James DeFilippisa

"The myth of social capital in community development"

[Challenges to the theory of social capital:]



Housing Policy Debate
Volume 12, Issue 4, 2001

Abstract

This article argues that contemporary interest in social capital by community development theorists, funders, and practitioners is misguided and needs to be thoroughly rethought. It argues that social capital, as understood by Robert Putnam and people influenced by his work, is a fundamentally flawed concept because it fails to understand issues of power in the production of communities and because it is divorced from economic capital. Therefore, community development practice based on this understanding of social capital is, and will continue to be, similarly flawed.

The article further argues that instead of Putnam's understanding of social capital, community development practice would be better served by returning to the way the concept was used by Glenn Loury and Pierre Bourdieu and concludes with a discussion of how these alternative theories of social capital can be realized in community development practice.

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Authors:
Farrell, Clare1
Source:
Irish Journal of Sociology; Dec2007, Vol. 16 Issue 2, p27-49, 23p

Abstract: "Although clearly sociological in origin, the concept of social capital has become popular in a number of academic disciplines, and prominent in discourses about tackling social inequality. It has managed to cross over into popular consciousness and the vocabulary of political leaders and it has been invoked as a sort of cure-all for an assortment of societal problems. Putnam (1998) has linked social capital to 'better schools, safer streets, faster economic growth, more effective government, and even healthier and longer lives'. Given its rapid journey into political, policy and popular discourse, this paper seeks to critically explore the concept, and its application in research and social policy terms. It calls for a critical and thoughtful approach to the application of the concept, particularly in the context of addressing the problems faced by communities experiencing deprivation or disadvantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]"
posted by Lloyd at 12:08 PM

Social Capital And Community Governance†

Samuel Bowles,
Herbert Gintis

The Economic Journal

Volume 112, Issue 483, pages F419–F436, November 2002

Abstract: "Community governance is the set of small group social interactions that, with market and state, determine economic outcomes. We argue (i) community governance addresses some common market and state failures but typically relies on insider-outsider distinctions that may be morally repugnant and economically costly; (ii) the individual motivations supporting community governance are not captured by either selfishness or altruism; (iii) communities, markets and states are complements, not substitutes; (iv) when poorly designed, markets and states crowd out communities; (v) some distributions of property rights are better than others at fostering community governance; and (vi) communities will probably increase in importance in the future."
posted by Lloyd at 12:01 PM

Joseph F. Donnermeyer, Pat Jobes, and Elaine Barclay, "Sociological Theory, Social Change, and Crime in Rural Communities," in Denis and Kalekin-Fishman, eds., Contemporary Sociology: Conflict, Competition, Cooperation, (Los Angeles: Sage, ????), 306-320.

(309) "three common features of rural communities" affecting analysis of rural crime. (1) "smaller populations and population densities," (2) "Patterns of daily life are comparatively more limited than in urban communities, and involve a greater share of persistent personal face-to-face interactions among people who know each other." (3) isolation and autonomy vs. globalization.

(311) summarizes nature of community's organization or disorganization. Three sources (1) "informal relations among primary groups" meighbors, cliques, extended family (2) overlapping webs of reciprocity in primary groups (3) external links and social capital.

(312) Summarizing Jobes, et al. on New Zealand, rural community crime was closely related to variables of social disorganization and disruption, and social capital, and not to economic conditions and economic stresses that shaped urban crime.

(313+) Lists five factors affecting rural crime. (1) proximity of rural communities to larger urban areas, especially in times of high change (2) Poverty, especially when disruptions produce sub-croup value, norm and loyalty divergences, and highlight intra-group inequalities; includes male masculinity and rural patriarchy tied to rural poverty and domestic violence. (3) residential mobility, with high rates of in/out flow, transitory and lacking cohesion; (4) racial/ethnic differences (5) Family and extended family "a primary source of socialization" (Citing Oetting, 1998); when absent, ganges and cliques take place
posted by Lloyd at 1:12 PM

Review: A New Take on American Violence? quick view
Violent Land: Single Men and Social Disorder from the Frontier to the Inner City by David T. Courtwright
Review by: Roger Lane
Reviews in American History, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Jun., 1997), pp. 248-252

Peter Stearns' review of this same book shreds the author's contention, and raises the question of Canada, whose gender imbalances were not dissimilar.
posted by Lloyd at 12:26 PM

James Madison, "Jonathan Bull and Mary Bull" uses sectional intermarrage as a metaphor for sectional tension and conflict in the context of the Missouri Crisis. See J. Madison, _Writings_, Library of America, pp. 779-786.
posted by Lloyd at 10:48 PM

Americans and their land : the house built on abundance / Anne MackinMackin, Anne
Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, c2006
LOCATION CALL NO. STATUS
 General Coll  [ http://alcuin.furman.edu/search%7ES1?/cHD191+.M33+2006/chd++191+m33+2006/-3,-1,,E/browse ]HD191 .M33 2006    AVAILABLE
posted by Lloyd at 8:29 AM

Joyce Chaplin, An Anxious Pursuit: Agricultural Innovation and Modernity in the Lower South

(Amazon product description) "In An Anxious Pursuit, Joyce Chaplin examines the impact of the Enlightenment ideas of progress on the lives and minds of American planters in the colonial Lower South. She focuses particularly on the influence of Scottish notions of progress, tracing the extent to which planters in South Carolina, Georgia, and British East Florida perceived themselves as a modern, improving people. She reads developments in agricultural practice as indices of planters' desire for progress, and she demonstrates the central role played by slavery in their pursuit of modern life. By linking behavior and ideas, Chaplin has produced a work of cultural history that unites intellectual, social, and economic history.

Using public records as well as planters' and farmers' private papers, Chaplin examines innovations in rice, indigo, and cotton cultivation as a window through which to see planters' pursuit of a modern future. She demonstrates that planters actively sought to improve their society and economy even as they suffered a pervasive anxiety about the corrupting impact of progress and commerce. The basis for their accomplishments and the root of their anxieties, according the Chaplin, were the same: race-based chattel slavery. Slaves provied the labor necessary to attain planters' vision of the modern, but the institution ultimately limited the Lower South's ability to compete in the contemporary world.

Indeed, whites continued to wonder whether their innovations, some of them defied by slaves, truly improved the region. Chaplin argues that these apprehensions prefigured the antimodern stance of the antebellum period, but she contends that they were as much a reflection of the doubt inherent in theories of progress as an outright rejection of those ideas."
posted by Lloyd at 12:52 PM

From Doug Edgerton's review of Morgan, Slave Counterpoint:

"Morgan sides with Slvia Frey and Allan Gallay in suggesting that the rise of evangelical religion, enlightened humanitarianism, and the ideal of the affectionate family were central to the emergence of paternalistic theories" (versus more harsh patriarchalist forms of slave profiteering).
posted by Lloyd at 3:02 PM