Social Capital and Communities of Place1

Abstract This paper develops a framework for examining the questions: Does social capital make a difference for well being in communities of place? How might rural sociologists utilize social capital to further well being in communities? The author reviews social capital literature, contrasting rational choice and embeddedness perspectives. Opting for a marriage between embeddedness and conflict theory, he introduces entrepreneurial social infrastructure (ESI) as an alternative to social capital. ESI adds to social capital the notions of equality, inclusion, and agency. Research results are presented which support the embeddedness approach: community-level action (the community field) is not simply an aggregation of individual or organizational actions within the community; social capital and ESI contribute jointly and independently to community action. Examining economic development as a form of collective action, the author concludes?the following: a) ESI contributes to economic development, and b) inclusiveness (internal solidarity) is more closely related to community self-development while industrial recruitment is better predicted by strong external ties.     

Social Capital in Rural and Urban Communities1

Abstract Conventional wisdom says that social capital is more common among families in rural communities than urban communities. Using data from the 1988 wave of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we compare the prevalence, type, and extent of social exchanges in these places. Results indicate that families living in rural areas are more likely to exchange exclusively with kin than are families living in urban areas. In particular, families living in rural areas are more likely to receive money help from kin than families in urban areas. Results on patterns of giving are more complex, with rural origin families with younger household heads more likely to give support to kin, and rural origin families with older heads less likely to provide such support, as compared to otherwise similar families of urban origin. Finally, only modest urban-rural differences in amounts exchanged (in dollars) are found among otherwise similar families. Overall, some of the urban-rural differences in patterns of exchange are explained by different family characteristics; however, key urban-rural differences remain, probably reflecting differences in norms and the availability of institutional support services in different areas.     

Social Capital Construction and the Role of the Local State1

Abstract As globalization weakens the role of the nation state, increased theoretical and practical attention is being focused on community level action, especially on the role of social capital. Proponents of social capital have placed primary emphasis on voluntary associations. This paper looks at the role the state can play in building social capital. The historical nature of social capital in the community, the organizational structure of governmental intermediaries, and the design of specific program interventions condition social capital building. Hierarchical governmental intermediaries are contrasted with participatory community based initiatives. Three key factors: autonomy, linkage and returns on investment for both intermediaries and participating residents, are shown to affect social capital construction.     

Community Connections: Social Capital and Community Success1

This article examines the impact of two types of community social capital—ties between civic organizations formed through shared members and ties between residents formed through socializing in local gathering places—on residents’ subjective appraisals of community success. Community social capital studies tend to focus on the first of these types of ties, networks of civic engagement, while the second, gathering place networks, has received relatively little scholarly attention. Studying both allows me to assess the formal and informal arenas of community sociability, providing a more thorough understanding of social capital and community life. I assess the effects of community‐level social capital networks on the individual‐level experience of residing in the community using survey data on 9,962 residents from 99 small towns in Iowa. This rich data set allows me to avoid two shortcomings common in social capital research: I construct genuine network measures of social capital (rather than infer network structure from community attributes) and conduct multi‐level analyses (rather than rely on disaggregation). My findings indicate both types of social capital are positively and significantly associated with resident ratings of community success, suggesting community networks—in both the formal and informal sectors—have important consequences for small towns and their residents.     

Recreating Social Capital

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the establishment of a pilot neighbourhood-based intergenerational programme and its evaluation in one town in England. It sets this in both the context of English inter-generational programmes involving schools and of English social policy. The latter is currently influenced by Putnam's concept of social capital. It argues that intergenerational programmes of all kinds are likely to be useful contributions to the development of social capital. The paper reports how the evaluation of the pilot has lead to the refinement of the original model. The pilot highlighted the need for more systematic measures of the process and outcomes, including the project's contribution to development of social capital. The revised model is being implemented in a number of contrasting neighbourhoods and will be evaluated in both outcome and process terms. These developments will be reported in further articles.     

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 .     

Social Capital Put to the Test

This article offers a critical review and mapping of theoretical elaborations of the social capital concept and of some of the key empirical projects which in their various ways have attempted to capture and measure social capital. In so doing, it maps the rise and rise of social capital within the social sciences and beyond. It then considers a range of hypotheses which have attempted to explain the ever increasing prominence and reach of the concept. To understand this reach, the article suggests that we must look beyond the theoretical, methodological and empirical technicalities of the social capital debates and cast our eyes to a fundamental rewriting and reworking of the social field.     

Getting Beyond the Training vs. Work Experience Debate: The Role of Labor Markets,Social Capital,Cultural Capital,and Community Resources in Long-Term Poverty

SUMMARY

Policy makers and advocates often see either training or work experience as the way out of poverty. Research in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania suggests that family-supporting jobs continue to elude many low-income women for more complicated reasons: (1) a bifurcated labor market where over half of the jobs pay below-poverty wages with limited benefits, (2) a lack of bridging social capital, (3) limited bi-cultural workplace habits, (4) problems juggling kin obligations and work, and (5) inappropriate or limited training. The study suggests that policy makers should take a two-pronged approach to combating poverty. Training, combined with network development and appropriate cultural capital development, will help some women. Given the growing percentage of low-paying jobs, however, policy should also seek to raise wages, supplement wages, and provide universal benefits.     

Urban Nightlife,Social Capital,and the Public Life of Cities1

Sociologists and urban scholars emphasize how nightlife establishments contribute to the social capital and public life of cities. In the interests of tempering this line of argument, I suggest three generalizable empirical findings that provide grounds for skepticism on this score: (1) the racial and class barriers to participation imposed by urban nightlife enterprises; (2) the normalization of gender differences and the routine harassment of women within such scenes; and (3) the lack of inclusiveness surrounding local nightlife in urban neighborhood communities. These findings suggest that nightlife scenes may function more efficiently as generators of bonding rather than bridging social capital.     

Social Capital,Place of Residence,and College Attendance1

The relationship between social interaction and college attendance is examined across varying types of communities. Structural arrangements and interaction patterns that foster positive relationships are regarded as social capital and are conceptualized as investments that can yield human capital returns in terms of higher educational attainment. Logistic regression procedures are employed to analyze data from the High School and Beyond Longitudinal Study. The social capital model of college attendance is estimated for the full sample and separately for high school students living in urban, suburban, and rural communities. Predicted probabilities of attending college for students with high and low social capital are obtained. Results of these analyses indicate that parental expectation of college attendance is the most powerful predictor of subsequent college attendance among variables examined. Measures of community social capital and parental human capital also strongly predict attendance.     

Social Capital Accessibility of Intermarrieds

Grounded in Bourdieu’s social capital theory, the study’s purpose was to investigate social capital accessibility of intermarrieds compared to intramarrieds. Using the 2001 Integrated Health Interview Series data, two generalized linear models with Poisson distribution and identity link were performed: Model 1 compared intermarrieds to intramarrieds; Model 2 compared specific types of intermarrieds to intramarrrieds. Model 1 indicated that intermarrieds had less accessibility to social capital than intramarrieds. Model 2 indicated that intermarrieds, particularly interracially marrieds, had less social capital accessibility than intramarrieds, although the influence was moderate. Social capital accessibility of the interethnically or internationally marrieds was not significantly different from that of intramarrieds. Findings provide partial support to previous research concerning a lack of social capital accessibility for intermarrieds.     

Social Capital and Neighborhood Poverty

ABSTRACT

Research indicates that concentrated neighborhood poverty has numerous detrimental effects on the health and well-being of individuals, families, and communities. The term “neighborhood effects” has been used to describe the interaction between socioeconomic disadvantage and social problems at the neighborhood level. Social capital theory, defined broadly as social networks characterized by trust and reciprocity represents one prominent explanation for the phenomenon of neighborhood effects. Within poor neighborhoods, it is theorized that socioeconomic characteristics of the neighborhood foster inadequate social capital and it is this low level of social capital that leads to the phenomenon of neighborhood effects. In order to explore the utility of social capital theory in explaining neighborhood effects, this paper argues for an ecologically-grounded model of social capital that allows for the different ways in which social capital operates within different types of neighborhoods. Implications for social work practice, policy and education are discussed.     

Comparing Conceptualizations of Social Capital

Social work is ideally suited to use social capital to understand societal ills and to conduct a more holistic exploration of power, privilege, and oppression that affects marginalized individuals and groups. To that end, we review how prominent theorists discuss social capital and offer guidance for community practitioners based on these conceptualizations. In opposition to purely micro-level theories of human behavior in the social environment that inadvertently separate micro and macro-level social work, social capital is particularly well suited to be employed at individual, family, community, and societal levels. Our position on the importance of social capital for social work practice is in congruence with social work perspective on the person-in-environment. Although we do not offer a social capital framework for community practice, we hope that our article informs community practitioners' understanding of the place and importance of social capital for communities.     

Social Capital and economic opportunities

Moving on from [Coleman, J.S., 1990. Foundations of Social Theory. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, London] and [Putnam, R.D., Leonardi, R., Nanetti, R.Y., 1993. Making Democracy Work Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, Chichester], an ever-growing literature claims that repeating trustful interactions in the economy do sediment in higher levels of generalized trust. This aggregate stock of trust is then named Social Capital and treated as an input in the aggregate production function, such as labour, physical capital, or human capital. In this paper we argue that in many instances there is no need for meta-concepts like Social Capital, as trust is often simply the outcome of profit maximization. Whilst approaches that refer to Social Capital ignore the set of economic opportunities, incentives and conflicts behind trust, in this article we propose a simple model to show that when these are taken into account, the roles of trust and Social Capital can be better defined and understood.     

Social Capital in Emerging Democracies

Theorists have linked the creation of social capital to the development of the kind of robust civil society that underwrites the well formed and stable democracy. This understanding raises the problem of what is social capital in specific national contexts. A critical issue is whether and to what extent a model of social capital moulded to the EuroAmerican experience is applicable to the new democracies. Three arguments are made in the context of a review of the works of Putnam and Touraine. First, the question of social capital foundationally concerns not only the production of institutions and values but the conditions of production. Analysis thus needs to grasp not only the specifically social process of its creation, distribution, and institutionalization, but the political culture and economy that serve as its foundation. Second, theories of social capital created in the context of nation-state based production-centered political economy do not capture what is going on in an increasingly globalized and circulatory political economy. And third, theories of social capital centered on the United States and Europe are only partially applicable to the emerging democracies of Africa and the postcolony generally.

劳动力市场中的社会资本与市场化

社会资本与市场化的关系是:对于市场化而言,社会资本是一种有益的非市场力量,还是市场力量的另外一种形式?从文献中可以看到,社会资本与市场化均属不易被操作化的变量,因此围绕二者关系的实证研究结果也各有不同。本文对2009年中国八城市"社会网络与职业经历"大型问卷调查数据的分析结果显示,市场化的不同测量对社会资本与市场化关系的判定影响很大;但是三种不同的测量仍然产生了一个一致性结果,即市场化进程在提升了社会资本的"认可度"的同时降低了社会资本的"含金量"。     

Gender and the Limits of Social Capital*

Dans cet article, l'auteure examine l'intensification de l'intérêt envers le concept de capital social dans la politique publique au Canada et considère que ce concept est assez prometteur, en même temps qu'il entraînera des problèmes considérables, pour les femmes. Elle explique les paramètres du concept de capital social et tente de l'approfondir à l'aide de questions féministes essentielles sur l'économie politique. Cette approche jette les bases de la tâche primordiale d'associer un sexe au capital social, de telle sorte que les résultats des politiques dans le contexte canadien n'augmentent pas le fardeau du travail social et de prestation de soins de groupes déjà surcharges. This paper considers the rise in Canadian public policy interest in the concept of social capital, and suggests that the concept holds some promise, along with considerable problems, for women. It elucidates the parameters of the concept of social capital and attempts to deepen it with critical feminist political economy questions. It begins the crucial task of gendering social capital so that policy outcomes in the Canadian context do not increase the burden of social and caring work onto already overburdened groups.