Suchergebnisse

Metadata only record ; This paper looks at the relevance and contributions of social capital analysis to human geography and vise versa. The authors start by defining social capital and clarifying and distinguishing concepts, and critiques of Putnam's work. Social capital is simultaneously an economic, sociological, political, and geographical concept, but it must be distinguished from human capital, cultural capital, and networks. Social capital can be relevant to human geographers because of the focus on the relationship between locality and the 'emergent casual power'. Social capital in not reproduced nor is it fixed to a place (it is the interaction between agency and structure). The geography of social capital exists in the: 1) Compositional effects produce spatial variations. 2) Participation varies with location. 3) Voluntary sector develops unevenly. 4) Institutional structures can influence formation of social capital which can affect levels of participation. 5) Uneven development are likely to have an impact on the quality of social relationships and, therefore, on levels of social capital. The challenge now rests in developing spatially disaggregated indicators of social capital. Obtaining disaggregated data on dimensions of social capital is difficult whether one measures participation or trust. Still, social capital is used in explaining economic growth and uneven development. It might be relevant to explain intrastate patterns of uneven development, in understanding effectiveness of government institutions, and health inequalities. Change have moved towards multiple stakeholders approaches involving partnerships between state, private capital and civil society, this so called the "third way" has have placed the focus on social networks and social capital, but the paper cautions us of the dangers of uncritical application of concepts.

In this article, I am concerned with how social capital circulates within and across communities. Social capital entails an accumulation of social and moral resources within groups or social collectivities which include norms of reciprocity, social trust, co-operation, and networks of civic engagement. Ethnic communities in Australia are frequently accused of indulging in identity politics that leads to a form of ethnic closure. In order to address this issue more clearly, two main questions are posed: first, does identity formation contribute to a form of separation and ethnic closure or can communities, based on identity formations and identity politics, enhance their levels of civic virtue and collective action; secondly, are ethnic communities in Australia rallying together through various forms of collective action to achieve social justice goals within their own ethnic groups and across the broader community?

In the development process worldwide, researchers and scholars these days are paying more attention to the significant role of social capital. There is a growing understanding that social capital is one of the determinant factors in the economic development. The importance of social capital as a significant factor of growth has been widely and commonly acknowledged. Social capital refers to the institutions, relationship, and norms that shape the quality and quantity of society's social intreactions. Social capital however, is not simply the sum of the institutions, which underpain a society; it is also the glue that holds them together. It includes the shared values and rules for social cinduct expressed in personal relationship, trust, and a common sense of "civic" responsibility, that makes society more than a collection of individuals.The formal study on social capital in Indonesia is still very rare. Eventhough the terminology of social capital has not been formally used, several studies on Indonesian villagers have tried to examine types and functions of human relations and cooperation. The Indonesian peasant households still attach great importance to good relations with neighbors and relatives in their community. These relations are expressed into various types of mutual and are commonly known as gotong royong tradition.It will be much more rewarding if the further studies are able to capture and cover each element of social capital dimension in rural Indonesia. Practices of local institutions in rural Indonesia such as social service groups, labor institutions for mutual help, rotational saving groups, traditional social safety net, equalized inheritance system, share tenancy forms, and service of government affairs should be included in the more advance studies.

We consider the contribution of public education to growth through its role in building social capital—instilling common values and norms that lower economic transaction costs and reduce social tensions between different population groups. This is modeled in the context of a political economy framework that focuses on the role of public education in reducing redistributive rent-seeking. Our analysis shows that the social compromises needed to mobilize popular support for public education are more difficult to achieve the deeper are the cultural divisions in society; and that a uniform public school system, when adopted, promotes stronger growth than would a private system.

Why are some countries richer than others? We suggest in the line of political economy theory that traditional production factors cannot explain the observed differences. Rather, differences in the quality of formal institutions are crucial to economic wealth. However, this type of political economy theory accentuating the role of formal institutions cannot stand on its own. This implies a socio-economic approach in the study where we supplement the formal institutional thesis with Bourdieu's idea of material and non-material forms of capital. Such new socio-economics - which might be termed a "Bourdieuconomics" -implies the usage of a capital theory that, methodologically, operates with material and non-material forms of capital at the same level. Here, we stress the particular importance of a non-material form of capital, namely social capital, which facilitates informal human exchange, thereby "lubricating" civic society and the voluntary provision of collective goods such as trust and predictable behavior. In this way, social capital reduces transaction costs in society, thereby enhancing economic growth and the creation of differences in the wealth of nations. Future research should therefore be directed towards analyses of a new and formerly disregarded production factor, social capital, within a new field of socio-economics, namely "Bourdieuconomics."

Recent research on social capital has explored trends in membership in voluntary organizations. However, there is currently little robust evidence on such trends in the UK since the 1970s, nor is there any analysis of whether participation bridges social divisions or accentuates them. This paper explores trends in participation in England and Wales since 1972 using data from the Social Mobility Inquiry of 1972 and the British Household Panel Survey of 1992 and 1999. We are concerned with social exclusion mechanisms in social capital generation in Britain over the three decades. Using binomial and multinomial models to 'unpack' the effects of socio-cultural factors on civic participation and on different types of associational membership, we test the thesis of across-the-board decline in social capital by Putnam (2000) and that of rising levels of middle-class social capital versus consistent low levels of working-class social capital by Hall (1999). The results show significant socio-cultural-gender differences, a relative stability of middle-class participation, and a rapid decline in the working-class access to social capital. We challenge the established accounts of both theses.

Metadata only record ; This article explores the ways in which discussion of social capital have emerged within the World Bank, and how they interacted both with project practices and with larger debates in the institution. These debates are understood as a "battlefield of knowledge," whose form and outcomes are structured but not determined by the political economy of the Bank. Understanding the debates this way has implications for research on the ways in which development discourses are produced and enacted, as well as for more specific discussions of the place of social capital in development studies. The article concludes with a reflection on implications of these debates for future research, policy, and practice.

This paper studies local social capital in two Swedish rural districts. It concentrates on the relations between local political/public bodies and local development groups. The political bodies have acted somewhat differently towards local development initiatives in the two districts. This has resulted in differences in the number of development groups and in the social capital of local culture, leisure and service environments. There are, however, few examples of social capital in these environments spreading to changes in production environments, in the form of e.g. attitudes to entrepreneurship, risktaking, etc. The study supports the view that private and public actors can change local social capital. Local organizations who act as intermediate nodes between the local groups and the political bodies seem to be of special importance. However, our results suggest that changing local social capital is a long-term mission that demands sustainable work.

As a response to the rapidly growing empirical literature on social capital and the evidence of its correlation with government performance, we build a theoretical framework to study the interactions between social capital and government's action. This paper presents a model of homogeneous agents in an overlapping generations framework incorporating social capital as the values transmitted from parent to child. The government's role is to provide public goods. First, government expenditure is exogenously given. Then, it will be chosen at the preferred level of the representative agent. For both setups the equilibrium outcomes are characterized and the resulting dynamics studied. Briefly we include an analysis of the effect of productivity growth on the evolution of social capital. The results obtained caution caution against both the crowding out effect of the welfare state and the impact of sustained economic growth on social capital.

This article provides an overview of social capital in the area of political economy, breaking down research into the communitarian, network, institutional, and synergy approaches. There is also a brief discussion of methodology in social capital research, and how methodology in social capital can be highly problematic. Despite this, the article argues it is important to overcome methodological difficulty in light of the vast potential of understanding social capital in poverty eradication efforts.

Using a Japanese national-sample panel survey in 2000 that includes snowball-sampled data, this paper attempts to examine the extended hypotheses on social capital. One focus of the extension is on the role of social networks, a low-cost device for obtaining political information that also operates as a portal to the society. The other focus includes the role of tolerance, which is as important as political participation in an open democracy. By positing a hypothesis that the reverse logic of social capital is applicable to the problem of intolerance, an attempt is made to elucidate the dark side of social capital. The result of multivariate analyses clearly indicates a positive correlation between social capital and political participation, both of voluntary organization and social networks, on the individual and the dyadic levels. On the other hand, political tolerance is not clearly related with social capital at any level.

Social capital has become a popular subject in the literature on determinants of health. The concept of social capital has been used in the sociological, political science, and economic development literatures, as well as in the health inequalities literature. Analysis of its use in the health inequalities literature suggests that each theoretical tradition has conceptualized social capital differently. Health researchers have employed a wide range of social capital measures, borrowing from several theoretical traditions. Given the wide variation in these measures and an apparent lack of consistent theoretical or empirical justification for their use, conclusions about the likely role of "social capital" on population health may be overstated or even misleading. Elements of a research agenda are proposed to further elucidate the potential role of factors currently subsumed under the rubric of "social capital."

This paper analyzes an early modern German economy to test alternative theories about guilds. It finds little evidence to support recent hypotheses arguing that guilds corrected market failures relating to product quality, training, and innovation. But it finds that guilds were social networks that generated a social capital of shared norms, common information, mutual sanctions, and collective political action. Guilds' social capital affected rival producers, suppliers, employees, consumers, the government, and the wider economy. Economic analyses of collective action, it is argued, can explain why guilds were so widespread while not necessarily being efficient.

The paper discusses the role of social capital in the dramatic structural change that has taken place in the rural municipality of Sotkamo in north-eastern Finland. The main approach of this study is to observe the formation and use of social capital in important local events. Earlier definitions of local development have been based on factors such as natural resources, labour force, machines and tools, technology, knowledge and skills. The explanation based on social capital focuses on factors which increase and improve co-operation. Important issues of social capital are the existing rules of behaviour, the networks mediating these rules, and the trust amongst members of society that these rules are respected. In the case of Sotkamo the change has been the rise of tourism. Simultaneously this has meant the rise of Vuokatti as the central place in regional and local development. The paper is based on a questionnaire study and key-person interviews in Sotkamo. The paper discusses the following themes: What kind of actors and networks are participating in local development? Which actors are regarded as trustworthy in local development? What kinds of changes have occurred in the local identity and image? What kinds of struggles and coalitions of local power can be recognised? Results are analysed in the framework of social capital and local development. The study concludes that 'balanced' local development may take place, if the locality has the capacity of building networks that can meet the challenges of the future. Such networks should unite actors using both traditional local resources and new resources from outside of the locality. An important challenge is to balance the demands of economic restructuring and those of local community cohesion. This paper is based on the Finnish national study RESTRIM (Restructuring in Marginal Rural Areas: the role of social capital in rural development), a project that is funded by the European Union (for more, see http://www.abdn.ac.uk/arkleton/RESTRIM/).

Using cross-country data from a sample of low, middle and high-income countries, the paper provides the first empirical test of the empirical relationships between national measures of social capital (civic and public), social divergence and social capacity upon various indicators of national environmental performance. The results indicate a possible link between public social capital (democracy and corruption) and effective national environmental policies and the pivotal effects of economic and demographic determinants on national environmental performance. The policy implication is that improved national environmental performance may be best achieved by encouraging reductions in emissions and input intensities and improving the quality of public administration and democratic accountability.