The article proposes a system model through which the relationship between social capital and its benefits can be understood. It starts giving a brief overview of the concept, and mapping some assumptions regarding social capital, such as “Societies with high social capital are generally believed to be better off”.
Basically, social capital is understood as the connections among people which influence collective action and the obtaining of benefits out of these actions.
The author then discusses the different types of social capital that can be found in the literature: civic social capital and governmental (or institutional social capital), which differentiates social capital at a local level and social capital at a national level, for example (Torsvik 2000). This could also be understood in the difference between bonding (strong ties) social capital and bridging (weaker, inter-community ties) social capital (Daubon and Saunders, 2002). The author also mentions structural social capital and cognitive social capital, but does not develop much the concepts (Yphoff 2000).
The author highlights the fact that social capital is not necessarily a good thing, and gives as example a Mafia community which has high level of social capital. He states that from a development point of view, bridging social capital may be desired over bonding social capital.
The author then passes to examine how social capital works. For this, he builds on the work of Coleman (1988), who defines three mechanisms through which social capital is built: reciprocity, information channels and norms and effective action. Torsvik (2000) discusses the mode of operation of social capital around the evolving trust within a network.
Talking about bridging social capital, which is relevant in order to build social capital among society, the author refers to the concepts of “connectors” (which would be individuals that are specialized in people) and “mavens” (individuals specialized in information) (Gladwell 2000). “Multiple-group membership may be one mechanism for bridging social capital of the civic rather then institutional type”. “Excessively strong ties often prevent people from making connections outside their small world”.
Also, Dudley briefly discusses the concept of social energy, which would be a kind of latent social capital, which could be activated by some event or need (Hirschman 1984).
In order to build his model, Dudley terms the connection among people using the concepts of connections/per unit and also attributes a value to the connections, which could be understood as the benefits minus costs (both understood in a very broad way).
The costs could be thought as time, money, and limitations required to maintain an specific connection. In this sense, there would be both an optimal number of connections and a limited number. “As social capital increases above some minimum number of connections, the cost per connection rises”. The author reflects that there should be a minimum amount of people engaged in order for social capital to take effect, since social capital involves networking, that is, knowing people through other people. “Social capital allows individuals to work together more smoothly producing benefits”. Still, Dudley points out that not necessarily the maintenance of connections is directly related to the outcome benefits of the connection.
From this background, the author proposes a model which seeks to understand the mechanisms through which social capital work. The model shows that the result of a development project can impact in several different ways the social capital of a community and that in long term planning, it might be better to improve the value of a connection then to overlap existing social capital bonds.
Dudley proposes then 3 different sub-models which aim to analyze how social capital is related to each of the mechanisms:
Reciprocity: works in terms of building of trust and memory of successful cooperative activities. In this sense, it might be a good idea to promote cooperative activities even if they have not benefit for themselves.
Information channels: Information obtained through social networks are more easily understandable. Some factors, such as lack of literacy, may negatively impact the benefit of the information available. Within a small community with only strong bonding social capital, the amount of information may be limited, which reduces the value of the connections.
Norms and sanctions: are necessary to stability and trust, as one knows what is expected from them and what expect from the community. It can have a negative impact if it limits creativity and innovation.
The article finishes with the author making a critical analysis of the model.
Dudley, Richard G. 2004. The dynamic structure of social capital: how interpersonal connections create communitywide benefits. En . Oxford. http://povlibrary.worldbank.org/files/15162_dudley_040826.pdf.
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