Many commentators (including me elsewhere in this blog) have called attention to the many ideological and political dangers that this term brings along with it. Quite apart from these uses of the term and the discourses they arise in, it is worth pointing out a number of obvious things about the term itself:
1. It quite literally doesn't exist. Capital as it is usually understood could hardly be a more concrete term meaning money and wealth and the means to acquire more of it as well as other goods and services (especially in "a non-barter system" - Wiktionary). "Social capital" cannot be spent or banked in any normal sense (and if it is used - whatever this means - you can be left with as much or more of it than you had when you started)
2. The word "capital" has a number of key features that the word "social" just cannot be appended to. It is a quite extraordinary example of a category error on a par with "thoughtful cheese" or "colorless green ideas" (whether or not these "sleep furiously")
3. Any useful sense of the term could just as usefully be replaced by the term "solidarity" (except that this is far too political a term for those communitarians who tend to use the term social capital).
4. Whilst solidarity hints at an activity or disposition towards activity as well as situating itself within a discourse of struggle and difference, the term social capital is a reification - a thing word rather than a doing word. It is a concept (if one can even call it that) that encourages merely a passive and apolitical stance.
-----Original Message-----From: Paul Cotterill [mailto:paul.cotterill@usa-is.co.uk] Sent: 03 February 2008 12:11To: Jon Griffith; AGregg@lasa.org.ukCc: ceri.hutton@gmail.comSubject: Re: Fwd: Discussion documentandyI sense in sixth sort of way that you (and don flynn) may be interested in this new article from Natali Letki (she being polish) challenging view that diversity in itself reduces trust in neighbourhoods (in the UK). Also, here's a Putman thing and an American view as ? counterpointsI've not read them yet but will this week sometime. Never mind the detail, I agree with Letki on the basis of the abstract......................
From Jon Griffith:
hello again
A quick skim of Letki and Stolle et al suggests that, not for the first time in this extraordinary 'debate', both are fatally undermined by treating social capital as if it actually exists.
It doesn't, it's a product (in the sense it's referred to here) of Robert Putnam's fevered sociological imagination, and therefore nothing has an effect on it, nor does it have an effect on anything - it's not there.
The only way to bring sanity back into the this type of discussion - about real people living in real places - is to abandon this concept and say what one actually means - black people, white people, behaviour, money, physical resources, how people spend their money, what they do to each other, legal and illegal drugs, illness and health, inequality of wealth, education etc etc, ie all the usual old fashioned contents of political debate.
The idea of social capital, and the discussion of this idea, turns all this into apolitical mush.
I don't understand why so many otherwise intelligent people seem believe in it, but you're right about the Sixth Sensiness of it - as if the discussion is being conducted by people who don't know that they're dead.
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2 comments:
I know where you are coming from but think you are missing the point. Social capital is something because as a concept it has connected with peoples concerns about the sorts of changes that are taking place within their own lived communities/social networks and it has given licence to some of blair and bush's 'social' policies. The erosion of the solidarity and and the weakening of the trade union movement/membership is what some of this work is trying to speak to?
Barbara Arneils diverse communities - the problem with social capital is a very good read and articulates very well some of the problems with the putman analysis / argument. She does not however totally throw the social capital baby out with the bath water.She more surgically disects it! She roots the debate in social justice and necessary conflict linked to the changed position/power of women, cultural minorities and people with disablities. She says what we need in not just socially connected communities but just ones. She is also very good on the historical impact of social injustice on peoples views and expectations of their social and political worlds.
Richard Pemberton
Yes Arneil gives an important critique of the conspept of social capital and as you say she doesn't entirely throw the baby out with the bath water. She does problematise the notion by showing how it performs the function of ideologically universalising the values and aspirations of middle America. An even more trenchant critique comes from Jane Franklin (for the Families and Soical Capital ESRC Research Group, 2007). Franklin sets down a number of fairly devastating criticisms of the concept. Amongst these is the fact that the concept is both circular and unfalsifiable: "adapting aspects of social capital theory, like trust and reciprocity, into concrete observable categories for research purposes has proved maddeningly difficult ......Often commitment to working with the concept and unquestioning acceptance of its validity come prior to its definition." She points out the underlying ideological reframing that is behind use of the term by showing that social capital theory privileges indivdiuals and communities rather than social groups like race, class and gender. "By refocusing on the social, rather than the economic or political spheres, the economy is not the cause of social inequalities..... The individual in her/his coomunity becomes responsible for their own inequalities". Social capital theory is utterly imbued with nostalgia and individualism and therefore antagonistic to the welfare state. Individuals are constructed solely through their bonds to community. They are not members of social classes "but of networks and relationships of trust". Far from being a nuetral concept, social capital resonates with third way and New Labour paradigms. By sidelining class and gender, the concept diverts us away from the real world in which inequalities and discrimination are sustained and challenged back into a cosy world of comfort and cohesion
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