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Social Capital
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"This long-needed and richly detailed volume, by one of the original theorists of social capital, organizes and advances on the key intellectual challenges and accomplishments of the field of structural sociology. Immensely readable and relevant to today's most interesting sociological questions regarding economic life, Lin's book succeeds in bursting open new doors to the theoretically and substantively important consequences of social capital." Brian Uzzi, Northwestern University
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The economists' approach to understanding how social capital is generated is ultimately very limited.... The problem is that social capital more often than not is produced by hierarchical sources of authority, which lay down norms and expect obedience to them for totally a-rational reasons. The world's major religions like Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, or Islam, or large cultural systems like Confucianism, are examples. Not only do norms from such sources not come about through decentralized bargaining; they are transmitted from one generation to the next through a process of socialization that involves much more habit than reason. Path dependence-another word for tradition-means that norms that are clearly socially suboptimal can persist for very long periods of time.
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The term "spiritual capital" refers to the economic and social consequences of religion and spirituality. While religion and spirituality are rich with various sources of personal meaning, they ... have profound public significance. The Spiritual Capital Research Program will fund high- level research that could lead to new understandings of religion's role in economic, social and political life.
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Experts from economics, sociology, management and political science will engage in lively discussions on current research on social capital. Participants hail from a number of leading institutions including Oxford, Stanford, Harvard and University of Chicago, as well as Notre Dame.
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The notion of social capital has been around for decades (see the article on social capital elsewhere on these pages for a fuller treatment). It is with the work of Jane Jacobs (1961), Pierre Bourdieu (1983), James S. Coleman (1988) and Robert D. Putnam (1993; 2000) that it has come into prominence. This is how Putnam (2000: 19) introduces the idea:
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There is ... an important question regarding the different dimensions of social capital through stocks of 'bridging' capital (weak ties between numerous people) in comparison to 'bonding' capital (strong ties within small groups) (Woolcock, 1998). Thus, whereas small, tightly knit groups may function well and assist their own members with practical, emotional and financial aid, they may also be exclusionary and even hostile towards perceived outsiders. On the other hand, where groups are more loosely connected and overlapping, bridging social capital may be of little value on a day to day level, but come into play when a member requires resources which are beyond his or her immediate social circle's ability to provide (Granovetter, 1973).
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Social Capital