Can demographic transition only be explained by altruistic and neo-Malthusian models?

Previous researches on demographic transition are based on models incorporating altruism in their utility function. These models are all neo-Malthusian in their essence, since they assume a positive relationship between income and fertility rates. This paper presents a model which departs from the neo-Malthusian frameworks in its definition of altruism. This framework better fits the data and socio-economic context of the early nineteenth century, a period where fertility rates went up. This paper stresses that the evolution of capital, wages and child labor may provide an alternate explanation for the observed pattern of fertility rates during the early European industrialization.     

Social capital as social relations: the contribution of normative structures

This paper presents a framework for social capital that highlights the normative structures through which it is manifested. The primary focus is on the ways that norms structure the relationships in which social capital is embedded. To this end, we introduce four types of normative structures which condition social capital: market, bureaucratic, associative, and communal. A field site in Japan is used to illustrate how different aspects of social capital interact. This case analysis also serves to make an important distinction between the availability and use of social capital. The central arguments are that 1) social capital is organized in different ways by the normative structures in which it is embedded; 2) there are important interactions between these different aspects of social capital that are often overlooked by simpler frameworks; 3) a useful distinction can be made between available social capital and used social capital; 4) access to social capital can be used to analyze power relations; and 5) distinguishing different aspects of social capital makes areas visible that are overlooked by other understandings of social capital. We conclude by identifying the utility of our perspective for informing public policy and guiding future research.     

Exploring youths' perceptions of the hidden practice of youth work in increasing social capital with young people considered NEET in Scotland

This small-scale research explores the generation of social capital in young people growing up in one urban area and one rural area in Scotland via community-led youth work projects that aim to re-engage young people categorised as NEET (Not in Employment Education or Training). By looking at their varied and complex biographies, it considers young people's experiences and perceptions of their communities and their transitions from education to the workplace. Using social capital as a theoretical lens, we examined the impact that youth work can have not just on these important transitions but also upon the young people themselves. By visiting two different sites of engagement we were able to explore whether the type of initiative (media or sports) or place (urban or rural) had an impact on the generation of capital for young people. The youth work practice in both areas acted as a glue between the young people and their communities, creating opportunities where the two could be bound together and relationships created. This occurred in both sites regardless of the area or type of initiative and confirmed in this study that youth work acts as a site of capital building.     

The demand for social interaction

In this paper social interaction is modeled as a consumer good. A model of household production is employed to derive the demand for social interaction. The model shows that the demand for social interaction is a function of its price, the price of other goods and income. The theory is tested with data from the General Social Survey and the results show that social interaction can be explained as the consequence of utility maximizing behavior by individuals. These results are in contrast to social capital theorists who have attributed these changes to factors such as increased community heterogeneity.     

WELFARE IMPACT OF A BAN ON CHILD LABOR

This article presents a new rationale for imposing restrictions on child labor. In a standard overlapping generation model where parental altruism results in transfers that children allocate to consumption and education, the Nash‐Cournot equilibrium results in suboptimal levels of parental transfers and does not maximize the average level of utility of currently living agents. A ban on child labor decreases children's income and generates an increase in parental transfers bringing their levels closer to the optimum, raising children's welfare as well as average welfare in the short run and in the long run. Moreover, the inability to work allows children to allocate more time to education, and it leads to an increase in human capital. Besides, to increase transfers, parents decrease savings and hence physical capital accumulation. When prices are flexible, these effects diminish the positive welfare impact of the ban on child labor. (JEL D91, E21)     

The elements of social capital in the context of six high schools

Purpose: The study described in this paper is part of a larger research project entitled, “Social Capital and Its Effects on the Academic Development of Adolescents At Risk of Educational Failure.” We drew the data for this study from in-depth case studies of six United States public and private secondary schools. We selected the schools based on two criteria: (1) they enrolled substantial proportions of students who would be considered to be at risk of educational failure due to their academic status, social background, or geographical location; and (2) they had qualities that led us to believe that the probability of finding school-based forms of social capital would be high. In selecting schools, we sought variation among settings, selecting case-study sites that allowed us to learn about how schools create and sustain social capital supportive of the academic development of students, particularly students characterized as at risk of failure.Background: In the first part of the larger research project, we used quantitative methods and a large, nationally representative sample of U.S. secondary schools and students. In that study, we documented the existence of a relationship between school-based social capital and such student outcomes as positive academic behaviors, achievement growth over the secondary years, and the probability of dropping out of high school. We operationalized the construct of social capital with two measures of the quality of students’ relationships with their teachers—the extent to which students saw their teachers as supportive and whether students sought guidance from their teachers outside of class. We believed, however, that school-based forms of social capital are more varied and complex than this. Moreover, we thought that it was important to examine in greater detail how social capital itself varies with the organizational and structural characteristics of high schools. Therefore, we embarked on a second phase of our study in which we relied on qualitative methods: specifically, the in-depth investigation of a small set of high schools thought to have social capital but exhibiting important variation on organizational and structural characteristics. Within these schools, we used field-based methods to examine social capital and students’ access to it.Methods: In general, we asked, “What does social capital look like in the six high schools that we studied?” “Do the quality or characteristic of social capital depend on a school’s student body composition, its programs and policies, or the ideologies and traditions that underlie its operation?” “If so, how do these factors influence the quality of school-based social capital that students have access to in a school?” “Are characteristics or elements of social capital especially prevalent or dominant in certain types of schools?” “Which types of schools, given our case-study sites?” “What do the results of these investigations tell us about the nature of social capital—its creation, maintenance, and usefulness to students and teachers in high schools?”Results: Our analyses of interview data and field notes suggest that school-based forms of social capital may be viewed from six different perspectives. These perspectives, which we refer to as elements of social capital in our paper, are:

• 1. Volition and perceived interest in membership. What are the opportunities that individuals have, both in terms of choices between schools and choice of programs within schools, to affiliate with others based on their interests? These choices may strengthen social capital within groups but weaken social capital between groups that comprise a school and its adjacent community.
• 2. Location and integration of social capital across social relationship networks. Where is social capital located in a school? Although we see the primary location for social capital to be between students and teachers, other networks of relationships also influence the extent to which students can gain access to social capital through teachers (e.g., teacher-to-teacher relationships or teacher-to-parent relationships). Integration across these relationships facilitates the formation of new relationships, trust building, and flows of information.
• 3. Impetus for social capital. What are the reasons that people seek to form supportive, collaborative relationships within schools? Such reasons may be individual or organizational, we argue. Nonetheless, social capital is most powerful when the impetus for its creation and maintenance coincide—that is, when organizational factors reinforce personal inclinations, perceived interest, and a sense of community.
• 4. Formation and stock of social capital. How much effort is required to create social capital? Social capital may occur naturally, as in small, rural schools, or it may require substantial effort and purposeful actions, as in large, urban schools. Natural forms of social capital may have negative consequences if they restrict exchanges with external groups to an extent that academic development is curtailed. Purposeful forms may also have negative consequences, if too much effort is required to create and sustain social capital, drawing deeply on already scarce resources.
• 5. Focus and quality of social capital. How is social capital used in a school? Social capital may be used for many different purposes, not all of which promote academic development. Social capital may be used to primarily promote social goals or ends, or even to undermine students’ development and a school’s academic mission. Differences in interest between school members diminish the focus of social capital, weaken its utility for academic purposes, and can create conflicts over its use and function.
• 6. Norms and social control. Do school norms and sanctions promote positive expectations and interactions between members of a school? Behavioral expectations and official actions are an important element of school-based forms of social capital. Over reliance on sanctions can undermine trust, just as does failure to sanction significant violation of rules. The consequences, norms, and sanctions for social capital depends on how much socialization is required to comply with norms, the perceived fairness of norms and sanctions, and the costs and benefits associated with compliance.
• 7. Conclusion: Using these conceptual lenses, we examine how social capital takes shape and is used in six different high schools. We provide examples of how each of the above six elements helps to understand the quality of interactions between students and teachers, as well as the educational environment in which students’ academic development takes place. In concluding the paper, we argue that social capital is a complex yet useful construct for examining the operation of high schools and the academic development of the students who attend them. Moreover, our examination of six high schools suggests that there can be too much social capital in schools and that social capital is most difficult to nurture in places that need it most. Using our field data, we give examples and provide further explanation for why this is so.

%Rather than provide an in-depth treatment of each element, we have instead attempted to lay the groundwork for deeper study and conceptual development of the notion of social capital in this paper. Each of the elements deserves more careful scrutiny, we believe, especially if we are to weave together in a meaningful fashion the conceptual threads that make social capital such an appealing construct. This initial study reveals some of the richness and complexity of social capital as a construct, as well as the utility of examining it through the six conceptual lenses that we use in this paper.     

Celebrity capital: redefining celebrity using field theory

This article proposes to redefine celebrity as a kind of capital, thereby extending Bourdieu’s field theory. This redefinition is necessary, it is argued, because one of the main limitations shared by current definitions of celebrity is their lack of explanatory power of the convertibility of celebrity into other resources, such as economic or political capital. Celebrity capital, or broadly recognizability, is conceptualized as accumulated media visibility that results from recurrent media representations. In that sense, it is a substantial kind of capital and not a subset or special category of social or symbolic capital, the latter being defined as legitimate recognition by other agents in a social field. Rather than adding another definition of celebrity next to many others, the notion of celebrity capital proposed here should be seen as an attempt to integrate the existing approaches of celebrity into a single comprehensive conceptualization that can enable us to grasp this societal and cultural phenomenon better.     

Consumption theory with reference dependent utility

This paper presents a closed form consumption function for an individual when his utility depends both on his own current and previous consumption and on the consumption by his relevant others. Given this model, I argue that we can introduce an alternative definition of marginal propensity to consume (MPC) in addition to the traditional definition. This alternative definition can be called the individual’s total MPC, which I show is smaller than the traditional MPC.     

Conceptualizing Resistance

Recently, there has been a rapid proliferation of scholarship on resistance but little consensus on its definition. In this paper, we review and synthesize the diverse literatures that invoke the concept of resistance. This review illuminates both core elements common to most uses of the concept and two central dimensions on which these uses vary: the questions of whether resistance must be recognized by others and whether it must be intentional. We use these two dimensions to develop a typology of resistance, thereby clarifying both the meaning and sociological utility of this concept.     

In credit we trust: Building social capital by Grameen Bank in Bangladesh

In this paper we examine how a third-party – Grameen Bank in Bangladesh – created social capital that has been a boon to the explosive growth of Microfinance in Bangladesh and elsewhere. Using Putnam's definition, we show how Grameen Bank created social capital by forming horizontal and vertical networks, establishing new norms and fostering a new level of social trust to solve the collective action problems of poor people's access to capital. The fact that a Microfinance Institution (MFI) can create social capital has strong policy implications. Since social capital is a public good – non-excludable and non-rivalrous – the market will underprovide such good. This paper shows that Microfinance corrects another type of market failure—under provision of a public good, in addition to correcting the failure of the credit market. The social capital building aspects of an MFI need to be taken into account in the whole debate about the need for subsidy.     

THE QUANTITATIVE IMPORTANCE OF OPENNESS IN DEVELOPMENT

This paper deals with a classic development question: how can the process of economic development—transition from stagnation in a traditional technology to industrialization and prosperity with a modern technology—be accelerated? Lewis (1954) and Rostow (1956) argue that the pace of industrialization is limited by the rate of capital formation which in turn is limited by the savings rate of workers close to subsistence. We argue that access to capital goods in the world market can be quantitatively important in speeding up the transition. We develop a parsimonious open‐economy model where traditional and modern technologies coexist (a dual economy in the sense of Lewis 1954). We show that a decline in the world price of capital goods in an open economy increases the rate of capital formation and speeds up the pace of industrialization relative to a closed economy that lacks access to cheaper capital goods. In the long run, the investment rate in the open economy is twice as high as in the closed economy and the per capita income is 23% higher. (JEL O11, F43, O14)     

A Strategic Engagement Framework for Nonprofits

Quantitative and qualitative analysis of research data collected over three years at a nonprofit public higher education institution and its community, along with a review of relevant literature, revealed the need for a new framework to guide economic and social value creation by utilizing the social capital held by nonprofit institutions. The study integrated research outcomes from the areas of social capital and institutional–stakeholder engagement to generate the new concept of strategic engagement management and a proposed Strategic Engagement Framework. This framework should help nonprofit organizations deploy their social capital for institutional and societal benefit by facilitating institutional–stakeholder collaboration. The study also tested the utility of implementing one component of the proposed framework: a structure for mapping, maintaining, and evaluating a portfolio of institutional engagement activities.     

Educate or serve: the paradox of “professional service” and the image of the west in legitimacy battles of post-socialist advertising

This article investigates a puzzle in the rapidly evolving profession of advertising in post-socialist Hungary: young professionals who came of age during the shift to market-driven practices want to produce advertising that is uncompromised by clients and consumers, and to educate others about western modernity. It is their older colleagues—trained during customer-hostile socialism—who emphasize that good professionals serve their clients’ needs. These unexpected generational positions show that 1) professions are more than groups expanding their jurisdiction. They are fields structured by two conflicting demands: autonomy of expertise and dependence on clients. We can explain the puzzle by noting that actors are positioning themselves on one or the other side based on their trajectory or movement in the field relative to other actors. Old and new groups vie for power in the transforming post-socialist professional field, responding to each other’s claims and vulnerabilities, exploiting the professional field’s contradictory demands on its actors. 2) The struggle is not between those who are oriented to the west and those that are not. Rather, the west is both the means and the stake of the struggle over historical continuity and professional power. Imposing a definition of the west is almost the same as imposing a definition of the profession on the field. In this historical case, “field” appears less as a stable structure based on actors’ equipment with capital, than as dynamic relations moved forward by contestation of the field’s relevant capital.     

Nichtregierungsorganisationen – die unbekannten Wesen?

First, the definition of NGOs in relation to the state, the oeconomics and the civil society will be worked out. Then also the difference between a Non-profit-organisation and a Non-governmental-organization is discussed. Central for NGOs is the requirement for political change. NGOs work mostly on multiple levels. The connexion and cooperation between the different territorial levels is the key for the comprehension, which advantage in the generation of know-ledge and transformation NGOs can reach. NGOs can be understand as a modern form of global care, where local and global problems, which are marginalized in the politics, can be linked, analysed and forced for change. At least, NGOs plays a central role in the politicial socialisation of people. Essential for the engagement is the experience, that people can effect something with their engagement. This experience is a bigger motivation for an engagement than information. NGOs can enable people to the experience, that they can effect something.     

Social Capital and the Human Psyche: Why Is Social Life "Capital"?

In this article, we propose a revised definition of social capital, premised on the principles of evolutionary psychology. We define social capital as any feature of a social relationship that, directly or indirectly, confers reproductive benefits to a participant in that relationship. This definition grounds the construct of social capital in human nature by providing a basis for inferring the underlying motivations that humans may have in common, rather than leaving the matter of what humans use capital for unspoken. Discussions and empirical reviews are presented on the innateness of human sociability, sex differences in sociability, and psychological mechanisms that mediate sociability .     

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.     

Building the Sustainable Community: Is Social Capital the Answer?

Over the past decade, environmental sustainability has emerged as a prominent theme in the community development literature. In fact, the concept has become a standard feature of most economic and social development plans. Most models of sustainable community development stress the importance of widespread participation in the decision-making process. Unfortunately, community studies document numerous barriers to broad involvement and the high level of activeness envisioned by proponents of sustainable community development. In searching for ways to overcome these barriers, scholars and policymakers have embraced the idea that we can enhance efforts to create more sustainable communities by increasing the local stock of social capital. We examine this line of reasoning in light of what we view as the most important conceptual issues surrounding the relationship between social capital and sustainable community development. We conclude that before social capital is endorsed as a central component of public policy, much work remains to be done in terms of developing a more precise definition of the concept, situating it within extant theories of community, constructing better measures of social capital, documenting the activities and networks most important in building social capital, and gaining a better understanding of the forms of social capital that are most important in developing sustainable communities.     

Cultural capital in educational research: A critical assessment

In this article, we assess how the concept of cultural capital has been imported into the English language, focusing on educational research. We argue that a dominant interpretation of cultural capital has coalesced with two central premises. First, cultural capital denotes knowledge of or facility with “highbrow” aesthetic culture. Secondly, cultural capital is analytically and causally distinct from other important forms of knowledge or competence (termed “technical skills,” “human capital,” etc.). We then review Bourdieu’s educational writings to demonstrate that neither of these premises is essential to his understanding of cultural capital. In the third section, we discuss a set of English-language studies that draw on the concept of cultural capital, but eschew the dominant interpretation. These serve as the point of departure for an alternative definition. Our definition emphasizes Bourdieu’s reference to the capacity of a social class to “impose” advantageous standards of evaluation on the educational institution. We discuss the empirical requirements that adherence to such a definition entails for researchers, and provide a brief illustration of the intersection of institutionalized evaluative standards and the educational practices of families belonging to different social classes. Using ethnographic data from a study of social class differences in family-school relationships, we show how an African-American middle-class family exhibits cultural capital in a way that an African-American family below the poverty level does not.