Social capital and poverty of the wage‐labour class: problems with the social capital theory

Abstract

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

Competitive sport and social capital in rural Australia

“…He suggests that the bonds and bridges that make up social capital have been steadily eroded over the past few decades, largely as a result of declining levels of sociability, the rise of television as a dominant form of leisure, the erosion of trust in government, institutions and individuals, and a growing emphasis on individuality ahead of notions of 'collective good'. In other parts of the world, scholars have also attempted to track changes in social capital (see, for example, Hall, 1999;Zhao, 2002;Baron et al, 2000;Onyx and Bullen, 2000;Das, 2004). However, one of the problems in determining levels of social capital is measurement.…”

“…Most often, social capital has been measured by analysing trends in, inter alia, participation in clubs and voluntary activities, voting rates, attending church, sense of community, and various measures of trust and confidence in governments and other institutions (e.g. Hall, 1999;Stone and Hudges, 2002;Das, 2004). However, the underlying methodological problem is how to make explicit the link between, for example, participation in community organisations and the creation and maintenance of social capital.…”

“…One of the main problems is that there tends to have been a relatively heavy reliance on trying to quantify social capital and statistically measure cause and effect, rather than accepting it as a rather subjective and highly nuanced quality (see also Boix and Posner, 1998;Schuller et al, 2000). Accordingly, there are increasing calls for approaches that recognise the multidimensional and complex nature of social capital (Das, 2004). The outcome has been a growing number of studies that utilise both quantitative and qualitative methods in their attempts to uncover the nature and role of social capital (Field, 2003).…”

“…Understood simply as norms of reciprocity and associational life (Das, 2004), social capital is often regarded as resource that can contribute to social cohesion, resilience and adaptability. For a growing number of policy makers and academics, social capital is a positive attribute that can help communities to respond to challenges, such as depopulation, service withdrawal, environmental degradation and so on (Cocklin and Alston, 2003;Sobels et al, 2001).…”

Embodied social capital and geographic perspectives: performing the habitus

“…Finally, a brief conclusion is offered. Radcliffe, 2004;Das, 2004;Mohan et al, 2005 iii ). Indeed, the 'decline' of social capital is increasing taken as a given within geographical debates (Houston et al 2005).…”