Talk:Social capital

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"A wide variety of quite specific benefits flow from the trust, reciprocity, information, and cooperation associated with social networks. Social capital creates value for the people who are connected and - at least sometimes - for bystanders as well". Some restrict it to "trust available to all members of a community (e.g. family, customer base)" - Craig Hubley

Nan Lin's concept of Social Capital has a more individualistic approach: Investment in social relations with expected returns in the marketplace. It may subsume some others concepts such as Bourdieu, Coleman, Flap, Putnam and Eriksson as noted in Nan Lin book ‘Social Capital’ (2001) Cambridge University Press.--Luisrull 11:57, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Putnam argues that participation in voluntary networks create trust among participants that also affect their trust in strangers, and which reinforces social norms. It should nonetheless be stressed that the connection between trust, norms and networks has been questioned in more recent empirical studies. For example, Eric uslaner, Dietlind Stolle and a number of other social scientists fail to find an association between network activity and trust in strangers. Yet, the studies by Stephen Knack, Philip Keefer and Paul Zak show that trust is associated with such features as economic growth, legal quality and corruption while network measures are not. As such, Putnam's policy recommendation - t oencourage network formation - may prove to be entirely ineffective.


Contents

[edit] norms and values

Following cites, that include social capital examples, was purged from article without usable feedback comments! These books are available from the NE-Kansas Library System (NEKLS) and were suggested during ongoing social network analysis research ...

Joseph Bruchac's "Lasting Echoes" (1977) reinforces the native american oral history traditions for conveying intergenerational community values. As savvy organizational development knowledge managers, Coehn & Prusak focus on "Social Talk and Storytelling" - "In Good Company" (2001) - Chapter 5 leads off with a John Milton Paradise Lost quote: Good, the more communicated, the more abundant grows.

In Paul Seabright's "The Company of Strangers" (2004) Part III: Unintended Consequences - From Family Bands to Industrial Cities focused on environmental economics in discussing "Water: Commodity of Social Institution? (Chapter 8).

The "Social Capital" bibliography crafted by M.K. Smith (2001) highlights the blending of interdisciplinary skills needed to establish effective peer group mentorship models championing civic community, organization and education. It includes excerpts from Robert D. Putnam's "Bowling Alone" (2000) Why social capital is important (pp. 288-290).

=== References===

RJBurkhart 20:02, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

None of these is a reference that was used to create this article as has been explained on your talk page. Wikipedia is not a link farm or a bibliography. Rmhermen 22:17, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Added abstracts for each item cited above. Please contribute your experience-based insights.
RJBurkhart 21:05, 5 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] New sections added

Hi I have just gone and added a whole lot of information. This is a work in progress as the headings, sources/citations and order of info in article is not great. I welcome anyone's suggestions but would love if you discuss first before making any major changes as I am still working on this. JenLouise 05:22, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


Have reverted the last edit because someone changed the [[]] to [] which makes no sense. JenLouise 09:19, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of POV sections

I have "undeleted" a couple of sentences that were removed in the last few edits but reworded them as they came from texts not from me. I have put a {{fact}} tag in there for me to go back and find the authors I mention. JenLouise 00:17, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] economic value of social capital

I removed from the the addition of the economic value of social capital and just left it value of social capital as social capital really has nothing to do with economic stuff. It is important because of all the value it provides apart from economic value. JenLouise 00:24, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Bourdieu and Coleman are both clear that social capital is important because it can help develop economic capital. In Bourdieu at least, the ability to transfer to and from economic capital is the whole point (social capital is an economic investment that gets paid back later; it's a way to maintain class power in a disguised manner). Most social capital writers stress that social capital is vitally important for the capitalist market. Illuminatingvision 07:42, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Definitions

Removed the following sentences from the definition section.

  • Another way of examining the concept is to take the two words that comprise that. Social- meaning relating to human society and how society is organized and Capital defined as: economics material wealth in the form of money or property, identifies the meaning as societal wealth.
  • Studies show that war generates social capital and that social capital can be divided along generational lines. For example the World War II generation has sustained their increased levels of civic engagement and remains the faction most likely to participate in activities such as voting and volunteerism.

The first doesn't actually offer a definition, and needs to be reworded/expanded and referenced before being added back in. The second isn't a definition at all and needs to be moved to a more appropriate section and referenced before being added back in. JenLouise 00:26, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Social Capital and Civil Society

Who cares if some guy wrote a book about civil society and didn't mention social capital? The Onyx and Lyons part goes on too long, and they really aren't that central. It makes contentious claims and looks very close to Original research to me. How is the cited Lyons definition of civil society "somewhat Marxist"? That part about a free space where people come together and argue about stuff? Sounds like textbook liberalism (Mill)/deliberative democracy (Habermas) to me. (Btw, did the author of this article go to Wollongong Uni? I think I know where their focus came from...) Illuminatingvision 07:51, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the civil society section sounds very close to an essay. Too much time is devoted to the question of whether civil society creates social capital or vice versa. It's chicken or the egg type stuff. This is a particularly problematic argument because many writers, such as Portes, have argued that many versions of social capital are tautological, ie. the meaning of term can not be distinguished from its purported effects. Does social capital cause a vibrant civil society? Or the reverse? Or do the terms really just mean exactly the same thing?Illuminatingvision 14:53, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Social capital and civil society definitely don't mean the same thing. But if you have a problem with the section, why don't you make some suggestions as to how you think it could be fixed? Or better yet go ahead and have ago at fixing it. Either way people will give you feedback once they can see what you would like the section to look like. JenLouise 07:30, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Changes I made

I fixed up some problems in this page. I removed the section saying what an ideal or acceptable definition of social capital is, it was nonsense to have a whole section on the significant, and sometimes fierce, debates about the definition of social capital and then simply judge them against an arbirtary scale which isn't referenced to academic research.

I also changed the section on Bridging and Bonding because it made it sound like Putnam developed the distinction, when Putnam has, in several texts, made it clear that he did not develop the distinction between bridging and bonding.

I also added in a bit from the bristish researcher David Halpern where he described why social capital has been such a wildly popular concept.

129.96.142.10 02:42, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


Measurement

The article states that there is no way to measure the cohesion of a group, that it is entirely "subjective." I would like to recommend that there are a number of measures for group cohesion within the practice of social network analysis, especially density, which is a ratio of the number of reported social linkages in a group to the total possible number of linkages. In other words, it tells a researcher the percentage of people in a group who know each other, collaborate, share information, etc, depending on the research question.

[edit] Social capital and education

Can anyone help to expand this important aspect of social capital?

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