Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
in Italy, where he argued that local participation in civic associations
fostered greater levels of citizenship, accountability and responsibility
in society, and efficiency in the economy. In essence, social capital
refers to the different qualities that stem from people's social relation-
ships, and it is argued that these qualities can have important impacts
upon other aspects of life for both individuals and societal groups
(Bebbington, 2008).
There have been a number of different interpretations which have
framed key debates over social capital's contribution to development
studies (Bebbington, 2007). Uphoff (1999) differentiates social capital
according to whether it is cognitive or structural. Cognitive social capi-
tal refers to the importance of intangible qualities such as trust, which
are inextricably linked to behaviours, experiences and attitudes.
Structural social capital focuses on the structure of social relationships,
their associations and networks, whether they are informal or formal,
or built upon weak or strong ties. Furthermore, bonding social capital
refers to the links between like-minded people or 'people like us' while
bridging
social
capital
is based on the building of connections between
people from different social, class or ethnic groups.
According to many commentators, it is structural rather than cogni-
tive social capital that has been enthusiastically adopted as a frame-
work for explaining poverty and vulnerability in development studies.
As discussed in Chapter 3.1, development agencies highlighted the
importance of social capital in helping vulnerable communities to access
resources and services, a view that was promoted via the livelihood
assets framework popular at the time and resulted in its mainstreaming
by the World Bank (Moser, 1998).
Since its heyday in the 1990s, social capital has undergone a substan-
tial critique for a number of weaknesses (Bebbington, 2004). First, the
concept is seen to be too broad to offer any meaningful insight into the
social fabric of people's lives. Secondly, it fails to explore the role of
power in shaping social relations and networks, and it is often seen to
be gender neutral. From a neoliberal perspective, facilitating communi-
ties to increase their stocks of social capital is a relatively low cost
option that aligns responsibility for local development with individuals
and community groups, rather than the state. Thirdly, policies aimed
at bridging social capital were often too focused on asset-based liveli-
hood frameworks that proclaimed 'more social capital' as the ultimate
goal, a view that neglected the negative impacts of people's inclusion in
some social networks or associations. In his work on 'habitus' - which
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