The Social Capital Gateway

Another great social capital link is the Social Capital Gateway, managed and maintained by Fabio Sabatini. It is an "everything you always wanted to know about social capital, but were afraid to ask" type of site. It contains links to writers who both agree with the notion of social capital, and those who are critical of it (i.e., suggest that it either doesn't provide new information that can't be gleaned in other ways, or suggest that it is so vaguely defined as to be unusable as a social scientific/empirical concept).

With you today in spirit, if not in body,
Lori

Farr's Conceptual History of Social Capital

James Farr wrote an interesting conceptual history of social capital.

Abstract:

Taking its departure from current debates over social capital, this article presents new textual findings in a backward-revealing conceptual history. In particular, it analyzes the texts and contexts of Lyda J. Hanifan who was rediscovered by Robert Putnam as having (allegedly first) used the term; it offers discoveries of earlier uses of the term and concept—most notably by John Dewey—thereby introducing critical pragmatism as another tradition of social capital; and it recovers features of the critique of political economy in the nineteenth century—from Bellamy to Marshall to Sidgwick to Marx—that assessed "capital from the social point of view, " especially cooperative associations. While it ends with Marx’s use of "social capital, " Dewey is its central figure. The article concludes by returning to the present and offering work, sympathy, civic education, and a critical stance as emergent themes from this conceptual history that might enrich current debates.

This can be found via the UNC eJournals link.

Farr, James. (2004). Social Capital: A Conceptual History. Political Theory 32(1): 6-33. Available at Sage Journals Online.

Neighborhoods in Network Society

In a new study in Information Community and Society, Keith Hampton revisits his "Neighboring in Netville" study from 2003. Abstract of current paper, "Neighborhoods in Network Society: The e-Neighbors Study":

This study examines whether the Internet is increasingly a part of everyday neighborhood interactions, and in what specific contexts Internet use affords the formation of local social ties. Studies of Internet and community have found that information and communication technologies provide new opportunities for social interaction, but that they may also increase privatism by isolating people in their homes. This paper argues that while the Internet may encourage communication across great distances, it may also facilitate interactions near the home. Unlike traditional community networking studies, which focus on bridging the digital divide, this study focuses on bridging the divide between the electronic and parochial realms. Detailed, longitudinal social network surveys were completed with the residents of four contrasting neighborhoods over a period of three years.
Three of the four neighborhoods were provided with a neighborhood email discussion list and a neighborhood website. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to model over time the number of strong and weak ties, emailed, met in-person, and talked to on the telephone. The neighborhood email lists were also analyzed for content. The results suggest that with experience using the Internet, the size of local social networks and email communication with local networks increases. The addition of a neighborhood email list further increases the number of weak neighborhood ties, but does not increase communication multiplexity. However, neighborhood effects reduce the influence of everyday Internet use, as well as the experimental intervention, in communities that lack the context to support local tie formation.

Given that it addresses pretty much everything we've been discussing with a good methodological approach and what looks like some tasty longitudinal data, definitely worth a read (er, assuming we have access to the journal, which I can't tell right now, not being on campus).