations, interviews, and archival material, I examine the way in which ethnicity and class play a significant role in recasting how community is organized and interpreted by Mexicans and long‐term white residents. In my field site, Mexicans have long been involved in (in)formal community‐making, yet long‐term white residents perceive a “loss of community” because social relations are no longer structured around an agrarian culture that at one time reinforced ties through volunteerism and interaction in local mainstream institutions. This article demonstrates the continual significance of place and interaction in defining community, but suggests that immigrants develop communities of need aimed at providing important social, emotional, and political support absent in mainstream society. Finally, this study also speaks of the competition for representation and respectability among rural residents developing a sense of belonging. “Community” is never simply the recognition of cultural similarity or social contiguity but a categorical identity that is premised on various forms of exclusion and constructions of otherness     

Making Sense of Voluntary Participation: A Theoretical Synthesis*

Abstract This paper examines the influence of community attachment on voluntary citizen participation in rural community improvement projects. We do so by modifying the original systemic model of community attachment (Kasarda and Janowitz 1974) and combining it with tenets of rational choice and social embeddedness theories. The modified model is then extended to consider voluntary participation in community projects by accounting for the influence of community attachment through both a solidarity of interests and a solidarity of sentiments (Bell 1998). Based on survey results of almost 9,000 citizens across 99 small (500–10,000) Iowa communities, findings provide overall support for the expected positive influence of local social ties (weak informal, strong informal, and formal) on the two forms of community attachment which, in turn, positively affect voluntary participation. Attachment in the form of community interests shows a strong direct and indirect effect on voluntary participation, while sentiment's influence is largely indirect. We conclude by considering the relevance of our findings to ongoing discussions of social capital.     

Social Capital,Labour Markets,and Job‐Finding in Urban and Rural Regions: comparing paths to employment in prosperous cities and stressed rural communities in Canada1,2

This paper compares paths to employment (job‐finding) in prosperous cities and economically‐stressed rural communities in Canada. Since the pioneering work of Mark Granovetter (1973; 1974 ), sociologists have investigated the role of social capital in job‐finding (specifically, the use of strong and weak social ties to find out about employment opportunities). To date, however, there have been few direct comparisons of job‐finding in urban and rural settings (see Lindsay et al., 2005 ; Wahba and Zenou, 2005 ). Using data from two major surveys and a qualitative interview project, we uncover several important differences in urban and rural paths to employment. First, we find that both strong and weak ties are used more frequently by rural residents to find a job, while city‐dwellers rely more often on formal or impersonal means. Second, we find much stronger evidence of differentiation within rural regions. Long‐time rural residents are much more likely to use strong and weak ties to find employment than are newcomers. However, rural residents who used weak ties as paths to employment have significantly lower incomes. None of these patterns are evident in the cities. Together, these findings lead us to conclude that job‐finding in rural settings is strongly affected by constraints – in the labour market and in social capital resources – that are not present in cities.     

Community resilience for youth and families: Facilitative physical and social capital in contexts of adversity

Studies that focus on community-level factors associated with the resilience of youth and families reflect a shift in perspective from community deficits to the potential of communities to facilitate the mobilization of human and physical resources. Physical and social capital (both informal relationships and formal service provision) give communities the potential to recover from dramatic change, sustain their adaptability, and support new growth. This paper reviews key concepts such as these as they relate to how young people access informal supports and formal services that promote resilience. A discussion of the relevant research highlights the way protective processes function when children, youth and families are exposed to catastrophic human-made and natural events. Five principles are suggested to help promote community resilience. Implications for the design and implementation of interventions are discussed with a focus on making informal supports more available and formal services coordinated, continuous, co-located, negotiated, culturally relevant and effective.