There has been a proliferation in social capital studies over the past decade. Many of these have accepted and promoted the theoretical distinction between bonding and bridging social capital (Woolcock 1998, Putnam 2000). However, when it comes to empirical measurement, these and most other studies still tend to agglomerate social capital into the one catch-all concept (Putnam 2000), or else measure only bonding (Granovetter 1973, Coleman 1988, Portes 1998) or bridging (Inglehart 1999, Paxton 1999), but not both at the same time. Furthermore, a broad sweep of the literature shows that few studies distinguish social capital research on the basis of methodology, between qualitative and quantitative approaches. There are thus concerns with bonding and bridging as empirical constructs, and qualitative and quantitative approaches to measuring them. No review paper to date captures the intersection between these four components clearly. Such a paper would show the state of the research in a new light, and refocus the task of measuring social capital. This paper reviews definitions and applications of bridging and bonding social capital, classifies empirical studies according to each network type, and produces a further breakdown according to methodological approach. The result is a four-part 'grid', useful for focussing social capital research. Though primarily interested in review, this paper does suggest a tentative pattern, whereby most qualitative research tends to focus upon small networks relevant to bonding social capital, whilst most quantitative analysis looking at civic networks and norms of trust relevant to bridging social capital. This review is not comprehensive enough to assert such a finding with certainty however, and relegates such a task to future investigations.

During the last 20 years many traditionally organized agricultural cooperatives have been forced to abandon their business form. Explanations have been put forward, comprising a variety of economic and sociological theories. The present study suggests that the social capital paradigm may add explanatory power when analyzing this development. It is claimed that the problems are due to the members having increasingly little trust in the cooperatives and in each other. The cooperatives' decision makers have no instruments for estimating how much social capital is lost when they pursue strategies of vertical and horizontal integration. Therefore, they do not consider this loss in their calculations. Thus, the problems caused by the cooperatives' vaguely defined property rights are becoming increasingly serious. This reasoning is summarized into a model, which is influenced by the consumer choice model.

The problem of integrating immigrants from non-western countries into western welfare states is the focus of this paper. To cope with this problem, we suggest a social capital approach by applying the conceptual pair of bridging social capital (BR), which connects an individual to the broader social structure, and bonding social capital (BO), which closely binds an individual to his narrow social group. By this we hope to grasp both the sunny and more shadowy side of network cooperation and trust in relation to the integration of immigrants. Our data on non-western immigrants in Denmark show a positive relationship between the levels of bridging and bonding capital, suggesting that bonding social capital in the immigrant group does not seem to work as an impediment to the establishment of the bridging social capital needed for integration.

What are the roots of social capital and how can it be measured and built? Social capital is considered as a new production factor that must be added to the conventional concepts of human and physical capital. Social capital is productive because it increases the level of trust in a society and allows more transactions to take place without third‐party enforcement. Theory and lessons from empirical evidence lead to the general recommendation that any loss in social capital must be deducted from the economic gain following market forces. For example, the voluntary organization of small‐sized groups in the Danish Co‐operative Dairy Movement was eliminated due to economies of scale. It may be so that an alternative way of production, taking social capital into ac‐count, could have increased economic growth further.

In recent years, the concept of social capital -broadly defined as cooperative networks based on regular, personal contact and trust -has been widely applied within cross-disciplinary human science research, primarily by economists, political scientists and sociologists. In this article, I argue why and how fieldwork anthropologists should fill a gap in the social capital literature by highlighting how social capital is being built in situ. I suggest that the recent inventions of "bridging" and "bonding" social capital, e.g., inclusive and exclusive types of social capital, are fruitful concepts to apply in an anthropological fieldwork setting. Thus, my case study on the relationship between local people and newcomers in the rural Danish marginal municipality of Ravnsborg seeks to reveal processes of bridging/bonding social capital building. Such a case study at the micro level has general policy implications for a cultural clash between two different groups by demonstrating the complexity of a social capital mix where bonding social capital strongly prevails. This ultimately leads to a "social trap" (Rothstein 2005), implying widespread distrust and serious social and economic costs for a whole population.