Talk:Social capital/Draft

The first draft of this article was written by Mark Middleton, a graduate student in sociology at West Virginia University. Unlike many contemporary approaches to social capital, this initial definition places explicit emphasis on economic capital. This article is part of the WVU contribution to the CZ:Eduzendium initiative.

Roger Lohmann 18:50, 2 January 2008 (CST)

Is it intended to consider the economic influence of social capital?-Nick Gardner 02:35, 10 June 2008 (CDT)

Roger - I have been encouraged by your email to give some thought to the possibility of expanding this article to include specific economic effects. This turns out not to be straightforward because different categories may have different effects, and quantification of those effects is bedevilled by measurement difficulties. In the end I settled on the draft structure of headings that you see. The "economic significance" heading would contain a range of sub-paragraphs, the structure of which I hope to develop as I attempt to draft the text. I am taking it for granted, on the basis of you email, that this will not conflict with the Eduzendium project. What do you think? - Nick Gardner 09:22, 23 June 2008 (CDT)

It is hard to see why a reference to the Social Capital Foundation has been placed under the heading of definitions. Nick Gardner 15:44, 26 June 2008 (CDT) I have now transferred it to the bibliography subpage. Nick Gardner 09:57, 5 July 2008 (CDT)

As I have given further consideration to detailed matters such as the measurement of social capital, I have felt impelled to make a few amendments to Mark Middleton's draft. One reason for doing so is a realisation that it is unwise to be dogmatic about the effects of social capital. For example, Mark's opening statement was, in my opinion, mistaken in implying that its effects are always beneficial (think of the Robbers Cave experiments) and I have amended it to avoid that implication. Another reason is my conviction that, while we should present the reader with an account of the received wisdom, we should leave it to him/her to decide whether to believe it. That has led me to insert qualifications on the lines of "it is generally held that" here and there. Thirdly, I have become aware of the danger of the circularity trap of defining social capital as what makes people better off and then using its statistics to demonstrate that it makes people better off. Some of my amendments were to avoid pre-empting what has to be said about that problem (yet to be drafted). However, I should welcome comments on all this, especially in view of my lack of sociology qualifications. Nick Gardner 05:32, 27 June 2008 (CDT)

A late realisation that this topic remains a matter of controversy - concerning such matters as how it should be defined, what it should include and how it should be measured - has led me to add some further qualifications and to add a concluding section for objections and qualifications. Nick Gardner 06:02, 1 July 2008 (CDT)

The text that is to appear under the heading of "Sociological implications" is being withheld for the time being, in the hope that a sociology scholar will come forward to make a contribution. Nick Gardner 09:57, 5 July 2008 (CDT)

Subject to the possibility of comments to respond to, I have nothing further to contribute to this article and I now submit it for approval. Nick Gardner 09:48, 28 July 2008 (CDT)

Some suggestions

Here are a couple of thoughts I had as I started reading through the text:

• The intro seems a little brief. Maybe it could be fleshed out with some statements conveying a sense of the signficance of the social capital concept within the social sciences? Also, the last part of the sentence there -- "to facilitate their actions" -- seems a bit limiting. If I recall correctly, social capital can be mobilized towards ends other than coordination and efficiency; e.g. democratic and institutional stability.
• In the "Definitions" section, there seems to be a lot of surname dropping, which assumes a lot of knowledge (of both the literature pertaining to social capital and scholarly communication conventions) on the part of readers. It might be a good idea to fill in the first names and perhaps include some identifying information about them (as is done, for example, in the second paragraph: "The sociologist James Coleman ...").

I'll probably be back with more tomorrow or Wednesday. Shamira Gelbman 02:58, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Shamira, Roger: I will think about expanding the introduction, but the definitions paragraph was the work of the original author, and its sources are unfamiliar to me (a mere economist). My preference would be to cut most of them out, but if you consider them to be helpful, perhaps you could tidy them up, Shamira? Or perhaps you could help me to do so, Roger? -Nick Gardner 05:31, 20 October 2009 (UTC)