Social Capital at the Community Level

An Applied Interdisciplinary Perspective

John M. Halstead, Steven C. Deller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317686033
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Aménagement urbain et paysager

In Social Capital at the Community Level, John Halstead and Steven Deller examine social capital formation beyond the individual level through a variety of disciplines: planning, economics, regional development, sociology, as well as non-traditional approaches like engineering and built environmental features. The notion of social capital in community and economic development has become a focus of intense interest for policy makers, practitioners, and academics. The notion is that communities with higher levels of social capital (networks, trust, and norms) will prosper both economically and socially. In a practical sense, how do communities use the notion of social capital to build policies and strategies to move their community forward? Are all forms of social capital the same and do all have a positive influence on the community? To help gain insights into these fundamental questions Social Capital at the Community Level takes a holistic, interdisciplinary or systems approach to thinking about the community.

While those who study social capital will acknowledge the need for an interdisciplinary approach, most stay within their disciplinary silos. One could say there is strong bonding social capital within disciplines but little bridging social capital across disciplines. The contributors to Social Capital at the Community Level have made an attempt to build that bridging social capital. While disciplinary biases and research approaches are evident there is significant overlap about how people with different disciplinary perspectives think about social capital and how it can be applied at the community level. This can be from neighborhoods addressing a localized issue to a global response to a natural disaster. This book is an invaluable resource for scholars, researchers and policy makers of community and economic development, as well as rural sociologists and planners looking to understand the opaque process of social capital formation in communities.

1 Social Capital and Community Development

An Introduction

John M. Halstead and Steven C. Deller

DOI: 10.4324/9781315774978-1

“An individual’s social origin has an obvious and important effect on the amount of resources that is ultimately invested in his or her development. It may thus be useful to employ a concept of “social capital” to represent the consequences of social position in facilitating acquisition of the standard human capital characteristics”

(Loury 1977: 176)

“…social capital [has] become all things to all people, and hence nothing to anyone…”

(Woolcock 2001: 69)

Since Loury’s early attempt at providing a conceptual definition of social capital, research on social capital and community well-being has produced an enormous number of academic peer reviewed publications, books, and popular press articles. This literature has tended to focus on specific dimensions of social capital, especially as viewed through a limited academic disciplinary lens. Yet, there is still a lack of consensus on what social capital is, why it happens, and how it is relevant from a public policy perspective. As we shall discuss in this chapter, the fields where social capital research has occurred—including sociology, planning, public administration, political science, management, and economics—have often worked in relative isolation from one another.

In this book we have attempted to synthesize different viewpoints by drawing from a range of disciplines dealing with community resource issues (economics, planning, political science, development policy, natural resources, environmental engineering, and sociology), calling on our authors to address common questions about social capital formation, research, and policy. While the social capital literature is expanding into many diverse fields, we attempt to provide a unique focus on smaller and/or rural communities.

The Evolution of Social Capital Research

When we ask the basic question of why some communities thrive and prosper while other seemingly similar communities struggle, stagnate, and decline, economists, sociologists, political scientists, and planners often arrive at vastly different conclusions. At the practitioner level these differences have at times gelled into interdisciplinary answers. Thirty years ago the notion of leadership was front and center: the “successful” community had a set of “sparkplugs” that would champion the community and move it forward. Significant energy went into efforts to foster community leadership with backing from a range of public and private institutions, such as the Kellogg Foundation.

More recently, both academics and practitioners have come to realize that leadership is but one part of a larger, more complex piece of the puzzle. Community scholars (sociologists in particular) spoke in terms of “social infrastructure” (Swanson 1996) or “entrepreneurial infrastructure” (Flora and Flora 1993). These community scholars were finding that effective leadership within a community was a necessary but not sufficient condition for viable community and economic development. Notions of the ability of the members of a community to come together to effect change moved to the forefront of thinking about community and economic development. Within planning the idea of grass roots initiatives was gathering broader interest. The idea emerged that to be effective, leaders needed to engage the broader community in identifying issues and concerns as well as potential policy ideas and strategies. The notion of community engagement was taking hold.

Questions became more refined and complex as community scholars and practitioners began to think more broadly about these notions of “social” and “entrepreneurial” infrastructure. How do communities come together to address community issues? How do we ensure that all elements of the community participate? Why are some communities more inclusive in decision making processes than others? How does the community address conflicts that arise within its decision-making process? Are community members with economic and/or political power willing to work within a framework of engagement? How can a community deal with apathy? In essence, do community leaders invite everyone to the table and do people show-up when invited? Furthermore, are the conversations around the table civil and proactive?

As this discussion was coalescing, political scientist Robert Putnam published his seminal book Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital (1995). His basic premise centered on the notion that people are increasingly isolating themselves from the community and becoming more apathetic where community issues are concerned. If they are invited to the table to discuss community issues they are electing not to attend or participate. Perhaps most important is that Putman (1995: 67) made the term “social capital, ” which he defines as “features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit” a general term of art. When one compares Putnam’s notion of social capital, Swanson’s (1996) “social infrastructure, ” or the Floras’ (1993) “entrepreneurial infrastructure, ” we find that it appears that some researchers simply substituted the word “capital” for the word “infrastructure”.

Indeed, there is not even agreement when the term “social capital” was first used within the current context. In Chapter 2 of this volume Rogers and Jarema note that the first use of the term “social capital” has been attributed to the work of the economist Glenn Loury (1977), the educator Lyda Hanifan (1917) and the journalist and founder of the New Urbanism movement in planning Jane Jacobs (1961). But the notion of the social fabric of the community being an important building block in the context of “capital” flowed from the work of Jacob Mincer and Gary Becker and the idea of human capital much earlier. Here there is a stock and flow of capital (human or social) that can be invested in or drawn down. Alternatively one could think of the “capital” as an “asset” that can be expanded upon, depleted, or even allowed to deteriorate. Staatz (1998: 2) suggests social capital facilitates social cohesion, claiming that it acts “to increase the ‘liquidity’ of social interaction…much like an expansion of the money supply.” Schmid and Robinson (1995: 66) view social capital as a productive asset, “like money in the bank, [social capital] makes assets more productive and saves costs—besides being valuable in itself”, as doesWoolcock (2001: 67) who wrote “the basic idea of ‘social capital’ is that one’s family, friends and associates constitute an important asset, one that can be called upon in a crisis, enjoyed for its own sake and/or leveraged for material gain.” Others, however, find the notion of social capital to have a much richer history.

Putnam (1995) attributes the first use of the concept as it is widely used today to Lyda Hanifan, a West Virginia rural educator writing in 1916. Farr (2004) suggests that the origins may go further back to the education writer John Dewey. While the contemporary notion of social capital is widely attributed to the work of Granovetter (1985), Coleman (1988), and Putnam (1995), the concept can be traced back to the social progressive movement of the early 20th century or imagined by the likes of deTocqueville, Hume, Smith, and Mill. Yet, it was not until the work of Coleman (1988) and Putnam (1995) that social capital rose to prominence in popular and academic literature. While various writers have focused on particular aspects of Putnam’s three-legged stool definition of social capital— “networks, norms, and trust”, the root of the current interpretation of social capital can be linked back to the work and philosophy of Thomas Dewey, particularly critical pragmatism, as well as Bellamy’s understanding of cooperative associations and radical political economy. The key difference between the current understanding and that of the 19th century philosophers is that the earlier writers were looking at capital from the social point of view whereas today’s writers generally focus on the capital aspect of the issue. Specifically, social capital can be viewed as an asset that can be invested in and drawn down.

Regardless of the origins of the concept, or even the term, the role of social capital in community and economic development has become prevalent in many local policy discussions. Mattessich (2009: 49) suggests that “Social capital or capacity lies at the heart of community development. “As outlined in detail by both Phillips and Pittman (2009) and Shaffer, Deller, and Marcouiller (2004) one could think of community development as the building of local capacity and institutions that are necessary to effect change. This can range from improving local perspectives about a sense of place and ownership of the community to building an engaged citizenry and institutions (e.g., volunteer organizations, chambers of commerce, local government capacity). Within this context, one could reasonably argue that building social capital within the community is at the heart of community development (Mattessich 2009).

Of course not all communities are ready to undertake economic growth and development efforts. Having certain levels of local capacity is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition before communities can successfully undertake economic growth and development initiatives. This capacity is embodied in a community’s social capital. If there is not a sufficient or minimum level of effective leadership, citizen engagement and local institutions in place, economic growth and development efforts are likely to stumble.

If community and economic development scholars and practitioners are to be more effective at crafting policy options for communities it is important that they have a working understanding of the current thinking around social capital. If Mattessich (2009) is correct that social capital is at the heart of community development, and hence a precondition for economic growth and development, then an inclusive approach to thinking about social capital is a prerequisite to effectively working within a community.

The problem that we face, unfortunately, is that social capital is such a broad concept that it does not clearly fit into economics, sociology, political science, or planning. At this point in time, it is our contention that there is no well-developed, coherent theory of social capital—at least no theory which crosses disciplinary boundaries. Svendsen and Svendsen (2008) speak in terms of social capital being a “troika” blending sociology, political science and economics, and their book attempts to draw a common paradigm from these disciplines. Nonetheless, because of the inherent interdisciplinary nature of social capital a pure theory of social capital is elusive. On the one hand this interdisciplinary perspective provides opportunities to think about the community in a more holistic manner. In practice, we know that neither the economist, the sociologist, the political scientist, nor the planner has “the answer” to the challenges communities are facing. In practice we must view the community from a holistic or systems approach which requires an interdisciplinary perspective.

One of the problems of a holistic or systems approach is that the complexity can become overwhelming in short order. To make sense of this complexity, scholars and practitioners of community and economic development often begin from a specific disciplinary perspective. Tackling the community system from the perspective of an economist, sociologist, political scientist, or planner but with a broad appreciation of the complexity of an interdisciplinary systems approach, allows our thinking and understanding of the community to move forward. The challenge to community and economic development scholars and practitioners is that the different disciplinary perspectives approach and think about the problem in very different ways. We see this in the different components of social capital that various disciplines tend to emphasize. Sociologists, for example, tend to focus on the social norms and informal rules of behavior, political scientists on the institutional structures that can foster and facilitate social capital, and economists on how social capital can influence transactions costs or the “cost of doing business.” Planners tend to be most interested in how to move the community forward. While each disciplinary approach brings a piece of the social capital puzzle to the table, it is unclear if those pieces are fitting together in a coherent manner.

While most social science scholars and practitioners can agree on broad concepts of social capital (e.g., Putnam’s three legged stool), differences in thinking and approaches across the different disciplinary perspectives become clear when we move from the abstract to the more concrete. These differences are not only conceptual but practical in the sense of how theoretical and applied research is conducted. A recent report by the United Nations University argues that the lack of consensus in definition and measurement of social capital is primarily due to a lack of interaction between disciplines, stating that “[t]he social capital of social capital researchers is low between disciplines” and that “the extent of collaboration between disciplines is not as rich as it is expected to be (or it ought to be)” (Akcomak 2009: i, 17). The parochial nature of the body of social capital work is demonstrated by the tendency of authors to principally cite literature from within their own disciplines, as illustrated in Figure 1.1.

The highlighting of these differences with the end goal of finding common ground in our thinking about social capital is a driving motivation behind this edited volume. By learning to appreciate different disciplinary perspectives and finding common ground we can move community and economic development forward. As we gathered collaborators for this project, it was our intent to have them structure their chapters in a way which would allow a general comparison and synthesis of approaches, regardless of the nature of individual case studies. All authors followed a theme in addressing their individual disciplinary approaches, specifically:

• Why does social capital happen?
• Does it matter?
• Can policy influence it?

Each chapter’s authors address the levels at which social capital “occurs”—individual, community, and the larger society—from their own disciplinary viewpoint, addressing issues such as: Does social capital change at the different levels? Does social capital matter at the different levels? These questi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Epigraph
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• 1 Social Capital and Community Development:An Introduction
• 2 A Brief History of Social Capital Research
• 3 The Built Environment of Communities and Social Capital
• 4 Social Capital, Communities, and the Firm
• 5 Social Capital, County Information Networks and Poverty Reduction
• 6 Measuring Social Capital at the Neighborhood Scale through a Community Based Framework
• 7 Social Capital and Community Planning
• 8 The Relationship between Social Capital and Ecosystem Services: A Regional Analysis
• 9 The Role of Natural Disasters and Technology in the Formation of Social Capital
• 10 Latino/a Immigration, Social Capital, and Business Civic Engagement in Rural Prairie Towns
• 11 Social Capital: What DoWe Know? And Where Do We Go From Here?
• Index