49 Facts About Social capital

Social capital is "the networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively".

Some have described it as a form of Social capital that produces public goods for a common purpose, although this does not align with how it has been measured.

Social capital has been used to explain the improved performance of diverse groups, the growth of entrepreneurial firms, superior managerial performance, enhanced supply chain relations, the value derived from strategic alliances, and the evolution of communities.

Concept that underlies social capital has a much longer history; thinkers exploring the relation between associational life and democracy were using similar concepts regularly by the 19th century, drawing on the work of earlier writers such as James Madison and Alexis de Tocqueville to integrate concepts of social cohesion and connectedness into the pluralist tradition in American political science.

Social capital observed that Americans were prone to meeting at as many gatherings as possible to discuss all possible issues of state, economics, or the world that could be witnessed.

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The appearance of the modern social capital conceptualization is a new way to look at this debate, keeping together the importance of community to build generalized trust and the same time, the importance of individual free choice, in order to create a more cohesive society.

Social capital has been used at various times to explain superior managerial performance, the growth of entrepreneurial firms, improved performance of functionally diverse groups, the value derived from strategic alliances, and enhanced supply-chain relations.

Early attempts to define social capital focused on the degree to which social capital serves as a resource – be it for public good or private benefit.

Robert D Putnam suggested that social capital would facilitate co-operation and mutually supportive relations in communities and nations and would therefore be a valuable means of combating many of the social disorders inherent in modern societies, for example crime.

Robison, Schmid, and Siles review various definitions of social capital and conclude that many do not satisfy the formal requirements of a definition.

Bourdieu thus points out that the wealthy and powerful use their "old boys network" or other social capital to maintain advantages for themselves, their social class, and their children.

In Coleman's conception, social capital is a neutral resource that facilitates any manner of action, but whether society is better off as a result depends entirely on the individual uses to which it is put.

Social capital says that television and urban sprawl have had a significant role in making America far less 'connected'.

Putnam believes that social capital can be measured by the amount of trust and "reciprocity" in a community or between individuals.

Putnam suggests that a root cause of the decline in social capital is women's entry the workforce, which could correlate with time restraints that inhibit civic organizational involvement like parent-teacher associations.

Social capital is formed by repeated interactions over time and, he argues, is critical for development and difficult to generate through public policy.

Fukuyama suggests that while social capital is beneficial for development, it imposes cost on non-group members with unintended consequences for general welfare.

Carlos Garcia Timon describes that the structural dimensions of social capital relate to an individual ability to make weak and strong ties to others within a system.

Bonding social capital refers to strong ties: the intimate relationships people feel close to and trust.

Communication is needed to access and use social capital through exchanging information, identifying problems and solutions, and managing conflict.

Whereas some scholarship, most prominently that of Robert D Putnam, posits that social capital has positive ends, a sizable body of literature finds that social capital can have adverse effects.

Pierre Bourdieu's work tends to show how social capital can be used practically to produce or reproduce inequality, demonstrating for instance how people gain access to powerful positions through the direct and indirect employment of social connections.

An example of the complexities of the effects of negative social capital is violence or criminal gang activity that is encouraged through the strengthening of intra-group relationships.

The negative consequences of social capital are more often associated with bonding vis-a-vis bridging.

Bonding social capital is a necessary antecedent for the development of the more powerful form of bridging social capital.

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The value of a specific source of social capital depends in no small part on the socio-economic position of the source with society.

In societies where immigration is high or where ethnic heterogeneity is high, it was found that citizens lacked in both kinds of social capital and were overall far less trusting of others than members of homogenous communities were found to be.

Social capital argues that interethnic networks are agents of peace because they build bridges and manage tensions, by noting that if communities are organized only along intra-ethnic lines and the interconnections with other communities are very weak or even nonexistent, then ethnic violence is quite likely.

James Coleman has indicated that social capital eventually led to the creation of human capital for the future generation.

If, in the case of education, he uses these resources to better his educational outcomes, thereby enabling him to become socially mobile, he effectively has worked to reiterate and reproduce the stratification of society, as social capital has done little to alleviate the system as a whole.

Social capital development on the internet via social networking websites such as Facebook or Myspace tends to be bridging capital according to one study, though "virtual" social capital is a new area of research.

Instrumental Social capital is behavior that is taught through one's surroundings over time.

Sociologists Carl L Bankston and Min Zhou have argued that one of the reasons social capital is so difficult to measure is that it is neither an individual-level nor a group-level phenomenon, but one that emerges across levels of analysis as individuals participate in groups.

One type of quantitative social capital measure uses name generators to construct social networks and to measure the level of social capital.

However, less introverted social media users could engage social media and build social capital by connecting with Americans before arriving and then maintaining old relationships from home upon arriving to the states.

World Social Capital Monitor is an instrument for measuring social goods and social capital created by the United Nations Sustainable Development Group in partnership with civil society actors.

Robison and colleagues measured the relative importance of selfishness and four social capital motives using resource allocation data collected in hypothetical surveys and non-hypothetical experiments.

However this ignores the arguments of many theorists who believe that social capital leads to exclusion rather than to a stronger civil society.

An abundance of social capital is seen as being almost a necessary condition for modern liberal democracy.

Social capital offers a wealth of resources and networks that facilitate political engagement.

Social capital affects health risk behavior in the sense that individuals who are embedded in a network or community rich in support, social trust, information, and norms, have resources that help achieve health goals.

Researchers have investigated the hypothesis that the health benefits of social capital depend on the socioeconomic resources an individual or community has available to them.

Social capital created it after an incident where a lady passed out during a train ride due to the congestion in the train and help was delayed because of the congestion in the train and the inefficiency of the train conductor.

Social capital's blog exposed the poor conditions of train stations, overcrowding train rides and inefficiency of the train conductor which eventually influenced changes within the transit system.

In that research, social capital is approved of its different effects upon different genders.

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The amount of accumulated Social capital is relevant to further advancement in the ongoing adaptation process.

Furthermore, maintenance of literacy in native language provides a form of social capital that contributes positively to academic achievement.

Thirdly, social capital can be affected by the participation of individuals of a certain area based on the type of institutions that are placed there.

Social capital has been associated with the reduction in access to informal credit in informal economies.