Social capital (sociology)

The social capital is considered the variable that measures the social collaboration between the different groups of a human collective and the individual use of the opportunities arising from it from four main sources: affection, mutual trust, effective norms and social networks.

Social capital measures, therefore, the sociability of a human group and those aspects that allow collaboration and use, by individual actors, of the opportunities that arise in these social relations to prosper. A sociability understood as the ability to work together, to collaborate and carry out collective action.^{[citation required]}

The term “social capital” comes from an analogy with economic capital. In any case, its scant fixation on the social and economic literature makes it somewhat difficult to agree on. Initially, it was used at the beginning of the 20th century in pedagogy. It was not taken up again until the 1960s when it began to be used for economic development theories. Normally in traditional economic models this concept is completely ignored, but in the 1980s it became important again. It was used by many authors in sociology and alternative economic models.^{[citation needed]}

It could be summarized as “it is not only important what you know, but also who”. Francis Fukuyama defines it as the norm that makes cooperation between two parties exist. Important references are Robert Putnam (1993) and James Samuel Coleman (1988).^{[citation needed]}

When it comes to the collective value of social media, it is considered for policy making in many organizations; even recently recognized by institutions such as the World Bank (although with some reservations about the concept).^{[citation required]}

Refining the nuances of the concept, social capital does not necessarily have to produce good things, it can generate discrimination against individuals or groups. Sometimes social capital can have negative connotations, as in the case of various mafias (the contacts and social networks created between various people can devise things considered negative by a society, such as crime).

History

Although it has been suggested that the term social capital was used intermittently from about 1890, before becoming more widespread in the late 1990s, the first recorded use is by Lyda Hanifan in 1916 (see 20th century below).

The debate of the community against the modernization of society and individualism has been the most discussed topic among the founders of sociology: theorists such as Tönnies (1887), Durkheim (1893), Simmel (1905), Weber (1946) were convinced that industrialization and urbanization were irreversibly transforming social relations. They observed a breakdown of traditional ties and the progressive development of anomie and alienation in society.

18th-19th century

The power of community governance has been highlighted by many philosophers from ancient times to the 18th century< /span>, from Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas, and Edmund Burke. This view was heavily criticized at the end of the 18th century, with the development of the idea of Homo Economicus and later with the rational choice theory. This set of theories became dominant in recent centuries, but many thinkers questioned the complicated relationship between modern society and the importance of old institutions, particularly the family and traditional communities.

The concept on which social capital is based has a much longer history; Thinkers exploring the relationship between associational life and democracy used similar concepts regularly in the 19th century, building on the work by earlier writers such as James Madison (The Federalist Papers) and Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America) to integrate the concepts of social cohesion and connectedness into the pluralist tradition in American political science. [John Dewey]] may have made the first direct use of mainstream social capital in School and Society in 1899, although he did not offer a definition.

In the first half of the 19th century, de Tocqueville made observations about American life that seemed to outline and define capital social. He observed that Americans were prone to gather in as many gatherings as possible to discuss every possible issue of the state, the economy, or the world that could be witnessed. High levels of transparency led to greater participation of the people and, therefore, allowed democracy to function better.

20th century

L. J. Hanifan's 1916 article on local support for rural schools is one of the earliest occurrences of the term social capital in reference to social cohesion and personal investment in the community. In the concept, Hanifan contrasts social capital with material goods, defining it as:

I am not referring to real estate, personal property, or to the cold cash, but to that in life that tends to make these tangible substances count more in the daily lives of people, that is, good will, fellowship, mutual sympathy and the social relationship between a group of individuals and families that form a social unity. If you can come into contact with your neighbor, and this one with other neighbors, there will be an accumulation of social capital, which can immediately satisfy your social needs and which can have sufficient social potential for the substantial improvement of the living conditions of the entire community. The community as a whole will benefit from the cooperation of all its parties, while the individual will find in their associations the advantages of the help, sympathy and fellowship of their neighbors.

After the work of Tönnies (1887) and Weber (1946), reflection on social ties in modern society continued with interesting contributions in the 1950s and 1960s. In particular, Theory of mass society -as developed by Daniel Bell (1962), Robert Nisbet (1969), Maurice R. Stein (1960), William H. Whyte (1956) proposes themes similar to those of the founders, with a more pessimistic emphasis on the development of the society. In the words of Stein (1960:1) "The price of maintaining a society that encourages differentiation and cultural experimentation is, without doubt, the acceptance of a certain amount of disorganization both at the individual and societal level."

Jane Jacobs used the term in the early 1960s. Although she did not explicitly define the term social capital, her use referred to the value of networks. Political scientist Robert Salisbury advanced the term as a critical component of interest group formation in his 1969 article "An Exchange Theory of Interest Groups" in the Midwest Journal of Political Science.

The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu used the term in 1972 in his Outline for a Theory of Practice, and clarified the term a few years later in contrast to cultural, economic, administrative capital, physical capital, political capital, social capital and symbolic capital. Sociologists Pierre Bourdieu, James Coleman (1988), as well as Barry Wellman & Scot Wortley (1990), adopted Glenn Loury's 1977 definition in developing and popularizing the concept. In the late 1990s, the concept gained popularity, serving as the focus of a World Bank research program and the topic of several widely read books, including Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone, and Putnam and Lewis Feldstein's book Better Together.

All these reflections contributed notably to the development of the concept of social capital in the following decades. The emergence of the modern conceptualization of social capital is a new way of looking at this debate, holding together the importance of community in building widespread trust and, at the same time, the importance of individual free choice, in creating a more cohesive society.. That is why social capital generated so much interest in the academic and political world.

Definitions and forms

Social capital has multiple definitions, interpretations, and uses. David Halpern argues that the popularity of social capital for policy makers is linked to the duality of the concept, which is because it "has a hard economic edge while reaffirming the importance of the social". For researchers, the term is popular in part because of the wide range of outcomes it can explain; the multiplicity of uses of social capital has led to a multiplicity of definitions.

Society capital has been used at various times to explain superior performance of managers, growth of entrepreneurial firms, improved performance of functionally diverse groups, value derived from strategic alliances, and improving relationships in the supply chain. "A resource that actors obtain from specific social structures and then use to pursue their interests; is created by changes in the relationship between actors" (Baker 1990, p. 619).

Early attempts to define social capital focused on the degree to which social capital serves as a resource, whether for the public good or private benefit. Robert D. Putnam (1993) suggested that social capital would facilitate cooperation and mutually supportive relationships in communities and nations and thus be a valuable means of combating many of the social disorders inherent in modern societies, for For example, crime. Instead, others focus on the private benefits derived from the web of social relationships in which individual actors find themselves. This is reflected in Nan Lin's concept of social capital as "Investment in social relationships with returns. expected in the market". This can subsume the concepts of some others such as Bourdieu, Flap and Eriksson. Newton (1997) treats social capital as a subjective phenomenon made up of values and attitudes that influence interactions. Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998), in their examination of the role of social capital in the creation of intellectual capital, suggest that social capital should be considered in terms of three groups: structural, relational, and cognitive.

Definition issues

Several scholars have expressed concern about the imprecision of the definition of social capital. Portes (2000), for example, points out that the term has become so widespread, even in mainstream media, that "it is nearing the point where social capital comes to be applied to so many events and in as many places." different contexts so as to lose any distinctive meaning" The term capital is used by analogy with other forms of economic capital, as it is argued that social capital has similar (albeit less measurable) benefits. However, the analogy can be misleading in that, unlike forms of financial capital, social capital is not exhausted by use; instead, it is exhausted by non-use (use it or lose it). In this sense, it is similar to the economic concept of human capital.

Robison, Schmid, and Siles (2002) review various definitions of social capital and conclude that many do not satisfy the formal requirements for a definition. They state that definitions must be of the form A=B, while many explanations of capital describe what it can be used for, where it resides, how it can be created, or what it can transform. Furthermore, they argue that many of the proposed definitions of social capital do not satisfy the capital requirements. They propose that social capital be defined as likability: the object of another's sympathy has social capital; those who have sympathy for others provide social capital. This proposal seems to follow Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments' up to a point, but Smith's conceptualization of sympathy (particularly in the first two chapters of this work) seems more concerned with the roles of acceptance or congruence - in ethics or virtue - in the evaluation of "action property" of an individual.

Social capital is different from the economic theory of social capitalism, which questions the idea that socialism and capitalism are mutually exclusive.

The forms of capital (Bourdieu)

In Forms of Capital, Pierre Bourdieu distinguishes three forms of capital: economic capital, cultural capital, and social capital. He defines social capital as " the set of real or potential resources that are linked to the possession of a lasting network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual knowledge and recognition" His treatment of the concept is instrumental, focusing on the advantages for the holders of social capital and in the "deliberate construction of sociability in order to create this resource"." Quite contrary to Putnam's positive view of social capital, Bourdieu employs the concept to demonstrate a mechanism of generational reproduction of inequality. Thus, Bourdieu points out that the rich and powerful use their "network of friends" or other social capital to maintain advantages for themselves, their social class and their children.

Norms of trust and reciprocity (Sander, Putnam, Coleman)

Thomas Sander defines it as "the collective value of all social networks (that people know about), and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for others (norms of reciprocity). " Social capital, from this point of view, emphasizes the "specific benefits of Goodness and Value Theory that derive from trust, reciprocity, information and cooperation associated to social networks." "Create value for the people who are connected, and also for bystanders"

Meanwhile, negative norms of reciprocity serve to discourage harmful and violent behavior.

James Coleman defined social capital functionally as "a variety of entities with two elements in common: they all consist of some aspect of the social structure, and they facilitate certain actions by actors...within the structure&# 34;-that is, social capital is everything that facilitates individual or collective action, generated by relationship networks, reciprocity, trust and social norms. In Coleman's conception, social capital is a neutral resource that facilitates any type of action, but whether society is better off as a result depends entirely on the individual uses to which it is put.

According to Robert D. Putnam, social capital refers to "the connections between individuals: social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trust that arise from them". " In the view of Putnam and his supporters, social capital is a key component in building and maintaining democracy. Putnam claims that social capital is declining in the United States. This is seen in the lower levels of trust in government and the lower levels of civic participation. He also says that television and urban sprawl have played a significant role in making America much less "connected." Putnam believes that social capital can be measured by the amount of trust and "reciprocity" in a community or between individuals. Putnam also suggests that one cause of the decline in social capital is the entry of women into the labor force, which could be correlated with time constraints that inhibit participation in civic organizations such as parent-teacher associations. The technological transformation of entertainment (for example, television) is another cause of the decline of social capital, as Putnam states. This offered a benchmark from which various studies evaluated measures of social capital by how the media strategically engages to build social capital.

Civic Association (Fukuyama)

In "Social Capital, Civil Society and Development,"political economist Francis Fukuyama defines social capital as generally understood rules that enable people to cooperate, such as the norm of reciprocity or religious doctrine such as the Christianity. Social capital is formed through repeated interactions over time and, according to him, it is essential for development and difficult to generate through public policies. The importance of social capital for economic development is that these norms of behavior reduce the transaction costs of exchange, such as legal contracts and government regulations. Fukuyama suggests that while social capital is beneficial for development, it also imposes a cost on non-group members, with unintended consequences for general well-being.

Referencing Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America, and what he described as the art of association of America's penchant for civil association, Fukuyama argues that social capital is what produces a civil society. Although civic engagement is an important part of democracy and development, Fukuyama asserts that "one person's civic engagement is another's rent-seeking." Thus, while social capital can facilitate economic development by lowering transaction costs and increasing productivity, social capital can also distort democracy if civic association allows special interests to gain special favors. However, Fukuyama argues that despite the risk of society having too much social capital, it is worse to have too little and to be unable to organize for public goods and welfare-enhancing activities.

Social Ties

Carlos García Timón describes that the structural dimensions of social capital are related to the ability of an individual to establish weak and strong ties with others within a system. This dimension focuses on the advantages derived from the configuration of an actor's network, whether individual or collective. The differences between weak and strong ties are explained by Granovetter (1973). The relational dimension focuses on the nature of the connection between individuals. The best way to characterize it is through the trust in others and their cooperation and the identification that an individual has within a network. Hazleton and Kennan (2000) added a third angle, that of communication. Communication is necessary to access and use social capital through the exchange of information, the identification of problems and solutions, and the management of conflicts.

According to Boisot (1995), and Boland and Tenkasi (1995), meaningful communication requires at least a shared context between the parties to said exchange. The cognitive dimension focuses on the shared meaning, representations, and interpretations that individuals or groups have of one another.