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Social Capital: Communities
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Social Capital Formation [W]as a project of the SPNO that ran until from May 2001 until March 2002. The project undertook three community case studies in this research and development project. The goal was to synthesize the case study research into a Resource Guide for Social Capital Formation by Social Planning Councils that proposes a model of strategic practice in the use of bonding, bridging, and scaling-up strategies. As a result of this project, the Social and Economic Inclusion Initiative was born.
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Social capital as a concept is still in its infancy. The construct offers a way of thinking about potentially important but difficult-to-quantify aspects of community that may be associated with health. The challenge is to determine whether it is causally associated with specific health outcomes, including psychiatric disorders. Despite its intuitive appeal, social capital has yet to be defined operationally, which has led to a burgeoning literature with a variety of related constructs. This is a major impediment to the development of a robust, empirical evidence base concerning the putative effects on different health outcomes.
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Social capital refers to the capital captured though social relationships and the networks they produce. Relationships have value whether they occur in economic, political, labor or community based social networks. Individuals and social networks engage in relationships that are able interact in order to produce profit. The profit involved with social capital may range from the value placed upon a personal reference for entry to employment or school to members of a community working on a common project.
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The term "Social Capital" was recognized and coined by political scientist Robert Putnam after a 20-year observation of communities throughout Italy. Putnam and his colleagues discovered that communities identical in form could result in dismal, inefficient failures, as well as bright, successful, innovative successes. The difference between the successes and failures was not explained by affluence, politics, or population movements, but rather by the existence social capital.
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Social Capital explains the importance of using social connections and social relations in achieving goals. Social capital, or resources accessed through such connections and relations, is critical (along with human capital, or what a person or organization actually possesses) in achieving goals for individuals, social groups, organizations, and communities. The book introduces a theory that forcefully argues and shows why "it is who you know," as well as "what you know" that makes a difference in life and society.
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The second source of social capital in developing countries is globalization. Globalization has been the bearer not just of capital but of ideas and culture as well. Everyone is well aware of the ways in which globalization injures indigenous cultures and threatens longstanding traditions. But it ... leaves new ideas, habits, and practices in its wake, from accounting standards to management practices to NGO activities. It is not just investment bankers who can take advantage of the global communications and information revolution; activists of all sorts from environmentalists to labor organizers can now operate transnationally to a much greater extent than before.30 The issue, for most societies, is whether they are net losers or gainers from this process, that is, whether globalization breaks down traditional cultural communities without leaving anything positive in its wake, or rather, is an external shock that breaks apart dysfunctional traditionals and social groups and becomes the entering wedge for modernity.
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