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 Internet Use: The Irrelevant,the Bad,and the Good

The social effects of Internet use have been a major concern for social scientists and society alike. How the Internet affects social capital has been a hot topic in sociology and other social sciences: Is the Internet reinforcing and complementing social capital? Or is it isolating people and diminishing their social capital? Social capital is here defined as the resources that are embedded in one's social ties. This article reviews the literature on the subject, looking at three perspectives: one that suggests no relationship between the Internet and social capital, a second that suggests a negative relationship between the Internet and social capital, and a third that suggests a positive relationship between the Internet and social capital. I conclude by showing that despite the prominent dystopian view of the Internet in the public and in some academic discourse (and the moral panic associated with it), research supports a positive relationship between Internet use and social capital. In addition, I discuss new trends and directions for future research.     

Affiliative Segregation of Outsiders from a Community: Bonding and Bridging Social Capital in Hachimori-cho, Japan

Abstract: Social capital makes cooperation possible even in situations of social dilemma. People develop bonding social capital when their network is dense. However, bonding social capital tends to make them look inward and to foster strong out-group hostility, which hinders the development of bridging social capital between groups. I investigated the possibility that bonding social capital may help develop bridging social capital from which all group members gain profits. Fieldwork was conducted in Hachimori-cho, Japan, where outsider Saru-Oiage volunteers are segregated from community residents. The volunteers have dense social networks and develop bonding social capital. They gain skills and take pride and responsibility in their actions from the bonding social capital, so that they can pursue the same interests as community residents, namely, expel monkeys from farmlands. Residents accept volunteers eagerly because they work well, and the existence of "good" outsiders contributes to the development of local identity. An affiliative relationship between volunteers and residents is maintained by the enormous efforts of the coordinators. Because the coordinators recently immigrated to Hachimori, they could understand the situations of outsiders as well as those of community residents, and they gain the most benefits from bridging social capital. These conditions were necessary for bridging social capital, or the cooperative relationship, between the two groups in Hachimori-cho.     

Social Capital and Community Supportsfor Low Income Families

Abstract

The Personal Responsibility, Work Opportunity and Medicaid Restructuring Act of 1996 changed welfare dramatically. This article explores the concept of social capital, illustrating how social and cultural capital are important factors that make the difference between persistent and temporary poverty. Through research in Wisconsin and Philadelphia, this article shows that social capital provides both barrier and bridge to families trying to survive in a changed policy context. However, just as programs focusing exclusively on work experience, developing human capital, or providing additional income fail to produce results for everyone on public assistance, programs concentrating exclusively on social or cultural capital are also doomed to failure.     

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.     

Family capital: Examining social capital,family commitment,and acculturation among college-enrolled Mexican-American men and women in the Southwestern United States

Social capital is integral to an individual’s ability to access various resources embedded in social and familial networks that are important in academic access and future success. The types and dynamics of social relationships created by men and women are thought to generate different forms of social capital with factors such as acculturation resulting in differences in intercultural networks and potential resource access. However, the factors that contribute to the development of social capital require further investigation. The current study examines the relationship between acculturation, family role commitment, and various social network characteristics associated with social capital among Mexican-American college-enrolled men (n = 119) and women (n = 196). Several multiple regressions were conducted. Findings indicate that acculturation and family role commitment relate differently to social-capital-network characteristics among Mexican-American men and women. For women, marital commitment was consistently related to social-capital-network characteristics whereas acculturation factors seemed to be more salient among men. Overall, study variables accounted for a larger portion of the variance for social-capital-network characteristics across analyses for men than women indicating that other factors may be at play in generating social capital for women.     

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.     

Dimensions of social capital and subjective well-being: evidence from Italy

The concept of social capital was investigated as an explanatory variable of a number of significant socio-economic phenomena, such as economic development, the well-functioning of institutions, and school performance. This study proposes an analysis of the relation between social capital and well-being. The two concepts have been interpreted by social sciences in many different ways. In particular, as a result of its recent success, social capital has been the object of a great deal of interpretations. Social scientists have considered it either as a collective resource (macro social capital), or as an available resource amongst members of specific groups (friends, associations, local communities, etc.; i.e. meso social capital), or as a resource that individuals can achieve through their personal networks (micro social capital). Using data from a representative sample of Italian citizens (25–80 years old), this work investigates which dimension (micro, meso, or macro) of social capital has (if any) a major influence on subjective well-being. Data show some interdependence only with the macro social capital, and suggest that it is just the symbolic and cognitive qualities of the social capital, rather than its structural dimension, that could be associated with subjective well-being in a significant way.     

Social capital,human capital,and career success in public relations in Taiwan

This study examined the degree to which demographic, human capital, and social capital variables can predict career success for public relations practitioners in Taiwan. Social capital includes two dimensions: social trust and social network. Human capital includes education, rank, career tenure, and motivation. Public relations practitioners (150) from 16 agencies in Taiwan were interviewed in 2006. Social capital explained the significant variance in subjective career success. As for human capital, motivation negatively predicted job comfort, but positively predicted challenge and task significance. Career tenure and rank in the agency positively predicted autonomy, while only age and professional tenure predicted objective success. This study also revealed that the longer the practitioners stay in the business, the more the sense of autonomy, financial rewards, and support they have. Combined with the results of objective career success, career tenure is the best predictor for career success among all the variables in human capital. Since gender does not predict career success, we may infer that public relations practice in Taiwan does not seem hostile to women.     

Family Capital: Implications for Interventions with Families

Social capital has been extensively discussed in the literature as building blocks that individuals and communities utilize to leverage system resources. Similarly, some families also create capital, which can enable members of the family, such as children, to successfully negotiate the outside world. Families in poverty confront serious challenges in developing positive family capital, because of lack of resources. For those families that are successful in developing positive family capital, family capital can help to create positive outcomes for family interactions. Thus, family capital can provide information about opportunities, exert influence on agents who make decisions involving the actor, provide social credentials that indicate a connection to a social network, and reinforce the actor's identity and recognition, which maintains access and entitlement to these social resources.     

The civility of social capital: Public relations in the public sphere,civil society,and democracy

Scholars have analyzed public relations’ role in democracy via proxy concepts like the public sphere and civil society. However, some have critiqued the public sphere on grounds of equal access and portrayed civil society as a guise for first-world imperialism. These critiques have implications for the role of public relations in the public sphere and civil society. This article suggests the normative role of public relations in democracy is best perceived as creating the social capital that facilitates access to spheres of public discussion and in maintaining relationships among those organizations that check state power. To that end, the paper argues that social capital does much to advance public relations theory and prescribe the role of public relations in democracy. Several implications for public relations from a social capital perspective are offered, including the creation of generalized societal trust, the building of cross-cutting or “weak” ties, the engagement of media on behalf of subaltern counterpublics, and the (re)creation of community or a fully functioning society.     

Testing the validity of social capital measures in the study of information and communication technologies

Social capital has been considered a cause and consequence of various uses of new information and communication technologies (ICTs). However, there is a growing divergence between how social capital is commonly measured in the study of ICTs and how it is measured in other fields. This departure raises questions about the validity of some of the most widely cited studies of social capital and ICTs. We compare the Internet Social Capital Scales (ISCS) developed by Williams [2006. On and off the ’net: scales for social capital in an online era. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(2), 593–628. doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2006.00029.x] – a series of psychometric scales commonly used to measure ‘social capital’ – to established, structural measures of social capital: name, position, and resource generators. Based on a survey of 880 undergraduate students (the population to which the ISCS has been most frequently administered), we find that, unlike structural measures, the ISCS does not distinguish between the distinct constructs of bonding and bridging social capital. The ISCS does not have convergent validity with structural measures of bonding or bridging social capital; it does not measure the same concept as structural measures. The ISCS conflates social capital with the related constructs of social support and attachment. The ISCS does not measure perceived or actual social capital. These findings raise concerns about the interpretations of existing studies of ‘social capital’ and ICTs that are based on the ISCS. Given the absence of measurement validity, we urge those studying social capital to abandon the ISCS in favor of alternative approaches.     

Farmers' Contribution to Agricultural Social Capital: Evidence from Southern Spain

Social capital is the whole set of shared norms, values, attitudes, and beliefs that promote cooperation among individuals within the community and that has proved to be a key factor in explaining development processes. This article aims to provide an analytically reliable notion of social capital within the farming sector and a methodological tool for empirically measuring how social capital is accumulated at the farmer level. The theoretical framework proposed is based on the multidimensionality of the complex concept of social capital. Thus, to develop a comprehensive index for social capital, we identify three dimensions of the concept, structural, relational, and cognitive social capital, each one also comprising several subdimensions. This integrative approach permits creation of a composite indicator of the agricultural social capital accumulated at the farmer level, further identifying socioeconomic factors that influence its accumulation at that level. We empirically apply this methodological approach to farmers in Andalusia in southern Spain as a case study. This research provides an interesting starting point for informing policymakers about social capital and helping them implement the necessary programs to facilitate sustainable development in the agricultural sector.     

Civil society,social capital and the Twelve Step group

This article examines the nature of community and family by using the concept of civil society through a Twelve Step group called Al-Anon. Al-Anon is related to Alcoholics Anonymous and is a support group for families of alcoholics. The concept of civil society is addressed by looking at its development in political philosophy and sociology. The work of Putnam, in particular, is used to understand how civil society and the associations which make it up develop social capital [Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, Princeton University Press (1993); Journal of Democracy, 6(1), 65–78 (1995); The Responsive Community, 5(2), 18–33 (1995)]. Social capital is understood to be norms and values such as trust and reciprocity that enable sociability or social connectedness. Community, then, embodies these norms of trust and reciprocity through their development in Al-Anon. Al-Anon is studied as an example of an association in civil society. The data come from an ethnographic study in Australia and five European countries as well as in-depth interviews with women members in Australia. The article reviews the similarities and differences between the various countries as well as the form that social capital takes for individual members.     

Individual Stress,Collective Trauma,and Social Capital in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill*

This article examines persistent social impacts of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill (EVOS) by focusing on the relationship between social capital and chronic individual stress and collective trauma, using Hobfoll’s (1988) conservation of resources model of stress as an organizing framework. Data are based on in‐depth personal interviews conducted 14 years after the disaster. Analyses focus on the ways in which stress‐related behaviors associated with loss and threat of loss of various forms of resources have affected social capital in the renewable resource community of Cordova, Alaska. Findings reveal lower levels of trust, disruptions in associations, weakened social connections and networks, altered social discourses, diminished feelings of good will, and violations of norms of reciprocity. Behaviors associated with long‐term stress related to the EVOS and to the associated protracted litigation are indicative of diminished social capital. This research highlights the critical importance of social capital as a collective resource and illustrates the ways in which decreased social capital can exacerbate individual stress and collective trauma.     

Development of Capital in Poor,Inner-City Neighborhoods

Abstract

Social work practice in poor, inner-city neighborhoods can be enhanced through assessment of individual and community needs that takes into account various forms of capital, i.e., financial, human, social, cultural, environmental, and political. This article defines and illustrates these forms of capital by reference to social science studies of the social problems in inner-city neighborhoods. Examples are provided of community interventions that focus on capital development and community building for residents in areas of extreme poverty.     

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.     

Women's Status and Social Capital in the United States

SUMMARY

Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone found that social capital is closely associated with a variety of important indicators of community health, and women benefit from many of these resources as members of their communities. But is there anything distinct about how women experience social capital? Is there a relationship between social capital and women's status overall? Using data on social capital from Bowling Alone and data collected by the Institute for Women's Policy Research for its Status of Women in the States project, we assess trends across the states on both dimensions. Overall, the findings suggest that there is a strong relationship between the two.     

How to Get a Longer Job? Roles of Human and Social Capital in the Japanese Labor Market

This article investigates the roles of human and social capital played in the Japanese labor market. Our research question is whether they interact to accelerate or decelerate each other to provide first jobs of a long duration. Based on the literature, we focus on the bonding functions of friends and relatives. Using the 2005 Social Stratification and Social Mobility Survey Data, we measure human capital by educational attainment (college education) and social capital by job search methods (using friends or relatives). The dependent variable is the hazard rate of turnover from the first job. We find that social capital especially benefits those with low human capital (high school graduates). When friends or relatives introduce workers to jobs, high school graduates tended to stay longer in their first jobs and had a lower turnover than college graduates did. This means that social capital decelerated effects of human capital. Therefore, in the Japanese labor market, social capital plays a complementary role in mitigating educational disadvantage.     

The Family in the Light of a New Relational Theory of Primary,Secondary and Generalized Social Capital

The aim of this article is to pinpoint the relevance of family relationships in the studies on ‘social capital’. In order to clarify this perspective, Pierpaolo Donati outlines a new approach called ‘relational approach’. According to it, social capital is a property and a quality of social relationships, not an attribute of individuals or social structures as such. This theory has two major advantages: first, it leads to differentiate those components of social capital which are usually conflated; second, it permits to identify various forms of social capital (primary, secondary-communitarian and civic or generalized). Riccardo Prandini criticizes the sociological prejudices which consider the family mainly as an obstacle for the full deployment of ‘liquid’ and ‘modern’ social relations. The family's social capital is defined as the reciprocal orientations of the family's members which are able to generate trust and therefore cooperative actions. Empirical evidence shows that the family's social capital is strictly connected to the emergence of pro-social attitudes in individuals, particularly in terms of social trust and participation in civil associations.