Field - Social Capital

Citizenship

Keith Faulks

Class

Stephen Edgell

Community

Gerard Delanty

Consumption

Robert Bocock

Globalization second edition

Malcolm Waters

Lifestyle

David Chaney

Mass Media

Pierre Sorlin

Moral Panics

Kenneth Thompson

Old Age

John Vincent

Postmodernity

Barry Smart

Racism second edition

Robert Miles and Malcolm Brown

Risk

Deborah Lupton

Sexuality second edition

Jeffrey Weeks

Social Capital second edition

John Field

Transgression

Chris Jenks

The Virtual

Rob Shields

Social Identity second edition

Richard Jenkins

Culture second edition

Chris Jenks

Human Rights

Anthony Woodiwiss

Childhoodsecond edition

Chris Jenks

Cosmopolitanism

Robert Fine

LONDAN AND NEW YORK

First published 2008 by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007.

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2008 John Field

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Field, John.
Social capital / John Field. 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 9780415433020 (hard cover) ISBN 9780415433037 (paper cover) ISBN 9780-203930519 (electronic) 1. Social capital (Sociology) I. Title.
HM708.F54 2008
302dc22
2007043002

ISBN13: 978-1-134-08151-6 ePub ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-43302-9 (hbk)

ISBN10: 0-415-43303-7 (pbk)

ISBN10: 0-203-93051-7 (ebk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-43302-0 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-43303-7 (pbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-203-93051-9 (ebk)

Connections count, and many friends, colleagues and acquaintances have helped me develop my ideas about social capital. Much of this learning has been profoundly rewarding in itself. Trust and reciprocity are not just conceptual abstractions; they help make life rather more secure and pleasurable than it would otherwise have been. Equally, of course, at some stages in life I have found myself learning lessons about trust, reciprocity and loss that I could well have lived without. Many of us discover at some stage that while our closest and most valued ties often lend meaning and affirmation to our existence, for that very reason they can also prove to be the cause of deep pain. Such everyday lessons positive and negative are writ large in our wider society, and you may want to reflect on your own personal ties with individuals and groups as you read your way through this book, just as I did when writing it.

Writing this book has benefited from countless exchanges with friends and colleagues, providing me with very particular examples of the ways that our connections are resources. The second edition has benefited from readers comments on the first edition; Robert Putnam was characteristically constructive and generous in his suggestions; my colleagues Grant Jarvie, Muir Houston and Richard Edwards drew my attention to new literature that I would otherwise have missed; Tom Schuller sent good tidings about a paper on earnings and bars (boozehounds will find it cited in Chapter2), and Jaswinder Dhillon shared interesting and important questions about social capital, education and ethnicity, which she plans to explore further in her own research. Martyn Turner, a man as courageous as he is funny, gave permission for me to use one of his cartoons.

I am also most grateful to all those many organisations university departments, voluntary associations, campaigning groups, community development agencies, business networks and policy agencies who wanted to discuss social capital with me as a result of the first edition, and whose generally lively audiences were free with ideas and suggestions about this exciting and complex concept.

I have also benefited from thoughtful and sometimes sharply critical conversations with Peter Alheit, Julie Allan, Loraine Blaxter, Jaswinder Dhillon, Kathryn Ecclestone, Richard Edwards, Ian Falk, Tom Healy, Sue Kilpatrick, William Maloney, Sian Reynolds, Michael Strain, Lorna Unwin and Bill Williamson. From Gudrun Geirsdottir I gleaned a fine Icelandic proverb. Pat Ainley, Christina Hughes and Tom Steele tried to persuade me that social capital is a dead-end or worse; they failed but I learned in the process. John Scott read the draft of the first edition and provided valuable feedback. Above all, I owe an enormous amount to three colleagues Steve Baron, Tom Schuller and Simon Szreter with whom I worked on the remarkably enjoyable seminar series on social capital sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council, which ran during 2000 and 2001 in Cambridge, Glasgow, London and Warwick. These seminars built social capital as well as debating it, and I have lost track of the debts which I owe to the participants. Tom and Steve are not only good chums but were also wonderful co-editors of a book of critical essays on social capital.