Social capital, environmental health and collective action: a Hamilton, Ontario case study

This article explores the relationships among environmental health, social capital and collective action in the industrial city of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Survey results from 512 households are used to document intra-urban variation in levels of social capital (defined as norms, networks and trust) and collective action in the context of environmental health issues, and specifically air quality. Despite real differences between areas in terms of socio-demographic characteristics, little variation in either social capital or collective action by area was observed. Further, while social networks and community involvement were significant predictors of collective action, indicators of norms and trust were not. Hence, the conception of social capital as a unitary construct that produces place-specific benefits is not reflected in the example explored here.     

Crime,collective action and development

Starting from a definition of criminal activity for economic purposes broader than the criminological concept of economic crime, and from an assessment of its empirical importance, the article considers: 1) the relationship between criminal behaviour and economic behaviour, on the hypothesis that criminal activity can in large part be viewed as a component of the broader category of economic activity;the negative effects of crime on the performance of markets and economic systems; The basic hypothesis is that when the social damage caused by crime is assessed, and consequently when the suitability and extent of punitive action is evaluated, the costs/benefits analysis must be extended to include the structural repercussions of crime on collective action and on the supply of public goods. This signifies that a substantial part of the harmful effects of crime affects the long-term competitiveness of local areas or systems, in particular by acting on the so-called non-material production factors, such as human capital, social capital and entrepreneurship. This consequence is particularly serious where the organized crime is able to exert control over a given territory and influence its patterns of development.     

集群社会资本对乡村民宿企业成长的影响研究——以丹霞山两村为例

采用质性研究方法,以丹霞山两村为例,探析集群社会资本对乡村民宿企业成长的影响机制。研究发现：集群社会资本由个体社会资本（企业纵向联系、市场网络和个人资源）和集体社会资本（社区合作网络和公共资源）构成。乡村民宿获取个体社会资本的存量取决于关系质量和关系数量,前者有利于降低成本、增加异质资源,后者能够补足企业综合性基础;乡村民宿吸纳集体社会资本的程度在于资源共享度和网络紧密度,前者决定了集体资源的存量,后者制约着民宿吸收转化集体资源的程度。个体社会资本影响企业的初创和生存,集体社会资本制约或促进企业的持续发展,两者相互作用共同影响企业成长。从集群社会资本视角可深化理解乡村民宿企业成长的机理,为我国乡村民宿业发展乃至乡村振兴路径提供指导。     

Social and political trust in Istanbul and Moscow: a comparative analysis of individual and neighbourhood effects

Aiming to bring local context into studies of social capital, our study uses samples of 4006 individuals in Istanbul and 3476 in Moscow using a comparable questionnaire. The stratification of each city's neighbourhoods on the basis of socio-economic characteristics provided the basis for the sampling. Using a multilevel modelling procedure, we show both that locality matters (neighbourhood effect proved significant) and that social capital may indeed be constituted in very particular ways in illiberal democracies such as Russia and Turkey. Social and political trust are frequently thought to contribute to social capital – that is, to provide social resources upon which individuals or groups may draw for their political efficacy. Trust in fellow citizens in Istanbul exhibits a positive relationship to associational activities (joining clubs etc.), while in Moscow social trust can be explained predominantly in terms of (lower) socio-economic status. At the same time, important similarities emerged between the two cases. For social trust, in both cities the 'cosmopolitanization thesis', which holds that those who associate more widely are also more trusting of fellow citizens, generally applied. Further, in both cities, residents with lower socio-economic status (though in Moscow this is complicated by education) and lower likelihoods of engagement in direct political action were more trustful of parliament . While this is the opposite of what we have been led to expect based on Western democratic polities, it is a reasonable outcome of illiberal democratic governance operating in these two cities.     

Cultural Capital and Place: Coles Bay and the Freycinet Peninsula,Tasmania

This paper poses the question: what is the role of cultural capital at the interface of environment, economy and society, and what other factors affect this role? A review of Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital and later developments of this concept by ecological economists serves to establish the values that comprise cultural capital, and its relationship to natural capital and economic capital. These relationships are investigated through a case study of a small coastal community, Coles Bay and the Freycinet Peninsula, in Tasmania. Three study groups are identified which comprise the communities associated with this place; long‐term residents, repeat visitors and tourists making a single visit. The complexity of the relationships of people with place are revealed through an examination of the different forms of capital (social, cultural and economic) relating to the different study groups. The dynamics of the social, economic and environmental realities of Coles Bay and the Freycinet Peninsula are seen to be complex and interlinked, with the potential to provide a model for action in communities of similar character and location.     

公共服务设施可达性、个人社会资本与居民心理健康——基于北京的实证研究

利用2018年来自北京的问卷调查数据,本文探讨了公共服务设施可达性、个人社会资本及其交互作用对居民心理健康的影响。研究发现：公共服务设施可达性对心理健康具有显著的正向影响,且对新市民的影响更突出。个人社会资本中密切交往的网络规模、从社会网络中获取经济支持两个维度对其心理健康有显著正向作用,但在新市民和本地市民群体间不存在显著差异。个人社会资本能够强化公共服务设施可达性对心理健康的正向影响。本文验证了社会生态学的健康促进模型的相关假设,即外部环境特征和个人社会资本相互嵌套共同影响个人健康水平。鉴于此,健康城市规划需兼顾“硬件”与“软件”层面,既要构建公平正义的空间环境,还需加强社会资本和社会组织培育。     

Social capital determinants and labor market networks

We explore the links between determinants of social capital and labor market networks at the neighborhood level. We harness rich data taken from multiple sources, including matched employer–employee data with which we measure the strength of labor market networks, data on neighborhood homogeneity that has previously been tied to social capital, and new data—not previously used in the study of social capital—on the number and location of nonprofit sector establishments at the neighborhood level. We use a machine learning algorithm to identify the potential determinants of social capital that best predict neighborhood‐level variation in labor market networks. We find evidence suggesting that smaller and less centralized schools, and schools with fewer poor students, foster social capital that builds local labor market networks, as does a larger Republican vote share. The presence of establishments in a number of nonprofit‐oriented industries are identified as predictive of strong labor market networks, likely because they either provide public goods or facilitate social contacts. These industries include, for example, churches and other religious institutions, fire and rescue services including volunteer fire departments, country clubs and golf courses, labor unions, chamber music groups, hobby clubs, and schools.     

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

Social capital, understood as norms of reciprocity and associational life, is supposed to provide a bottom-up approach to poverty alleviation world-wide. The World Bank says that social capital is a necessary condition for long-term development and that social capital is the capital of the poor. This paper will argue that much of the literature is too sanguine of the benefits of social capital for the poor. It is, of course, important to look at the extent to which social capital can help the poor. But how the conditions of the poor people can also affect their social capital is equally important to examine, and this has often been neglected by many scholars who have been busy to prove that social capital is a new paradigm of development. Based on qualitative interviews in two rural areas in Orissa, eastern India, this paper seeks to examine whether and to what extent poor people of the daily wage labour class benefit from their social capital. It then goes on to unpack the mechanisms in which the economic-political conditions under which poor people live and the spatiality of these conditions affect the production of social capital. By seeking to unpack the dialectical relation between social capital and poverty, the paper aims at problematizing the overly optimistic claims about social capital. It shows that it is untenable to posit social capital as an independent variable and poverty as a dependent variable because the economic-political conditions of poor people have an enormous constraining effect on social capital itself and its supposed material benefits for the poor.     

Are there differences in social capital related to corporate regional engagement in dynamic and less dynamic non-core regions?

ABSTRACT

This article explores corporate regional engagement and related social capital in non-core regions. Corporate regional engagement comprises various activities of firms to influence regional contexts, which are challenging in non-core regions (e.g. on account of their organizational or institutional thinness). Corporate regional engagement engenders positive effects for regional development when firms collaborate among themselves (bonding social capital) and with other actors (bridging social capital) to improve regional endowments. We assume that dynamic regions have at their disposal higher levels of inclusive social capital in terms of collaboration networks for regional concerns and trust, while less dynamic regions have more exclusive and fragmented social capital. Consequently, less dynamic regions in particular appear to have potential to develop in a more social sense by activating the endogenous potential of region-wide collaboration. Those assumptions are tested based on a survey with Chief Executive Officers from the manufacturing industry from three dynamic and three less dynamic Swiss regions. The findings show that in dynamic regions, more firms are members of regional cross-industry associations, favouring regional collaboration; in less dynamic regions, meanwhile, more firms are members of industry-specific associations and service clubs, where benefits seem to be higher for individual firms than for the regional business environment.     

Network topologies as collective social capital in cities and regions: a critical review of empirical studies

This paper outlines a theoretical framework to study collective social capital at the local scale using social network analysis. To do so, it develops a review on empirical research that found evidence regarding the impact of networks on the performance of cities and regions. Eight network topologies are identified with collective social capital: size and composition, connectivity, closeness, clustering, small world, openness, centralization and heterophily. The paper inquires into the effects of these properties concluding that they influence two aspects that are highly relevant for territorial development: they facilitate the diffusion of information and they foster cooperation among actors. Results help tracing roots among three different academic fields: literature on social capital, local and regional economics, and social network analysis. Furthermore, the article suggests a framework to obtain relevant conclusions regarding political and economic aspects of territorial capacities.     

社区社会资本对居住满意度的影响——基于北京市中低收入社区调查的实证分析

居住满意度是居民对所居住的住房和社区宜居性的综合评价。尽管近年来,中国的城市地理学者开始关注城市重构与居住分异背景对社区邻里关系、社会互动及居民的社区满意度的影响,已有研究对社区社会资本与居住满意度之间因果机制的探讨,缺乏合理的指标构建和实证依据。本文结合城市社会学、地理学和政治学相关理论,构建了一套适合于中国城市转型背景的社区社会资本指标体系,通过对北京市九个中低收入社区的实证研究表明,社区社会资本与居住满意度有显著的正向关系,然而,尽管低收入居民对于邻里信任因素的重视大于对社区组织的信任、邻里互助和共同价值,其在社会资本的几个维度中得分最低。因此,打破社区内的分异与隔阂,建立邻里信任,应当成为社区社会资本建设中首先解决的问题。     

Capitalizing on Women's Social Capital? Women‐Targeted Microfinance in Bolivia

Both social capital and microfinance are central to mainstream development interventions, and both are predicated on the need to recognize the importance of social factors in development. Microfinance institutions mobilize social capital in the form of a group guarantee, and aim to support the development of sustainable financial institutions and income generation. Women are targeted in part because of the effectiveness of their social capital as collateral. However, although social capital is assumed to support development and income generation, the precise dynamics involved in this are rarely explored. This article examines the construction of social capital and its relationship to income generation, based on a long‐term ethnographic study of village life in rural Bolivia and the microfinance institution operating there. The author examines the complexity and gendered contradictions implied in the way that social capital is generally viewed to support economic development. It is suggested that the way microfinance institutions use social capital to support sustainable financial institutions and income generation does not always reflect the way that women's networks support access to resources and ultimately, economic development.     

Telling small stories: spaces of knowledge and the practice of geography

This article examines how the practice of learning geography, and the arenas in which knowledge-making takes place, can be usefully positioned within changing histories of the discipline. It contends that networks of action – understood through the intersection of social sites, subjects and sources – present a conceptual framework and narrative focus for the re-consideration of specific episodes from geography's past. The interventions made here are informed and illustrated by a 'small story' about the doing of geography. Based on different personal accounts, the story revives a series of events, encounters, dialogues and images dating back to the winter of 1951 at Glenmore Lodge, Scotland. This educational institution in the Cairngorm mountains offered children from urban areas the opportunity to learn field studies and the skills of 'outdoor citizenship'. Initially, the focus falls on Margaret Jack, a 14-year-old field-course participant. Her learning experiences are traced through personal letters, a diary and a field journal dating from that time, and her recent recollections of this event. Margaret's account dovetails with the story of her field studies instructor, Robin Murray. Robin's role is traced through his learning experiences as a geography undergraduate at Aberdeen University, and the recent recollections of Catriona Murray, his wife.     

Fiddling for outcomes: traditional music,social capital,and arts policy in Northern Ireland

Arts development policies increasingly tie funding to the potential of arts organisations to effectively deliver an array of extra‐artistic social outcomes. This paper reports on the difficulties of this work in Northern Ireland, where the arts sector, and in particular the so‐called ‘traditional arts’, have been drawn into a politically ambiguous discourse centred on the concepts of ‘mutual understanding’ and, more recently, ‘social capital’. The paper traces the recent history of these policies and the difficulties in evaluating the social outcomes of arts programs. The use of the term ‘social capital’ in the work of Putnam and Bourdieu is considered. The paper argues, through a rereading of Bourdieu’s articulation of the ‘forms’ of capital and Eagleton’s ‘ideology of the aesthetic’, the concept of social capital can be released from its current neoliberal trappings by imagining a reconnection of the concepts of ‘capital’ and ‘the aesthetic’.     

Tackling Social Exclusion: The Role of Social Capital in Urban Regeneration on Merseyside — From Mistrust to Trust?

In recent years community involvement and increasingly social capital have become central themes in debates and policies surrounding urban regeneration. This paper attempts to contribute to these debates by reviewing the role of social capital in the context of a major regeneration initiative, namely the European Union-sponsored Objective One Programme, currently underway on Merseyside. The paper argues that it is important to show how social capital is formed through the 'scaling-up' of local associational relationships, networks and institutions, to wider power structures and relations. Trust amongst participants is central to this process. Two areas on Merseyside are used as case studies to illustrate the argument. The paper concludes that the active development of trust and the social relationships surrounding it needs to be central to the process of urban regeneration.     

Tackling the Down Side: Social Capital,Women’s Empowerment and Micro‐Finance in Cameroon

Micro‐finance programmes are currently dominated by the ‘financial self‐sustainability paradigm’ where women’s participation in groups is promoted as a key means of increasing financial sustainability while at the same time assumed to automatically empower them. This article examines the experience of seven micro‐finance programmes in Cameroon. The evidence indicates that micro‐finance programmes which build social capital can indeed make a significant contribution to women’s empowerment. However, serious questions need to be asked about what sorts of norms, networks and associations are to be promoted, in whose interests, and how they can best contribute to empowerment, particularly for the poorest women. Where the complexities of power relations and inequality are ignored, reliance on social capital as a mechanism for reducing programme costs may undermine programme aims not only of empowerment but also of financial sustainability and poverty targeting.     

The Mystery of Capital: Eurasian Entrepreneurs' Socio-Cultural Strategies for Commercial Success in Early 20th-Century Hong Kong

Unlike economic capital, which is visible and easy to calculate, social capital is intangible and difficult to assess. Although both types of capital are crucial in determining social relations and social behaviour, little solid research has been done on the latter. This paper attempts to use the rags-to-riches story of Sir Robert Ho Tung, a first-generation Hong Kong Eurasian entrepreneur who commenced life without traditional social/cultural capital as the illegitimate son of a Chinese woman and a Dutchman, to illustrate the processes involved in cultivating and accumulating social capital. With special reference to economic development in early colonial Hong Kong and major social transformations in the Chinese mainland, this paper also demonstrates how a group of so-called social/racial “half-caste bastards” (Eurasians) were able to form their own social networks of mutual help and protection. It also considers how they worked to consolidate, mobilise, aggrandise and transmit their social capital. In conclusion, it is argued that Eurasians in early twentieth-century Hong Kong constructed their personal networks like a web, with different interconnecting layers that functioned at different socio-economic-political levels to serve different purposes.     

MONEY FLOWS LIKE MERCURY: THE GEOGRAPHY OF GLOBAL FINANCE

ABSTRACT. If the social relations and inherited configuration of production were at the core of economic geography a decade ago, these aspects of the world are increasingly taken for granted. The global scope of industry and corporate strategy has claimed increasing attention over the past decade. And while any 'new' economic geography must have something to say about the nature of human agency and the role of institutions in structuring the landscape, care must be taken not to exaggerate their significance for constructive interaction. In point of fact, the global finance industry is an essential lens through which to study contemporary capitalism from the top-down and the bottom-up. If we are to understand the economic landscape of twenty-first century capitalism, it should be understood through global financial institutions, its social formations and investment practices. This argument is developed by reference to the recent literature on the geography of finance and a metaphor – money flows like mercury – designed to explicate the spatial and temporal logic of global capital flows. Some may dispute this argument, but in doing so they lament the passing of an era rather than advancing a convincing counterclaim about how the world is and what it might become. All this means that we have to rethink the significance of geographical scale and organizational processes as opposed to an unquestioned commitment to localities.     

General Social Capital,Education‐Related Social Capital,and Choosing Charter Schools

Proponents of charter schools credit them with many advantages over traditional schools. One claim is that school choice yields increased parental participation in voluntary school activities—which we shall call education‐related social capital. In this article we test for the independent effect of school choice on education‐related social capital, controlling for general social capital and other potentially confounding variables. Studies of school choice invariably show that choosing parents have a greater level of general social capital than non‐choosing parents. Consequently, any increase in education‐related social capital could be spurious—due to the fact that choice parents start with atypically high levels of general social capital. We find under controlled conditions that school choice has a small but statistically significant effect on education‐related social capital. However, its effect is considerably smaller than for general social capital, as well as for other traditional predictors such as parental education and the school‐related home resources that parents may provide.     

The Effect of Public Infrastructure on the Private Productive Sector of Spanish Regions

In this paper we analyze the effect of infrastructure on the cost and productivity performance of the private productive sector of Spanish regions over the period 1980–1993. We use a dual approach based on cost functions that allows us to recover the usual parameters estimated with production functions. In addition, we obtain rates of return and cost elasticities of production factors at the regional level. Our framework explicitly considers that some factors are quasi-fixed and their volume can differ from their optimal endowment levels. Our results indicate that the public sector has contributed significantly to enhance productivity and reduce costs in the private sector of almost every Spanish region. Nevertheless, there is still scope for the government to continue its investment efforts, given that there remains an appreciable gap between observed and optimal public capital, and we find that in the long run, public capital promotes private investment.