Sunshine Skyways

The political economists of the nineteenth century from Marx to Marshall to Bellamy — took capital from the social point of view. Today's social capitalists, apparently take 'the social' from capital's point of view. The one reflected an age coming to terms with capital, the other an age cominng to capital for its terms. Then, 'social capital' expressed an explicit antithesis to an unsocial perspective upon capital, now, an implicit antithesis to a noncapitalist perspective on society (Farr, 2004, p. 25).

According to Putnam, the first known use of the term "social capital" was by West Virginia rural educator Lyda Hanifan in 1916 (2000). For Hanifan, social capital was:

those tangible substances [that] count for most in the daily lives of people: namely good will, fellowship, sympathy, and social intercourse among the individuals and families who make up a social unit... The individual is helpless socially, if left to himself.... If he comes into contact with his neighbor, and they with other neighbors, there will be an accumulation of social capital, which may immediately satisfy his social needs and which may be a social potentiality sufficient to the substantial improvement of living conditions in the whole community. The community as a whole will benefit by the cooperation of all its parts, while the individual will find in his associations the advantages of the help, the sympathy, and the fellowship of his neighbors (Putnam, 2000, chapter one).

If one scans the online and traditional literatures, it seems that there is widespread agreement that Putnam is correct in his assertion that Hanifan was the first to use the term. For examples, the following authors repeat that Hanifan was the first to explicitly use the term: Bagchi, Bertin and Sirvan, Herrman, Olate, Smith, and Wulf. However, conceptualist historian James Farr shows that Hanifan was not the first. Philosopher John Dewey used the term, although not defined the same way, in his 1900 publication The Elementary School Record and in subsequent works, which may have influenced Hanifan (Farr, 2004). Moreover, the term was in use at the time that Hanifan wrote about it. Furthermore, Farr demonstrates that Marx was the first to use the term "social capital" (gesellschaftliche Kapital) "as an aggegate or 'quantitative grouping' of individual capitalists that formed a fund for further production" in 1867 in Capital (ibid, p. 18). Consequently, what social capital is has not been the same since its use.

Recently, social capital has become a useful concept when studying virtual communities, in large part because of Putnam. According to Putnam, social capital "refers to social networks and the associated norms of reciprocity. ... Social networks have value" (Putnam in oecd Observer). Moreover, social capital "is comprised of a complex of obligations, expectations, norms, and trust embedded in the relations between members of a community. ... Whereas physical capital can be thought of as the tools and training that enhance individual productivity, social capital refers to the 'features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit (Putnam, 1995, p. 67)" (Young Larance, 1998, p. 6).

At present, there seems to be no universally accepted definition of social capital. However, Farr notes that "social capital is complexly conceptualized as the network of associations, activities, or relations that bind people together as a community via certain norms and psychological capacities, notably trust, which are essential for civil society and productive of future collective action or goods, in the manner of other forms of capital" (2003, p. 4).

End of part one.

Bibliography:
[1] Bagchi, Barnita. September 2, 2005. "Engendering ICT and social capital" at Digital Opportunity Channel, online at www.digitalopportunity.org.
[2] Bertin, Alexandre and Sirvan, Nicolas. [date unknown]. "Social Capital and the Capability Approach: A Social Economic Theory." Online at www.socialeconomics.org/uploads/Bertin-Sirvan.doc.
[3] Clarke, Rory J. March 2004. "Bowling together" in OECD Observer. Online at www.oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/1215/Bowling_together.html.
[4] Farr, James. 2003. "Social Capital: A Conceptual History" in Political Theory, vol. 31, no. X, pp. 1 - 28.
[5] Herrmann, Vera. [date unknown]. "The Concept of Social Capital in Network Analysis: Implications for Design and Intervention." Online at www.oecd.org/dataoecd/22/46/2382134.pdf.
[6] Olate, RenÃ. 2003. "Local Institutions, Social Capital and Capabilities: Challenges for Development and Social Intervention in Latin America." Online at http://cniss.wustl.edu/workshoppapers/olatepaper.odf
[7] Smith, Mark K. 2000, 2001. "social capital" in Infed encyclopedia, The World Bank Group. Online at www1.worldbank.org/prem/poverty/scapital/topic/edu1.htm.
[8] Young Larance, Lisa. September 1998. "Building Social Capital from the Center: A Village-Level Investigation of Bangladesh's Grameen Bank." Online at www.movingideas.org/content/en/report_content/wealth_in_america.htm.


Modified 1/17/06