Michael W. Foley

Is It Time to Disinvest in Social Capital

In an effort at theoretical clarification, the authors reviewed 45 recent articles reporting empirical research employing the concept of ‘social capital’. The literature is roughly equally divided between those who treat social capital as an independent variable and those who consider it as a dependent variable, and between those who operationalize the concept principally in terms of norms, values and attitudes and those who choose a more social structural operationalization, invoking social networks, organizations and linkages. Work on social capital as a mainly normative variable is dominated by political scientists and economists, while sociologists and a wide range of applied social scientists utilize more social structural understandings of the term. We find little to recommend in the use of ‘social capital’ to represent the norms, values and attitudes of the civic culture argument. We present empirical, methodological and theoretical arguments for the irrelevance of ‘generalized social trust’, in particular, as a significant factor in the health of democracies or economic development. Social structural interpretations of social capital, on the other hand, have demonstrated considerable capacity to draw attention to, and illuminate, the many ways in which social resources are made available to individuals and groups for individual or group benefit, which we take to be the prime focus and central attraction of the social capital concept. The paper concludes by elaborating a context-dependent conceptualization of social capital as access plus resources, and cautions against ‘over-networked’ conceptualizations that equate social capital with access alone.

Civil Society and Social Capital Beyond Putnam

Both civil society and social capital have proven useful heuristics for drawing attention to neglected nonmarket aspects of social reality and constitute a needed corrective to narrowly economistic models. However, both break down, although in different ways, when treated as the basis for elaborating testable hypotheses and further theory. Civil society is most useful in polemical or normative contexts, but attempts to distinguish it from other sectors of society typically break down in unresolvable boundary disputes over just what constitutes civil society and what differentiates it from “state” and “market.” Work by Robert Putnam and others has assimilated social capital to the civic culture model, using it as just another label for the norms and values of the empirical democratic theory of the 1950s. This strategy undermines the empirical value of James Coleman and Pierre Bourdieus useful social relational concept.

Beyond Tocqueville : civil society and the social capital debate in comparative perspective

Recent discussion about the role of civil society in democratic governance around the world and the decline of social capital in the US has raised pressing theoretical and empirical questions about the character of contemporary societies and the social and institutional correlates of sound and dynamic democracies. This debate has reached a North American and European audience that extends well beyond academia. The predominant refrain in the debate, following Alexis de Tocquevilles 160-year-old analysis of democracy in America, attaches tremendous importance to the role of voluntary associations in contemporary democracies. Participation in such groups is said to produce social capital, often linked to high levels of social trust. Social capital in turn is conceived as a crucial national resource for promoting collective action for the common good. Beyond Tocqueville presents 21 varied essays on how civic engagement and political and economic cooperation are generated in contemporary societies, linking theoretical discourse with public policy and actual behaviors.

Editors' Introduction Escape From Politics? Social Theory and the Social Capital Debate

This article sets the stage for the discussion of social capital, civil society, and contemporary democracy by attempting to clarify terms and set out the most promising avenues for discussion and debate. The authors argue that current usage of key terms in the debate suffers from three faults: First, the notion of “social capital” is generally undertheorized and oversimplified. Second, popular usage and some scholarly accounts tend to suppress the conflictive character of civil society, seeking in society itself and in its inner workings the resolution of conflicts that politics and the political system in other understandings are charged with settling or suppressing. Third, these (mis)understandings conjoin in the suppression of the economic dimension of contemporary social conflict. This introductory article takes up the first two of these points, in an effort to lay out the theoretical and empirical questions that the subsequent articles address.

Organizing, Ideology, and Moral Suasion: Political Discourse and Action in a Mexican Town

Recent scholarship on peasant protest has shifted from the speculative analysis of large-scale historical trends to the limited testing of hypotheses to a preoccupation with micro-level analysis of peasant consciousness and decision making. That shift has been salutary, sharpening our attention to the role of peoples perceptions in shaping behavior and to the subtle ways in which people act out their discontent; but we still understand too little about the origins of these perceptions and about the ways in which everyday discontent gets transformed into politically viable action. The present paper argues that, while peoples perceptions are grounded in their material and social situation and in past experience, they are continuously reshaped in interaction with new experience and with the claims of others. Understanding the role of political discourse in such interactions is essential to understanding popular mobilization.