Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract: We make use of predicted social and civic activities (social capital) to account for selection into "social" occupations. Individual selection accounts for more than the total difference in wages observed between social and nonsocial occupations. The role that individual social capital plays in selecting into these occupations and the importance of selection in explaining wage differences across occupations is similar for both men and women. We make use of restricted data from the 2000 decennial census and the 2000 Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey. Individual social capital is instrumented by distance-weighted surrounding census tract characteristics. JEL classification: J31, J24, C34

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Class analysis has never been hegemonic in Human Geography, or indeed, in any other social science, although it had some visibility in the 1960s and the 1970s. Recently the claim has been made for a resurgence of class analysis, as with in labor geography and new working class studies. I subject this claim to a brief critique. Although labor geography has shed some light on workers’ agency, its underlying view of class is very problematic. I then offer a map of an alternative view of class more rooted in the Marxist tradition. In mapping the class theory in the form of a dialectical synthesis, I briefly elaborate selected conceptual theses on class. These theses together aim at conceptualizing class as a social-material relation of exploitation that exists at multiple levels, and as (tendentially) connected to class unity, consciousness/ identity and struggle. The theses show class to be a spatial and multi-scalar process. The paper also discusses briefly and illustratively why class matters, in particular, as far as the analysis of social oppression based on race and gender, and (uneven) economic development is concerned. It is about time to move from the labor geography type approach, whose dominant and narrowly-defined agency-oriented concerns include social-democratic manipulation of landscapes of capitalism, to a dialectical-materialist class analysis of social-geographical issues, which has more radical ambitions and which will encompass a less voluntarist and more radical labor geography.

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This paper launches a class-based critique of social capital, and goes on to develop an alternative approach to it. In particular, it unpacks the nature of 'workingclass social capital'. There cannot be a social-capital theory of society. Within a class theory of society, social capital can play some role-perhaps a minor role, given the enormously constraining eff ff ff ff ffects of class on its production. How minor that role will be depends on the issue at hand, and is geographically contingent. A class critique of social capital is necessary in order to counter its growing popularity and its potential to serve neoliberal ends.