| Abstract: |
This paper unpicks the assumption that because social networks underpin social
capital, they directly create it – more of one inevitably making more of the
other. If it were that simple, the sheer quantity of networks criss-crossing a
defined urban space would be a proxy measure for the local stock of social
capital. Of course the interrelationships are more complex. Two kinds of
complication stand out. The first is specific: networks have both quantitative
and qualitative dimensions, but the two elements have no necessary bearing on
each other. The shape and extent of a network says nothing about the content
of the links between its nodes. Certainly the line we draw between any two of
them indicates contact and potential connection, but what kind of contact, how
often, how trusting, in what circumstances, to what end…? Reliable answers to
these questions need more than surface maps or bird’s eye accounts of who goes
where, who speaks to whom. The second complication is a general, not to say
universal, difficulty. We are stuck with the fact that sociological concepts -
networks, social capital and trust included - are ‘only’ abstractions. They
are ways of thinking about the apparent chaos of people behaving all over the
place – here, to make it worse, in multi-cultural urban environments - but
none of them is visible to be measured, weighed or quantified. This does not
make the concepts ‘untrue’, and it should not stop them being useful. My hope
is that we can find a nuanced perspective which will at least make the
complications intelligible. At best, a multi-layered model will account for
diversity in the nature of trust; and for variations in the way social capital
is hoarded or distributed within and across ethnic boundaries. It would be
contribution enough if we were able to specify the conditions which cause
social capital, as Puttnam formulates it, to be exclusionary or inclusionary
in its effect. |