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Debates around the concept of social capital are often also debates about the level at which social capital can be abstracted for analytical use. Yet while many theorists and commentators involved in these debates implicitly discuss the issue of abstraction it is rarely done explicitly. In this article I attempt to overcome this missing link in the social capital literature by theoretically examining the 'social' in 'social capital' through interconnected levels of abstraction. In particular, and at a high level of abstraction, I argue that social capital is underpinned by a contradictory relationship associated with what I term as 'isolated reciprocity'. At lower levels of abstraction I show how isolated reciprocity poses problems for the establishment of 'good' social capital in the UK.

This paper provides a sociological overview of the concept of social capital and explores how it is related to the notion of health. The theoretical section of the study addresses the issue of an operational definition of social capital and conducts detailed analysis of the dimensions and forms of the concept that stand out in terms of importance in the field of health research. It also takes into consideration the most significant causal mechanisms identified between social capital and health outcomes. The empirical part of the paper features analysis of data on the connection between social capital and self-perceived health, collected during the first survey conducted in Italy by the Osservatorio sulle Strategie di Consumo delle Famiglie (Observatory on Consumption Strategies in the Family). The survey shows that community social capital, generally expressed in terms of family trust, may, depending on the subject's social milieu of origin, not play any role in determining the level of self-perceived health in Italy. Alternatively, it may play either of two roles, acting as a multiplier or a substitute with regard to positive causal processes determined by parameters of a socio-demographic nature.

We offer a critical review of the concepts and principles of social capital and social networks as applied to entrepreneurship. Our review is intended for junior scholars and graduate students in the field of entrepreneurship who wish to learn the basic vocabulary of social network and social capital analyses. We illustrate several interesting research questions and a toolbox of methods to answer them. First, we use a popular new website, Friendster, to show the potential power of social capital accessed via social networks. Then, we show that the potential of social networks often cannot be realized because of various socio-cultural constraints. Taking account of these constraints, we offer three empirical generalizations about social networks and show how the concepts of homophily, social boundaries, and bounded rationality provide a framework for understanding the observations. As we discuss each generalization, we discuss some well-established theoretical contributions and empirical findings from the social capital and social networks literatures. Throughout the text we explain various research designs for studying social networks and issues raised in trying to use them. We conclude by noting the tension between the properties of social networks used in entrepreneurship researchers' models and the limited perspective on networks available to practicing entrepreneurs

Social capital is in danger of going the way of political culture—a potentially powerful concept that is given many different meanings by many different people for many different purposes. This article starts by picking out three different aspects or dimensions of the concept—norms (especially trust), networks, and consequences. It then considers three models of social capital and the forms of trust and democracy associated with them. Finally it discusses the role of voluntary associations as a foundation for social capital, arguing that their importance may be overstated in the classical Tocquevillean model of the 19th century, and that, in any case, modern democracy may be increasingly based on different forms of trust and association.

We use weekly data from 79 Russian regions to measure the impact of economic shocks and proximity to war in Ukraine on social capital in Russian regions. We proxy social capital by the relative intensity of internet searches for the most salient dimensions of pro-social behavior such as "donate blood", "charity", "adopt a child" etc. This measure of social capital is correlated with a survey-based measure of generalized social trust. Our search-based measure of social capital responds negatively to the spikes of inflation and positively to the intensity of the conflict in Ukraine (controlling for region and week fixed effects).

We use weekly data from 79 Russian regions to measure the impact of economic shocks and proximity to war in Ukraine on social capital in Russian regions. We proxy social capital by the relative intensity of internet searches for the most salient dimensions of pro-social behavior such as "donate blood", "charity", "adopt a child" etc. This measure of social capital is correlated with a survey-based measure of generalized social trust. Our search-based measure of social capital responds negatively to the spikes of inflation and positively to the intensity of the conflict in Ukraine (controlling for region and week fixed effects).

In this special issue ofScandinavian Political Studiesit is explored how the concept of social capital relates to the Scandinavian context. It is common knowledge that Scandinavia performs well with regard to many aspects of social capital, such as the level of trust and the density of membership in voluntary associations. Contrary to developments in the United States, there is little evidence of a decline in social capital in Scandinavia. There are thus several reasons why Scandinavia offers an especially interesting testing ground for many of the hypotheses and problems generated by social capital theory. What kind of empirical evidence do we have for the changes of social capital in Scandinavia? If high levels of social capital are indeed an important attribute of Scandinavian society, how can such high levels be maintained? What is the relation between, on the one hand, social capital in the form of norms about reciprocity and, on the other hand, the Social Democratic type of encompassing and universal welfare state? Is there something special about the types of mechanisms that are behind the abundance and maintenance of social capital in Scandinavia? It is argued that the high level of social capital in the Scandinavian countries can be explained by (a) the high degree of economic equality, (b) the low level of patronage and corruption and (c) the predominance of universal non‐discriminating welfare programmes.

▪ Abstract  This review evaluates the most recent studies of social capital in political science and argues that they have strayed considerably from the original treatment of social capital, which casts it as endogenous. Recent treatments have recast social capital as a feature of political culture and thereby treat values as exogenous. These two approaches emanate from incompatible premises and have fundamentally different implications. Thus, efforts to combine the two approaches are rendered unproductive by inevitable inconsistencies of internal logic. Moreover, empirical tests of the exogenous social capital approach are deficient: They are selective in their use of data and employ ad hoc procedures at crucial junctures. We therefore urge a return to the treatment of social capital as endogenous.

Abstract This paper sets forth an interdisciplinary interpretation of social capital that will permit the concept to be used with precision in scholarly and scientific work. If the interpretation is accepted, the social capital concept cannot be regarded as a social theory, nor as a statement of normative goals. The interdisciplinary concept proposed here is applied to rural studies.

We use weekly data from 79 Russian regions to measure the impact of economic shocks and proximity to war in Ukraine on social capital in Russian regions. We proxy social capital by the relative intensity of internet searches for the most salient dimensions of pro-social behavior such as "donate blood", "charity", "adopt a child" etc. This measure of social capital is correlated with a survey-based measure of generalized social trust. Our search-based measure of social capital responds negatively to the spikes of inflation and positively to the intensity of the conflict in Ukraine (controlling for region and week fixed effects).

The volume brings together a stellar group of contributors who examine the social capital thesis by means of four different approaches: theoretical, historical, comparative, and empirical. In the end, this book will serve to answer two fundamental questions which have hitherto been neglected: What can a gendered analysis tell us about social capital? And what can social capital tell us about women and politics?

New social media such as Facebook and Google+ are web-based communication platforms that enable socially meaningful interactions between contacts in the virtual space (Ellison et al. 2014). Studies show that new social media are particularly conducive to social capital development, as they offer its users the possibility of creating heterogeneous, extremely large electronic social networks (Hampton et al. 2011). This article presents the results of a quantitative research study on the social capital and trust of the Lithuanian population in the electronic social networks. The study used an adapted D. Williams' Internet Social Capital Scale (2006).