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Workshop Proceedings
SOCIAL CAPITAL FORMATION AND INSTITUTIONS FOR SUSTAINABILITY
Chair: Dr. Rod Dobell
(Public Administration, University of Victoria)
Hosted by
Sustainable Development Research Institute
at Cecil Green House, University of British Columbia
November 16 - 17, 1998
Workshop proceedings prepared by
Asoka Mendis
Table of Contents
OVERVIEW
SOCIAL CAPITAL
THE CASE FOR A DELIBERATIVE SCIENCE
DELIBERATIVE AND INCLUSIVE PROCESSES IN PARTNERSHIP DECISION MAKING
REFERENCES
OVERVIEW
OVERVIEW
SOCIAL CAPITAL
DEMOCRACY
EDUCATION
INEQUALITY AND INSECURITY
GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS
DOES GLOBALISATION LIMIT NATIONAL POLICIES TO SUPPORT SOCIAL COHESION?
CONCLUSION
REFERENCES
OVERVIEW
GLOBAL-LOCAL RELATIONSHIPS
CIVIC IDENTITY
CONDITIONS THAT PROMOTE IDENTITY AND SUSTAINABILITY
REFERENCES
OVERVIEW
POLITICAL SCIENCE LOOKS AT CIVIL SOCIETY AND SOCIAL CAPITAL
THE CLASH BETWEEN COMMUNITARIANISM AND LIBERALISM
Acknowledgement
We are grateful to the Science Council of B.C. for providing the funding for this workshop. We also wish to acknowledge the support of Dr. Ann Dale, senior associate with SDRI, who provided input into the workshop objectives and design.
INTRODUCTION AND WORKSHOP PURPOSE
In November of 1998, the Sustainable Development Research Institute at the University of British Columbia hosted a two-day workshop that brought researchers together to bring greater definition to the social aspects of sustainable development. Sustainable development is customarily seen as encompassing ecological, economic and social dimensions. However, the focus of attention in much of the literature, and most of the policy, in the domain of sustainable development has been upon environmental and, increasingly, economic concerns - and their reconciliation. Much less attention has been paid to the social dimensions of sustainability. This workshop thus attempted to address this apparent lacuna by focussing on the concept of social capital and its relationship to sustainable development.
The notion of 'social capital' has often been suggested as a means of improving overall social and economic performance and, in some sense, linking institutional and value changes. In the literature on self-governing institutions and management of open-access or common property resources, a central proposition is that institutions must be structured so as to align individual incentives with community objectives. But the concept of 'social capital' conjures up many different, possibly incompatible, images for different people (See Annotated Bibliography).
In order to begin to explore these issues, it was necessary to contend with the emerging literature on social capital formation and the role it plays in mediating consumption and other human behaviour. The general purpose of this workshop, therefore, was to share perspectives on the subject of 'social capital' in order to develop these ideas into a clearer understanding of the concept and the role it might play in examining processes of 'resocialization' or other possibilities for reconciling human activities with ecological constraints. A focus on the institutional dimensions of social capital formation provided some thematic consistency.
The Chair opened the discussion by suggesting that there were two significant ways in which this workshop was timely.
There is already a large and burgeoning literature on social capital, social cohesion, social exclusion and other similar concepts. Some of the literature on social capital makes an attempt to take into account concerns about natural capital and common property resources, but most does not. And most of the literature on sustainable development and environmental management is more concerned with formal economic institutions than with social structures and informal institutions.
Thus, as a first objective, the workshop had the opportunity to push further the integration of concerns about social capital with the features of natural capital and ecosystem dynamics (and perhaps with institutions for community management in particular). In particular, we sought to explore the linkages between the consumption of goods and services in the formal economy, and the nature of social institutions in the informal sector. A tentative hypothesis is that it is possible to uncouple, to some degree, growth in such consumption from increases in human well-being, through the build-up of 'social capital'. Such "resocialization" strategies could complement "technical fix" or "dematerialization" strategies intended to uncouple economic activity from environmental impact by means of approaches such as eco-efficiency and industrial ecology. (Robinson and Tinker, 1997).
Moreover, we live in a world - within a finite Earth - which is changing, complex, uncertain and increasingly congested. Although there are many philosophical challenges concerning information and knowledge to be faced even in making such observations, most of us probably feel that in some fashion our world now presses against a variety of ecological limits in a full biosphere. In this setting, the information needs in decision-making are overwhelming, and notions of rationality need to be examined and perhaps extended. In particular, economic rationality, or instrumental rationality, may not be a sufficient guide to civic action. It is necessary to explore much more fully the potential and limits of notions of communicative rationality. In response to the overarching information challenges associated with a complex and changing world, should we be following the path of Hayek and Friedman, relying on market institutions to achieve the necessary decentralisation of decisions, or - given the incompleteness of price systems and the congestion of the biosphere - the road of Habermas and Dryzek, looking to communicative action or discursive democracy?
Thus, as a second objective, we had the opportunity to explore ideas of social capital in conjunction with social processes for group decisions - processes of policy formation and community management of adjacent resources. In that sense this workshop carried on the prior work of Scott, Cohen and Robinson on institutions for sustainable management of resources. But it also leads directly into the work of the Sustainable Development Research Institute's SSHRC funded Georgia Basin Futures Project, which addresses specifically:
- integration of the dynamics of systems governing cultural, social, natural, physical and financial capital;
- the potential impact of decision support systems such as QUEST in promoting reconciliation of conflicting values and perceptions, and thus, ultimately, reconciliation of human action with ecological limits, in community decision-making processes which themselves must be reconciled with the requirements of democracy.
The workshop heralded the possibility of a creative start to a new and more integrated wave of research on social capital, institutional frameworks and biosphere politics in a congested full world. Such research might enable the exploration of the following:
- informationally-efficient rational processes;
- incentives for adoption of selective technologies;
- restructuring of perceptions and preferences in order to support a comprehensive reframing of our relationships with ecosystems and other species.
The workshop suggested the possibility of exploring two distinct underlying themes - notions of social capital and civil society as elements in changing, complex, uncertain and congested dynamic systems, and notions of rational collective decisions governing human action in the context of those systems. Concretely, this workshop - through its focus - raised two questions.
The first asked how the notion of social capital figures descriptively, as an endowment which contributes to meeting individual human needs, or as an infrastructure which offers an alternative to market provision in reducing individual material deprivation. The second asked how social capital might provide or strengthen frameworks for better decision-making at a community or collective level.
In order to address these questions, we began with the notion of social capital as a set of relationships amongst people - inherently multiple, not individual. One basic idea is that of reciprocity or trust, an essential feature of the context being repeated encounters, or continuing association. But another key feature of the context is complexity and the transition to a full world, characterised by congestion along with global connection. Indeed, these two sides of the globalisation coin - connection and congestion - seem likely to continue to be central to any ongoing exploration of the concept of social capital.
In this context, the interaction of perspectives, issue frames and compliance at varying levels from global to local is crucial. How big is the community under consideration? How do informal social capital and civil society merge into formal political institutions? These questions take us into the examination of decision processes and criteria for decision in policy-making or risk management contexts.
And that in turn leads on to considering alternative modes of rationality - ways of combining processes for building local or traditional ecological knowledge through tacit or informal filtering of experience with conventional scientific processes for building esoteric knowledge through formal processing of information flows. (Note that in both cases the emphasis is on the processes for gathering and filtering information, not on any static body of knowledge.) This suggests movement from a scientific or accounting approach to a more decentralised, organic and eclectic process based on democracy and markets and socially constructed understandings of science (See Annex A).
The idea of the program, overall, then, was to work around to the underlying character and consequences of social capital after exploring the following:
- deliberative processes;
- integration with traditional knowledge and cultural capital in an ecological context;
- (empirical examination of) links to improved social (including economic) performance;
- identity and membership at various levels from group or community to global.
It was anticipated by the Chair that at the end of the workshop it would emerge that, beyond its role in reducing transactions costs broadly throughout the economy, a major feature of social capital was its capacity to contribute to effective social decisions in the face of congestion problems in complex ecosystems. And this, in turn, based on the synthesis of the workshop results, would lead to a research agenda for another, more directed, meeting to follow this exploratory review.
The discussions following the presentations and in the workshop and plenary sessions were expansive and, in a sense, reflected the ambiguity of the concept of 'social capital' as mentioned in the introduction. There were numerous attempts at defining social capital and it's characteristic qualities, including trust. Given the wide-ranging nature of the discussion, it was felt that the summary should capture the key points and concepts which emerged throughout the workshop including:
- the definition, nature, and measurement of social capital;
- trust, resilience and convergence as key aspects of social capital;
- the roles of science and education in creating and sustaining social capital;
- the relationships between power and knowledge on one hand and, on the other, social capital and;
- the link between the global and the local.
The discussions raised many questions, the utility of which lie in their identification of future research directions.
Definition of social capital
It seemed, as the workshop proceeded, that there were as many definitions of social capital as there were participants. During the discussion, a number of key components essential to social capital formation emerged. These included: trust in people and community; sense of belonging; sense of identity; increased ability of individual to act; free and participatory communication; democratic decision-making processes and a collective or co-operative ethos.
There was concern among some of the participants about the use of the term 'capital', which contained the assumptions that social capital had the same economistic characteristics as human-made capital. That is, something to be owned, privately; depreciates; is depleteable; can be traded; and is value neutral. It was argued that social capital assumed private as opposed to collective ownership, and individual as opposed to co-operative behaviour. An alternate term proposed, social fabric, suggests interconnected webs of relationships which may promote a collective sense of ownership and responsibility. The point was made by one participant however, that the use of the term social capital - with its implicit notion of 'investment' - was readily understood by community groups and other actors. This points to the utility perhaps of using a business oriented lexicon.
One participant expressed the need to make a clear distinction between social capital and cultural capital - defined as a system of beliefs, assumptions, values, etc. This distinction is important because one can a have a society rich in social capital; however, due to the nature of its cultural capital (as represented, for example, by 'frontier economic' mentality) such a society may be unsustainable. Cultural capital may determine the quality of social capital. As was evident through the course of the workshop, there is currently a blurring of the distinctions between different types of capital.
The nature of social capital
A significant and often expressed point was that strong social capital, if not linked to sustainable development, can lead to unsustainable futures. A community may possess a high degree of social capital and social cohesion but unless those properties are linked to a certain set of values commensurate with sustainable development, the outcomes may not be desirable. An example would be a wealthy, enclave community united in the pursuit of common goals such as protection of private property rights, security, the exclusion of other groups, and the right to 'consume'. It could be argued that such a group possesses a high degree of social capital and social cohesion.
Resilience was defined as the ability to adapt to change. The difficulty with the problem of resilience is identifying what doesn't change and what does. Resilience implies the preservation of the capacity to change, not the preservation of a state. There is a need to link change, as a quality of resilience, to a political process in order to determine what change is desirable. It must also be linked to a deliberative process in order to decide who gets to choose what. Resilience, however, also has a normative quality. For example, with respect to climate change and agriculture, resilience could entail simply getting used to the effects of climatic change by growing new crops, changing inputs, etc - that is, simply adapting to changing conditions. Resilience could also, however, result in trying to reverse the processes leading to climate change.
Measurement of social capital
Does social capital possess the same characteristics as economic capital, such as, for example, appreciation and depreciation? Similarly, does social capital require maintenance in the way that a capital asset does? One participant's response was that it is more useful to conceive of social capital as a process rather than as a thing to be measured (if it can be measured at all). With respect to cultural capital, and to maintenance, there is a scale issue ranging from world-views - which change slowly over time - to practices (e.g. resource management practices) - which are quick to change.
The utility of measuring social capital was also argued for as an indicator of social cohesion. For example, measures related to civic participation - voting - would be a useful measure of social capital. However, given this need to measure social capital, there is an equal need to consider those unmeasurable aspects of social capital such as informal education and the operations of informal economies.
Trust was identified as a significant component of social capital. The discussion of trust began with a presentation of results of a case study on trust in Saskatchewan. In order of decreasing trust it was found that people trusted people in their neighbourhood, religious groups, community, and people in general. At the bottom of the list of people and institutions trusted were governments, politicians, scientists, and the institution of voting. The idea was presented that pre-modern systems of trust in, for example, kinship, are increasingly being supplanted by trust in abstract systems.
The discussion revealed that trust in institutions and people was contingent on a number of factors including culture, perception of risk, and type of issue at stake. For example, in Denmark there is a high level of trust in official institutions and as you move further south in Europe such organisations are increasingly distrusted. In Greece, the most trusted institution is the media. Studies in Canada have revealed that there is a very high level of trust in official institutions, particularly with respect to their ability to deal with environmental problems. However, the higher the health risk posed by a particular situation, the lower the trust in the government's ability to deal with such problems. As one participant's comments on the public's perception of steel-maker Stelco in Hamilton revealed, trust and legitimacy were contingent upon Stelco's role as a major economic force in the city.
A discussion on the role of trust in organisations emerged with dissenting viewpoints. An argument was made that there is more trust in horizontally structured organisations characterised by equality. The dissenting view was that there was more trust in hierarchical organisations such as, for example, the military. The need for combining features of both horizontally and hierarchically structured organisations in subtle, interactive ways was expressed.
A variety of views emerged on trust in corporations, particularly with respect to their role in achieving sustainable development. One view was that a long-term perspective is required in this instance and that certain corporations, Shell and Monsanto for example, were indeed attempting to move towards more socially and environmentally responsible business practices. As well, it was argued that corporations themselves, in order to acquire legitimacy, must secure the trust of the public through such means as public outreach and through tools such as social accountability and social audits. Given corporate practices to date, however, the public's trust in corporations has been severely eroded. Some participant's expressed a less than sanguine opinion that corporations, as they presently operate, could assist in the transition to sustainability. Increased corporate presence in civil society - on university campuses and as sponsors of cultural events, for example - was also a point of concern.
One participant noted that even though family and friends tended to be the most trusted, information sources on risk and environmental issues tended to be governments and other institutions. The role of the trusted is as mediators and filters for that information, and as a means for legitimising that information.
(Western) science's ability to foster sustainability, and its relationship with traditional environmental knowledge (TEK), became a point of discussion. How do you mobilise a larger range of knowledge and include more intuitive, non-empirical, non-reductionist and more traditional forms of knowledge in the decision-making process? A parallel relationship, that between research and advocacy (social action), was also deemed to be problematic. How does one translate the fruits of research and science into advocacy? What are the tensions between the two? It was argued that the relationship between science and advocacy was arbitrated by the media which, in turn, is agenda driven. What is required in this context is a more deliberative process between scientists and other stakeholders.
The discussion on education and its relationship to social capital and sustainable development brought into relief the complexities of the issues involved. Education, it was argued, was a determinant of social capital. The more educated one is the more one participates in groups, in civic activities, and in the institutions of democracy. That is, education leads to social capital formation.
However, two problems were identified with respect to education. The first had to do with the definition of education as the formal process of learning in institutions and earning degrees and diplomas - that is, credentials. Where does informal education - street knowledge, traditional forms of education acquired by learning from elders and within communities, education as a result of experience, social learning, etc - fit into the argument? Are these valued forms of education, problematic because they cannot be easily measured, and where do they fit into our conceptions of social capital? Do we need to move away from an essentially ethnocentric, credentialist, and somewhat elitist conception of education and highlight the role of informal education in the movement towards sustainable development?
The second point, related to the first, was that, as empirically demonstrated, higher education, as a result of higher incomes, leads to greater consumption. Excessive and inappropriate consumption had been identified as an impediment to sustainable development. This chain of causality suggests that the process of education and the institutions responsible are fundamentally flawed and that social capital operationalized for the purpose of sustainable development must take into account the processes involved. This highlights the problems of conceiving social capital as an inherently neutral stock - to be applied to the cause of sustainable development - and suggests that the process is more important.
The issue of power and its relationship to knowledge was raised. Where does power lie? Where is the power to affect change? What is its relationship to institutional structures? How is power related to social cohesion? What is the relationship of power to social class? An observation was expressed that power is not an explicit concern in global change circles - that is, not integrated into models - and that there was no conceptual means to deal with it. It is important to find where power lies.
A key point in the proceedings was reached with the discussion of convergence in incomes. It was demonstrated that high social capital leads to increased convergence, and that economies which lacked the institutional means for social capital formation were generally poorer. This was identified as the problem in developing countries and in the transitional economies. The degree of openness of a society has a positive correlation with convergence. Again, however, what is the relationship to sustainable development since the discussion was based on traditional measures of economic growth such as GDP?
The axiomatic point about convergence is that increased income disparity leads to a weakening of social capital through the erosion of trust, and increases in social resentment and alienation. Empirical studies have revealed that trust is lower when income inequalities are greater.
The discussion on this issue began with the suggestion that sustainable development may require the substitution of social capital for the acquisition of private material capital (that is, consuming too much). There is a need for people to (re)acquire a sense of community and to seek satisfaction, for example, from education (variously defined), recreation, community participation, civic duties, etc. In fact, it was argued, a lot of the activities required to create and maintain social capital were time-consuming and, hence, diverted energy from the act of consumption. The higher the sense of social cohesion derived from activities other than consumption, the more sustainable the community.
The discussion of the global/local nexus began with a few case studies, primarily from the European Community (EC). These case studies revealed that there is a new relationship developing between local communities and international organisations that, in some ways, displaces the nation-state. In the case of the EC, local communities devastated by globalisation were able to seek funds and assistance from the EC for community rebuilding. New relationships such as these have led to a reformulation of the roles of institutions in the context of increased globalisation and, in some important sense, eclipsed the traditional role of the nation state.
It was stressed, as well, that there is a need to think globally, to act as global citizens in the construction of sustainable development. This requires being mindful of the effect of one's consumption, for example, on the global environment and on more distant communities. A key concept in this context is the 'ecological footprint'.
INTERIM CONCLUSIONS AND LESSONS FOR SDRI'S GEORGIA BASIN FUTURES PROJECT
The Chair opened the final plenary session by reviewing some tentative conclusions or hypotheses to explore as set out in his summary presentation attached. The workshop then went on to consider some implications for further work.
A central purpose of the social capital workshop was to arrive at a set of questions, concerns, and issues which would guide the Sustainable Development Research Institute's SSHRC funded Georgia Basin Futures Project. The central elements of this project - strategies to be tested - are dematerialization and resocialization. Dematerialization refers to the maintenance or increase in goods and services while reducing their material and energy content. Resocialization refers to the increase in human well-being per unit of economic activity. The concept of social capital is central to the strategies of dematerialization and resocialization.
The use of the Georgia Basin, encompassing Vancouver and Southeastern Vancouver Island, as a test case is based on its richness in natural and human resources - which offers great potential for sustainability in a region experiencing rapid population and economic growth.
The following is a summary of research questions and issues of relevance to the Georgia Basin Futures project which emerged from the workshop,
- construct an operational definition of social capital. This is an important first step given that ambiguity about the concept could divert energy from the main aims of the project. Subsumed under this imperative is the need to clarify definitions related to the components and determinants of social capital such as education and health;
- try to create, and use, measures of quantification of social capital based on the operationalized definition - in some sense this may actually help clarify a working definition of social capital. An example of a useful measure of social capital would be civic participation which would lead to insights into how people view democracy, and their confidence in the institution.
- determine where, and in what form, social capital exists in the Georgia Basin. For example, how are people dealing with such issues as economic deprivation and job loss? Is there a traditional dependence on the state or are there new forms of networks - characterised for example by the emergence of an informal economy based on barter? How do people deal with job loss and the erosion of job tenure? Is there evidence of new forms of co-operation and community network building?
- determine if there are different forms of social capital requirements depending on alternate scenarios or models of sustainable futures. This suggests a fluid definition of social capital and, if so, what does that imply for the process of trying to construct a working definition of social capital?
- engage in deliberative and inclusive processes in partnership decision-making including community groups and all levels of government. This entails, among other things, the building of trust in a process that leads to a shared outcome that participants recognise is in their own interest as well as the interests of everyone else, and communicating in a language and meaning most comfortable and authentic in order to establish a community forum.
- build an educational component into the project. That is, the project itself should be engaged in trying to build social capital through a formal and informal education component.
Robinson, J.B. and J. Tinker. 1997. "Reconciling Ecological, Economic, and Social Imperatives: A New Conceptual Framework" In T. Schrecker (ed.) Surviving Globalism: Social and Environmental Dimensions. London: Macmillan, New York: St. Martin's Press
Scott, A., J.B. Robinson and D. Cohen. 1996. Managing Natural Resources in British Columbia: Markets, Regulations and Sustainable Development. Vancouver: UBC Press
Sustainable Development Research Institute. 1998. Reconciling Ecological Carrying Capacity and Human Well-Being: Exploring Alternative Futures for the Georgia Basin. A proposal submitted to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada's Major Collaborative Research Initiatives grant program. June 30.
The following are summaries of the presentations made at the workshop prepared by the speakers. Other than formatting, these summaries have not been altered. Three of the summaries (Berkes, Young, Dobell) are indeed just that, summaries, while the other two (O'Riordan - two presentations, Helliwell) expand on the original presentations. The presenters, and the titles of their papers, were as follows:
Tim O'Riordan, Centre for Social and Economic Research in the Global Environment, University of East Anglia: DELIBERATIVE AND INCLUSIVE PROCESSES: THEORY AND CASES
Fikret Berkes, Natural Resources Institute, University of Manitoba: Cultural and Natural Capital: A Systems Approach revisited
John Helliwell, Economics, University of British Columbia: Empirical Studies of Social Capital (The paper submitted for these proceedings is entitled: Combining Social Cohesion and Sustainable Growth)
Tim O'Riordan, Centre for Social and Economic Research in the Global Environment, University of East Anglia: Globalism and Localism: Seeking a Civic Identity
Lisa Young, Political Science, University of Calgary: Social Capital and Civil Society: A Political Scientist's Approach
Rod Dobell, Public Administration, University of Victoria: Social Capital: Tentative Conclusions and Hypotheses to Explore
Participants were welcomed by John Robinson, Director, Sustainable Development Research Institute, University of British Columbia
John Robinson is Director of the Sustainable Development Research Institute (SDRI), and Professor in the Department of Geography at UBC. At SDRI he directs several research programs in the areas of climate change and policy, the human dimensions of global change, the regional analysis of sustainable futures, and the development of modelling and scenario analysis tools. His personal research interests include large-scale greenhouse gas emission reduction; modeling sustainable futures in the Georgia Basin; the interactions among sustainability, competitiveness and trade; environmental philosophy; and the relationship between science and decision-making. He is Principal Investigator of the Georgia Basin Futures Project, a five-year SSHRC-funded program exploring how ecological limits can be reconciled with human well-being. Robinson is a member of the US National Research Council's Board on Sustainable Development, the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research, the Boards of the Canadian Climate Program and the Canadian Global Change Program, and the Canadian National Committees for the International Human Dimensions of Global Change Program (IHDP) and the UN Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE). He was a Principal Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Second Assessment Report and will be a Lead Author in the Third Assessment Report.
SOCIAL CAPITAL, CIVIC SCIENCE AND DELIBERATIVE DIALOGUE
Tim O'Riordan
Associate Director, Centre for Social and Economic Research
on the Global Environment (CSERGE)
University of East Anglia, UK
Timothy O'Riordan is a leader in the environmental policy field. His research is of immense practical importance and is distinguished by its remarkable interdisciplinary breadth and collaboration, exciting the interest of many scholars. A prolific author of books of substance, Environmental Science for Environmental Management (1994, 1999), and Environmentalism (1981) are widely used in a great variety of courses. He has made major contributions in the areas of risk analysis and management, resource management, environmentalism as a social movement, and the use of science in policy-making. He knows BC (having lived here for seven years and keeping in close touch with developments through his twin brother, Jon O'Riordan, Assistant Deputy Minister, BC Ministry of Environment), and is familiar with recent initiatives in sustainability, environment and natural resources management; he can relate his international scholarly research and practical experience to the specific context of BC. His research is on the cutting edge of defining new roles for academics, bridging scholarly research and contemporary public policy. His experience in South Africa as a visiting Oppenheimer Fellow, has enriched his interpretation of sustainable development.
Social capital is a theme with twin roots. One lies in economic literature, and is based on the utilitarian doctrine that people who bond in recognised and comfortable groupings, based on trust, reciprocity and agreed norms of behaviour, will conduct business more expediently, and with less chance of failure. The other root is sociological. It presumes that a more coherent and supportive social setting will be more conducive to effective participatory democracy. In addition, such a coherent social "voice" will be more authentic when policy makers need to tap the public mood over complex choices that intrinsically require their active engagement if "good" choices are to be made. This paper takes these ideas further into the realms of the sustainability transition, into a more interactive and deliberative science, and into processes of civic engagement that are explicitly inclusionary.
Jules Pretty (1998, 8-9) summarised the existing literature on social capital on the basis of four principles.
- 1. Trust, both in face to face relationships, and in institutions through which knowledge and judgement are mediated. Trust is important as it reinforces fundamental world views, and day-to-day beliefs in a comforting manner, as well as lubricating co-operation. The key to trust is a coalescence of networks of association that permit individuals to express themselves authentically, with self respect, and with dignity. People who have no esteem for themselves, cannot even trust themselves, let alone others. This is why trust, as well as empowerment generally, has to begin with the responsive ego.
- 2. Rules and sanctions have to be mutually agreed to the point where they are obeyed even when no one is there to monitor individual behaviour. It is this "anarchic obedience" that is the key to sustainability. It invests in all property rights the coupling of an individual possession and a planetary stewardship. No matter if the property right is air, water, land or peace and quiet, these twin conditions of self respect for stewardship, and civic responsibility for trusteeship have to apply. No externally prescribed rules can guarantee compliance. It must come from empowered and connected citizens. This is certainly one test of social capital.
- 3. Reciprocity and exchange are the basis of any nurturing social relationship. Generosity is meaningful only when it is unconditional. The successful partnership is one that share responsibilities and generates mutual support as appropriate, and when necessary. It is not pre-programmed, nor should it be expected. Such a state is truly revelationary. For the partnership becomes an energising bond of extended awareness of all others' expectations, interests and conditions for compensation, when joint entitlements are infringed or reduced. As such, a levy on socially and ecologically disruptive activity becomes a tolerated payment. This is because the revenue can be steered to form "sustainability charities" that are locally accountable, mutually supportive and joyfully redistributive. For a fuller description of how sustainable charities might work, see generally O'Riordan (1997).
- 4. Connectedness amongst social organisations takes place through a variety of means. Some are non-profit, but formal. Some are voluntary, and may be socially bonding but also exclusive. Some are transformational, built on coalitions of other groupings in the interests of new requirements. This would be the case with sustainability charities outlined above. But some comments may be less salubrious. They may form part of the informal economy, an element of which may be socially bonding and highly adaptable. But it would be illegal. Crime is also a feature of connectedness, for successful crime depends on closed associations, and a peculiar degree of trust.
It follows that all these conditions reinforce and recreate each other. Trust is the overarching requirement. But trust can only be imbedded through the observable response of "unobserved co-operation". Such co-operation has to be anarchic, i.e. unsupervised and unregulated, and trust is built simply in the joy of realising that others are watching as well as doing in the spirit of commons compliance. Social networks reinforce trust, and bolster beliefs around worldviews that in themselves are undulated by the coalescence of new groupings around the revelatory experience of deliberation and inclusiveness.
Thus, for the transition to sustainability, social capital may take on new forms of investment. The endgame is both people and planetary care, a coupling of the resilience and adaptiveness of intertwining natural and social capital. Trust and companionship create a behaviour to the natural fabric that binds the planet in habitability. This behaviour accepts that precaution is an act of stewardship, not a penalty, and that thresholds of adaptability require anticipatory measures of restraint. Where such measures may disrupt trust and connectedness for those likely to be effected by restrictions on their use natural resources such as forests or fisheries, or atmospheric, or aquatic absorptive capacities, then it is all the more important that new coalitions of discourse and fresh configurations of social networks are formed. These can help to address how to handle potential losers with dignity and respect. This is currently the challenge facing the mining and forestry industries in BC. And this is why a more interactive, civic science of resource management, as well as the introduction of deliberative and inclusive processes may assist the transition to sustainability in the Province.
The case for a deliberative science
To pursue participatory science is easier claimed than achieved. Once science enters a realm of direct democracy it becomes imbued with the failings as well as the triumphs of democracy. Endless studies of democracy (for example in Lafferty and Meadowcroft, 1996) have shown that power is not distributed evenly, that some interests are more likely to get their way than others in particular classes of policy and decision, that information is manipulated by bias and motivation, and that powerlessness is endemic to particular groups by virtue of their class, colour, creed, culture or choice to be peripheral to the currents of social change.
All this is well analysed, and, for the most part, well understood. What is less well understood is how to incorporate deliberative and inclusive procedures into the scientific discourse. The notion of deliberation is essentially the public discussion of issues that can only be determined through the public interest.
What pushes this approach forward is the funding from recent research, summarised in O'Riordan et al. (1998), namely that, in general, people do not trust institutions of governance and regulation when seeking assurance over risks to their lives. Such risks may be medical, military, criminal or economic. What a majority are exercised about is the involuntariness, the arbitrariness, the non-accountability, and the injustice of certain risks (see Marris et al. 1997). There appear to be embedded in commercially and politically motivated structures that do not seem to take the wider public interest into account, and which may cross moral thresholds of social acceptance. Such thresholds include the appropriateness of interfering with nature, the denial of real choice over what we eat or genuinely to wild 'wildlife', and the possibility that those who are vulnerable by virtue of poverty, or unknowingness, or inability to defend their rights, may selectively be the most disadvantaged.
This is why there is a case for a more inclusive and deliberative 'civic science'. Such a science is as much dependent on reliable information as it is on trusting procedures. No complex topic nowadays, such as the genetic modification of food, or the contamination of food chains by micro-toxins, can be handled by lay debate alone. It must be informed by science, as well as by social interpretation. Eiser (1994) suggests that opinions are formed by mutually supportive associations of beliefs and values that he calls "attitudinal certainties". People search for their version of the truth via a combination of trusted authority and equally trusted social networks of knowledge mediation. Once they lock these into their own attitudinal certainties, sometimes by recalibrating these certainties, then they feel reassured as to their view on the order of things. Inclusive deliberation for a participatory science requires a set of conditions that are hard to fill. There are various types of procedures, but all require the following underlying commitments.
That elected politicians agree to share power. In so doing, politicians should actually enhance their power finally to act. But that assumption is speculative in an uncertain new patterning of democracy, so most politicians remain deeply sceptical about real community democracy. This is an important issue to address in any practical exercise, and needs to be taken into account at the outset. Trust is clearly important here.
- 1. That regulatory and executive agencies become fully transparent. This means that they agree to allow interests to enter fully and openly into their deliberations. Again this is not easy, for most senior executive regulators are chary of relinquishing their highly cherished decision rules. But in many areas of food safety, including GMO regulation, the entry of consumer interests and other public interested individuals is all important innovation. So too is the introduction of the use of the World Wide Web for communicating agenda and minutes of deliberations, as is the principle of arriving at all decisions by consensus. This latter principle means that there is an obligation on all parties to move to a common position or jeopardize the outcome by the exercise of a voluntary veto.
- 2. That participants accept responsibilities to reach agreement. Rights to participate are not absolute. There is an obligation to incorporate the interests of other parties when inclusive procedures are invoked. Social networks usually throw up elites who do not always want to share power that they have recently attained. Inclusive procedures suggest they must do so, but in a manner that is dignified and fair.
Such conditions are difficult to find. Democracy may be well developed but it is not fine tuned to inclusive deliberation. We need to find many case studies of extended and learning democracies to discover just how possible it is to share power, and to reach just as equitable outcomes. The arrival of a more active civil society in recent years, well beyond the formal pressure groups, is a hopeful sign. So, too, is the emergence of Local Agenda 21 and the civic involvement in sustainability indicators. These are two initiatives of the late 1990s, that show the scope for more inclusive deliberation and a social and political norm. All of these issues are covered fairly fully in O'Riordan and Voisey (1998).
However, the crucial issue is how seriously and purposefully these procedures are treated by those actually in power. Citizens juries and consensus conferencing are well and good as deliberate procedures. The point is how they relate to other arrangements for scientific debate, such as advisory committees, specialist panels, and technology assessments.
Deliberative and inclusive processes in partnership decision making
The aim of deliberative and inclusive processes is
- to build trust in a process that leads to a shared outcome that participants recognise is in their own interest as well as the interests of everyone else
- to communicate in the language and meaning most comfortable and authentic, so that all participants can gain power through self respect and self identification. This in turn means building on esteem and self confidence
- to create a dialogue initially on a one to one basis through a trained facilitator who acquires information on views about the appropriate process, and also about desirable outcomes. This element only ends when all relevant interests are identified
- to establish the basis for common agreement amongst all parties and to build on that agreement by working slowly outwards to areas of development and dispute. To start from the basis of agreement also helps to show interests, and to build confidence that shifts in outlook and position are not too threatening
- to create an atmosphere for meeting that allows for both collective discussion and small group 'break outs' so that continued progress can be made
- to generate a document of common understanding before the first full meeting takes place and after the end of the process, to which everyone involved agrees
- to create a sustainability trust to act as a pool of grant aid for various community initiatives, run by community representative trustees
- to establish a community forum to act as a sounding board for all decisions, such a forum would be representative of all interests, but would only meet once a year. The rest of the time it would be facilitated on a face to face basis, and by internet. An effective and inclusive forum is an essential backdrop to partnerships in the promotion of sustainable development.
Eiser, R. 1994. Attitudes, Chaos, and the Connectivist Mind. Exeter: University of Exeter Press
Fishkin, J. 1991. Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions for Democratic Reform. New Haven, CT.: Yale University Press
Lafferty, W. and Meadowcroft, J.M. (eds.) 1996. Democracy and Environment: Problems and Prospects. London: Edward Elgar
Lee, K. 1993. Campers and Gyroscope: Integrating Science and Policy for the Environment. New York: Island Press
Marris, C., Langford, I., Sanderson, T. and O'Riordan, T. 1997. Risk Analysis.
O'Riordan, T., Marris, C. and Langford, I. 1997. Images science underlying public perceptions of risk. In Royal Society, Science, Policy and Risk, Royal Society, London, 13-30.
O'Riordan, T. and (ed.) 1997. Ecotaxation. London: Earthscan Publications
O'Riordan, T. and Ward, R. 1997. "Building trust in shoreline management: creating participatory consultation in shoreline management plans." Land Use Policy, 14(4), 257-276.
O'Riordan, T. and Voisey, H. (eds.) 1998. The Transition to Sustainability: The Politics of Agenda 21 in Europe. London: Earthscan Publications
Pretty, J. 1998. The Living Land. London: Earthscan Publications
CULTURAL AND NATURAL CAPITAL: A SYSTEMS APPROACH REVISITED
Fikret Berkes
Natural Resources Institute
University of Manitoba
Fikret Berkes's main area of interest is common property resources and community-based resource management. In subarctic Canada, he has worked with the Cree people of Quebec and Ontario (James Bay area) and Manitoba, and also with the Ojibwa, Dene, Nishga, and Inuit. Internationally, he has worked in the West Indies, Turkey, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. He has published on common property theory, coastal commons, small-scale fisheries, co-management, traditional ecological knowledge, indigenous resource use systems, subsistence economies, human ecology and conservation, environmental assessment, and biodiversity conservation.
His current work, supported by the SSHRC, involves comparative research on community-based resource management, and the current focus is traditional ecological knowledge and co-management. In the past decade, he has completed three team projects, Property Rights and the Performance of Natural Systems (1993-96, Beijer Inst.), Sustainability of Mountain Environments in India and Canada (1994-96, UM and U.Delhi), and sustainability of land-based economies in James Bay (1990-94, McMaster). He continues on a team project, the Resilience Network, with the Beijer Institute, Stockholm; acts as the President of the International Association for the Study of Common Property (1996-98), and Co-chair of the IUCN Working Group on Collaborative Management (1995-present). Ph.D. Marine Sciences, 1973 and B.Sc., 1968, McGill University
This paper does not claim to provide an "ecological perspective" on social capital. Ecology has little to say directly on social capital. But the paper does emphasise social system-ecosystem interactions, along the lines of our recent book (Berkes and Folke, 1998)
First, let's place social capital in perspective. There is a spectrum of concepts on the social dimensions of sustainability. These include social indicators, as used for example in Robert Allen's new book still in press, and a diversity of concepts of social and cultural wellbeing:
- equity: fairness, social justice, distributional issues;
- empowerment: ability of people to exert a degree of control over decisions affecting their lives;
- sustainable livelihoods: capacity to generate and maintain one's means of living;
- cultural sustainability: ability to retain cultural identity, and to allow change to be guided in ways consistent with the cultural values of a people;
- social cohesion: shared values and commitment to a community - as the foundation stone of social order, as used by Jane Jenson and others; and
- social capital: social organisational features, such as trust, norms and networks.
In practice, several of these concepts are used together. For example, the 1994 World Bank paper by Serageldin, Daly, Goodland uses empowerment, equity, community participation, civil society, social cohesion, cultural identity, and institutions in defining social dimensions of sustainability. The World Bank's Environment Matters (1998) mentions several concepts, including participatory processes, stakeholders, and civil society, but focuses on inclusion and institutions.
Expanding on social capital, it is worth noting that different authors have emphasised different aspects of this idea. Perhaps the most commonly cited definition is that of James S. Coleman (1990), in which social capital is defined as features of social organisation such as trust, norms of reciprocity and networks of civil engagement. Robert Putnam's (1993) emphasis is on one form of social capital, civic participation. Strong traditions of civic engagement are the hallmarks of social cohesion and, in turn, economic progress, argues Putnam. Elinor Ostrom (1990), equates social capital with the richness of social organisation. She emphasises institutional capital, defined as the supply of organisational ability and social structures, literally the "capital" of institutions that a society has at its disposal.
Our notion of cultural capital covers a somewhat different set of elements related to sustainability. I need to explain where we are coming from. First, the context of the cultural capital idea is ecological economics, and its focus on ecology/economy and its consequent blindspot in social systems and institutions. Second, the formulation of cultural capital is related to our central interest in natural capital, and in the relationship between societies and natural capital (Berkes and Folke 1993; Berkes and Folke 1994).
We define cultural capital as factors that provide human societies with the means and adaptations to deal with the natural environment and to actively modify it. It includes the following dimensions:
- worldview or cosmology;
- environmental philosophy and ethics;
- knowledge systems, including traditional ecological knowledge; and
- institutions (rules-in-use) that deal with resources and the environment.
In operationalising the concept, we emphasise three areas. First, cultural capital identifies institutions as the key concept. The major lessons are from the common property literature ("the global sustainability dilemma is a common property dilemma writ large"). Second, cultural capital attempts to capture several key features of society-ecosystem relationships, such as the importance of cultural diversity. It emphasises adaptive processes and an evolutionary perspective (C.S. Holling et al. In: Berkes and Folke 1998), and co-evolution (Norgaard 1994). Third, cultural capital uses a systems perspective: societies not only adapt to, but also actively modify their environment.
Can the concept of cultural capital assist with the project under discussion, and with the objectives of dematerialization and resocialization (Robinson and Tinker. 1997). Looking at the first-order, three-way interactions among the three capitals - cultural capital, natural capital and human-made capital - one potential area of intervention that stands out, is the loop involving natural capital and cultural capital (Figure 1). In many ways, this loop parallels Robinson and Tinker's (1997) resocialization. Note, however, that sole reliance on the idea of social capital would not capture all of the essential dimensions, including worldview, environmental ethics, knowledge, and institutions that deal with resources and the environment.
Berkes, F. and C. Folke (eds) 1998. Linking Social and Ecological Systems: Management Practices and Social Mechanisms for Building Resilience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Berkes, F. and C. Folke. 1994. "Investing in Cultural Capital for Sustainable Use of Natural Capital" In Jansson et al. (1994)
Berkes, F. and C. Folke. 1993. "A Systems Perspective on the Interrelationships Between Natural, Human-Made and Cultural Capital." Ecological Economics. Vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 1-8.
Coleman, James. 1990. The Foundations of Social Theory Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press
Holling, C.S., F. Berkes, and C. Folke. 1997. Science, Sustainability, And Resource Management. In Berkes and Folke (1998)
Jansson, A.M. et al., (eds) 1994. Investing in Natural Capital: The Ecological Economics Approach to Sustainability. Washington, D.C.: Island Press
Norgaard, Richard. 1994. Development Betrayed. London and New York: Routledge
Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action New York: Cambridge University Press
Putnam, Robert D. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy Princeton: Princeton University Press
Robinson, J.B. and J. Tinker. 1997. "Reconciling Ecological, Economic, and Social Imperatives: A New Conceptual Framework" In T. Schrecker (ed.) Surviving Globalism: Social and Environmental Dimensions. London: Macmillan, New York: St. Martin's Press
World Bank. 1998. Environment Matters 1998. Online Document. Figure 1 Re-drawn from Folke and Berkes (1998)
COMBINING SOCIAL COHESION AND SUSTAINABLE GROWTH
John F. Helliwell
Department of Economics
University of British Columbia
John F. Helliwell studied at the University of British Columbia and Oxford University, and taught at Oxford before returning to UBC, which has been his base since 1967. His main macroeconometric modelling projects have included the RDX1, RDX2 and MACE (=macro+energy) models of Canada, the INTERMOD model of the G7 and world economies, and contributions to the OECD's INTERLINK and other international models. He has also participated in Project LINK and the network for empirical research in international macroeconomics based at the Brookings Institution. His recent research has emphasized comparative macroeconomics and growth, including especially the influence of openness and institutions. From 1991 to 1994 he was Mackenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies at Harvard, and in 1995-96 was back at Harvard as a Fulbright Fellow. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and an Officer of the Order of Canada. His most recent publication is a book called How Much Do National Borders Matter? (Washington: Brookings Institution, August 1998).
Dr. Helliwell's main interests in Economics are: quantitative macroeconomics, national and international; comparative empirical studies of economic growth; international economics; taxation and monetary policy; natural resources, energy and environmental issues.
These notes provide some references to research relating to the four following questions: What are the linkages between social capital and economic growth? What policies and institutions are most important to maintain social capital? What are the linkages among inequality, social capital, and economic performance? What pressures does globalisation place on social cohesion, and on social policies?
Some combination of measures of trust and participation have often been used to measure what is frequently referred to as social capital. Although usage differs somewhat among studies, and across disciplines, social capital is usually taken to be the "features of social organisations, such as networks, norms, and trust, that facilitate action and co-operation for mutual benefit."1 This broad definition has its roots in the pioneering comparative empirical study of post-war democracies by Almond and Verba (1963), who "concluded that interpersonal trust is a prerequisite to the formation of secondary associations, which in turn is essential to effective political participation in any large democracy." (Inglehart 1990). Over the forty years since their empirical work in the 1950s, researchers in many countries have probed the extent of interpersonal trust, and examined the extent to which individuals participate in, and contribute their efforts to, voluntary associations. There have also been attempts to establish the extent to which interregional differences in these variables, described sometimes as measures of social capital or of civic culture, are linked with the extent to which citizens in the regions of a country are satisfied with the efficiency of their regional governments (Putnam 1973), and in turn whether there are subsequent payoffs in terms of conditionally higher growth in those regions with higher levels of social capital. For the regions of Italy, where detailed research had been carried out for more than twenty years, the results were fairly supportive of the notion that there was a causal linkage running from high levels of trust and engagement to higher levels of regional government performance and in turn to higher levels of economic performance, and higher rates of upward convergence towards best practice levels of efficiency (Helliwell and Putnam 1995).
1Robert Putnam, as quoted by Portes (1998), who also notes that sociologists often use the term to relate more to the contacts possessed and used by individuals.
Subsequent attempts to use World Values Survey (Inglehart 1990) measures of trust to explain subsequent differences in growth rates among industrial countries and among Asian economies (Helliwell 1996a) have had mixed results, although Knack and Keefer (1997a) have found stronger evidence supporting the view that better social institutions do support higher levels of growth among a sample of countries including both industrial and developing countries. Their use of a larger sample, covering a broader range of institutional quality, was probably an important reason for their finding.
Democratic institutions provide ways of mediating social and economic differences, but require a certain degree of social cohesion if they are to succeed. Proponents of democracy often argue that it is good for everything, including economic growth, while sceptics have argued that populist electoral pressures within a democracy are likely to destroy economic policy discipline, and then lead to budget deficits, inflation, and ultimately to political and economic instability. The relationship is difficult to unravel, since there is reason to expect that higher levels of income will increase the demand for democracy, thus making it difficult to untangle the reverse influences running from democracy to subsequent economic growth. My best attempts to sort out these two-way relations (Helliwell 1994) indicate that there is indeed a strong linkage running from the level of real per capita GDP to the existence of a democratic regime. As for the reverse line of causation, from democracy to economic growth, it is of uncertain sign, and in any event very weak. Thus it would appear, based on more than twenty years experience from almost 100 countries, that countries tend to become more democratic as they get richer, while the attainment of democratic institutions does not itself either damage or ensure subsequent economic growth.
At the time the transition to democracy in Russia and Eastern Europe was just beginning, policy-makers and analysts drawn together for an OECD conference (Marer and Zecchini, eds.1991) were inferring the lessons to be drawn from previous transitions to market economies, including, among others, post-war experience in Germany and Japan, later industrialisation in Spain, and the development experience of Korea.. Nothing in those earlier experiences hinted at the many years of economic decline in Russia and Ukraine. What went wrong? The studies done in 1990 did raise the difficulties posed by the institutional gaps in the former USSR- the lack of a rule of law, of standards of commercial practice and contracts, and even of basic levels of social and interpersonal trust - but did not begin to predict the full consequences of these institutional gaps. Perhaps it should have been possible to predict that in these circumstances even the most likely of commercial ventures would be mired in corruption and delays, while the most striking growth would be of criminal activities expanding to fill the institutional vacuum. The result was one of the twentieth century's most dramatic displays of the central importance of the institutions of civic society.
Is it reasonable to attribute the tumult and decline to the existence of a democratic system? Surely not, but it is reasonable to ask if it was unrealistic to expect that the institutional, political, social and entrepreneurial vacuums would be filled appropriately by some magical operation of the invisible hand. What is clear is that the institutional needs would have been easier to fill had they been more clearly foreseen, and if the process had been launched earlier and more effectively. If trust levels start low, and then fall sharply lower, the process of recovery is bound to be more difficult.
One common factor that underlies all good performance, whether economic, social or political, seems to be broad and better education. There is substantial evidence that economic growth in developing countries proceeds faster where educational attainments are higher, and where literacy is more pervasive. This seems only reasonable, as the greatest part of the productivity growth of the poorer countries involves catching up to the levels of technological and organisational efficiency already in place elsewhere in the world. To search out and learn from the successes and failures of others is likely to be easier and more effective when education levels are higher and widely met.
Social capital, taken to comprise the norms, networks and trust that underpin civil society, has long been found to depend heavily on education. Empirical research consistently shows that education levels are the most important and pervasive determinants of both trust in others and engagement in community activities. The implication of these results is that rising education levels are not only good for the individuals receiving the education, who thereby receive higher incomes and greater satisfaction from their other activities, but also for the societies in which they live.
The latter inference has recently been challenged by Nie, Junn and Stehlik-Barry (1996), who agree that trust levels are generally higher where education levels are higher, but present evidence to support their claim that the effects of education on participation (as measured by the U.S. General Social Survey) apply only to relative education. They argue that those with relatively high levels of education are able to attain positions of leadership, and tend to participate more than those with lesser education. However, they argue, rising general levels of education do not lead to rising general levels of participation. Although the issue is not yet settled, subsequent research has shown that when education levels of one's peer group are appropriately defined the evidence remains strong that social engagement increases strongly with education levels regardless of relative education effects. For some types of activity, e.g. reading groups, participation increases with one's own education and with average education levels, while for other types of activity these own-education effects are partly offset by relative education effects. For all total measures of engagement, at least in the U.S. data studied thus far, there remains a strong link from education to both trust and social engagement (Helliwell and Putnam 1998).
Returning to democracy and political engagement, there is also strong evidence that the likelihood of a country supporting democratic rights and freedoms depends positively on education levels as well as on levels of per capita GDP. This should also come as no surprise, as those citizens with higher levels of education are more likely to take an informed interest in what their governments are doing, and to want an active say in the decisions being taken on their behalf.
There is also a further relation, not yet fully analysed in the literature, linking education and health status, with those who are better educated taking better care of their own health as well as taking effective action to obtain timely medical assistance where necessary. This linkage is likely to be general as well as relative, so that societies with higher average levels of education are likely to have higher average levels of health, which in turn are likely to feed back to provide a more productive economy and society.
All of the above roles of education provide evidence of social returns which augment the already well-documented private returns to education, suggesting a high policy priority for widely accessible high-quality education. There is evidence that the returns are high to both basic literacy and to higher education, and also some indication that equality of educational opportunities is likely to support a more sustainable and balanced growth path.
Inequality and Insecurity
Although inequality and insecurity are obviously not institutions, they do differ systematically among countries and over time. In addition, they have been found to be linked to several of the variables already mentioned. For example, several studies (Persson and Tabellini 1994, Knack and Keefer 1997b) have presented evidence that economic growth is higher in countries where income is more equally distributed. There is also a persistent finding from several countries (Wilkinson 1992, Ben-Shlomo et al. 1996, Mustard 1998) that several measures of health status are lower in regions or countries where there is greater inequality of income, even after account is taken of the fact that regions and individuals with higher levels of income have better health outcomes. The inequality effect may be partly because there is a diminishing payoff to income as a determinant of health (Gravelle 1998), but there may be more at play than this. Finally, it has been suggested that greater inequality may also have negative effects on measures of social capital such as trust and participation.
The most important growth-supporting institutions provided by governments are those providing the rule of law, including criminal justice, commercial and civil laws, and a civil service that is free of corruption and capable of developing and administering the framework of laws and regulations required to support a modern society. Within such a framework, there is a real possibility that an enterprising civil population, supported by advice and finance from home and abroad, can develop the commercial ventures to employ and feed the people in such a way as to continually expand their options for contributing to an economically, environmentally, politically and socially secure future. Behind this broad picture lie many essential elements: a tax system that is fair and efficient, social safety nets that resemble trampolines rather than hammocks, accounting and reporting standards that provide the transparency needed to support intelligent investments, trustworthy monetary and financial institutions, efficient transportation and communication facilities, credible independent and diverse sources of information, and the ability to deliver education and health services efficiently and fairly. Whether individual items on this menu are provided by governments, non-governmental agencies, or private investors matters less than the quality of their provision. As the pre-1989 experience in the USSR shows, a fully state-operated system is not likely to provide individuals with sufficient freedom and opportunities to develop and exploit their talents. One the other hand, post-1990 Russia has shown all too clearly that without some critical combination of social trust and public institutions, individual and commercial freedoms are of little use, with or without access to foreign expertise and capital. Indeed, in the absence of the required domestic laws and institutions, an open economy may be in more trouble than a closed one, since the absence of order may scare off many legitimate investors leaving a vacuum to be filled by those venturers more willing and able to operate by stealth and corruption.
Does Globalisation Limit National Policies to Support Social Cohesion?
It is frequently said (e.g. Kenichi Ohmae 1995) that we are now in a borderless global economy where the nation state is obsolete. However, recent empirical work (McCallum 1995; Helliwell 1996c, 1997, 1998). has shown that this perception is dramatically mistaken, and that national economies are far more tightly woven than is the global economy. This implication of this is that national governments have more room than is generally thought to design and deliver social programmes that their citizens want and are prepared to pay for. What programmes the citizens want will depend on the strength of the same networks of shared values, institutions, knowledge and culture that make national economies so much more tightly woven than the global economy. How much in the way of social safety nets, transfers among regions and individuals, and other forms of income redistribution will a nation choose to provide? Where measures levels of social trust are especially high, as in the Nordic countries, social safety nets are correspondingly well (and more expensively) provided. Although measured trust levels are only slightly higher in Canada than in the United States, the Canadian social safety nets have been broader and more expensive than in the United States. For example, Blank and Hanratty (1995, 192) found that U.S. poverty rates for single-parent families would have fallen from 43% to 16% if typical Canadian transfer programs were applied instead of the actual US programs, using 1986 data. Card and Freeman (1995) calculate that the total cost of transfer programmes in 1990 was 4.7% of GDP in Canada, compared to 1.7% in the United States. This is a large difference, but smaller than the amount by which the cost of the U.S. health care system exceeded the cost of Canadian health care. Thus the combined cost of health care and the more conventional social safety nets was no more in Canada than in the United States.
Income tax rates are nonetheless higher in Canada than in the United States for high income earners. This does not follow directly from the social transfer and health costs, but depends on a more progressive income tax system in Canada than in the United States and greater public debt costs in Canada. Intergovernmental transfers are also much greater in Canada than in the United States, with implications for federal tax rates. Does Canada have enough social cohesion to support these high transfer and tax rates? There has been worry over the past decade, as welfare case loads have risen, tax rates have risen, unemployment has remained stubbornly high, and incomes have stagnated for the average worker, that it would impossible to maintain support for the social safety nets. Budget pressures have led to programme cuts and attempts to make the programmes leaner and more efficient. The combination of tighter rules and the growing numbers of poverty-level youth and single-parent families has meant that the current system has come under attack for being both too restrictive and too expensive. Are the current programmes politically and economically sustainable at current levels of expenditure? The politics are difficult to assess. On the social side, the programmes have been under pressure, but they have helped to avoid the growing after-tax inequality of family income seen in the United States, even though the pre-tax inequality of incomes has risen somewhat. On the economic side, it is worth considering both the intergovernmental transfers and the frequently heard claim that tax differentials are responsible for a sharply increased drain of talented Canadians to the United States.
Although the Canadian interprovincial transfer system, whose centrepiece is the system of equalisation payments, is much larger than its U.S. counterparts, interprovincial migration in Canada is even more fluid than that in the United States. The strength of national networks is so strong that Canadians are far more likely to move right across the country than to move to the United States, even if the incomes are higher and the move a shorter one (Helliwell 1996b and 1998, chapter 4). It would be expected, especially by someone who was not aware of the much greater strength of national social and economic networks, that there would have been a large brain drain from Canada to the United States during the 1990s. This was to be expected because growth was much faster in the United States than in Canada, the supply of those with higher education was increasing much faster in Canada than in the United States, the salary premium for those with higher education was increasing faster in the United States than in Canada, and the unemployment rate difference between the two countries was about 4% for much of the decade. What is surprising to many, and unknown to most, is that the actual number of Canadian-born individuals living in the United States has fallen substantially since 1980, and most especially during the 1990s. The U.S. census and the U.S. Current Population Survey put the numbers of Canadian-born in the United States, in thousands of persons, at 843 in 1980, 772 in 1990, 679 in 1994, 660 in 1996 and 542 in 1997. Migration from Canada to the United States has fallen over the past decade, both in numbers and as a share of the population of either country.
The main message of this paper is that there is much more scope and need for national policies than is popularly thought. This is especially true for policies of the sort needed to build institutions capable of supporting equitable and sustainable growth. This requires economic policy-makers to take a broader than usual perspective, and to consider more explicitly the linkages among social, human and economic health. The need for such an enlarged perspective, and the corresponding need to take institution-building seriously, is one of the most striking lessons to be drawn from Canadian and international experience in the 1990s.
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Ohmae, Kenichi. 1995. The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Region Economies. New York: The Free Press
Persson, Torsten, and Guido Tabellini. 1994. "Is Inequality Harmful for Growth?" American Economic Review 84 (3): 600-21.
Portes, Alejandro. 1998. "Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology." Annual Reviews of Sociology 24: 1-24.
Putnam, Robert D. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press
Schmidley, A. Diane, and J. Gregory Robinson. 1998. "How Well Does the Current Population Survey Measure the Foreign-Born Population in the United States?" Population Division Working Paper No. 2. Washington DC: US Bureau of the Census
Wilkinson, R.G. 1992. "Income Distribution and Life Expectancy" British Medical Journal 304: 165-8.
GLOBAL-LOCAL RELATIONS AND CIVIC IDENTITY
Tim O'Riordan
Centre for Social and Economic Research in the Global Environment, University of East Anglia
Globalisation and localisation are coupled together in mutual identification. There is nothing that is global that does not have a local manifestation, and that in its transformation, changes the global context. Similarly local actions, local perceptions, and local aspirations accumulate to chaotic but global outcomes. Globalisation and localisation, therefore, are processes of change, together with their impacts on economies, societies, cultures and outlooks, that are both globalising and localising. They may take place at any scale, and at any level of social organisation. Globalism and localism, however, are culturally and politically framed interpretations of globalisation and localisation that take place via processes of personal experience, trust, reciprocity, and social networks of interest and bias. These two discourses cannot be separated and provide a basis for civic identity, along with consolidated views on the transition to sustainability.
Global-local relationships
To show how convoluted, how non-spatial, and how interactive are the linkages between global-local relations, let us look at three very different examples:
- 1. Genetic modification of foods. The US corporation Monsanto is anxious to create an "all-round" commercial embrace of the farmer. To do this, the Company, along with joint ventures, has gained control over the modification of rape seed, soya and maize so that its own seeds are designed to take its own herbicide (a very effective but non-specific compound called Roundup). Furthermore, farmers are forced to lock themselves into the Monsanto regime because their seeds are designed to destruct after a year. This is regarded as a protection against genetic spread to non-genetically modified crops. But in practice it commits millions of farmers to a Monsanto "package" from which there is virtually no escape.
- Resistance to this practice has come from Europe, where both activists are damaging all trial crops, via internet communication as to location, and where governments are holding a moratorium on commercial planting due to local protest. A global company is put in its place by global environmental organisations, and local protest, and micro-local experimental crop destruction. It is unlikely that Monsanto will regain a positive image amongst the general public and its competitors until it moves away from a pure biotechnology solution.
- 2. The Garden Route in South Africa is one of the most attractive areas for coastal biodiversity, yet also coastal residence. Golf courses, housing development, time-share apartments, and hotel complexes are sprouting on the indigenous bush with virtually no opposition. All of the financing is from outside the areas, most in from outside South Africa, and few people gain locally once the construction has finished.
- Developers, sensitive to growing opposition, are looking for ways of creating local educational trusts to finance computers, books and classroom maintenance in impoverished schools in disadvantaged communities. The so-called educational trusts are very shady operations, but are designed to drive a wedge between black South African anger over failing to gain any real wealth or opportunity in the post-apartheid process, and white frustration at the loss of environmental quality. This is seen as a loss which will ultimately damage future tourist prospects and provide no long term jobs in the local area. Global capital, local manipulation in civic resistance: these are hall-marks of global-local relations.
These global-local relationships are neither spatial, nor judgmental in their manifestation. Spatially, the impacts may take place in many forms in many distant areas. Construction workers on the controversial Garden Route sites may transmit money to their families in the Transkei, 600 km away. GM food may inflame an interest in organic production, thereby creating a market for new organic co-operatives, a dozen kilometres from the scene of GM crop planting. And so on.
What is important is that global may be good or bad, depending on the circumstances of social capital formation the safeguards for the vulnerable, and the general public mood. It may well be that GM food will make agridiversity increasingly untenable, unless GM technology is explicitly geared to promote that cause. The consequences of the undermining of local agridiversity for rural social capital in many parts of the Third World could be catastrophic.
So globalism and localism are really processes of responsiveness and adaptability that are mediated and indeed defined by institutional arrangements and patterns of social expectations. All this may cause them to be interpreted by interests and stakeholders positively or negatively, depending on their views on the transition to sustainability.
Civic identity is the mechanism through which groups in society reveal their own sense of worth, and position, in the order of things when facing global-local change. Following a study of five European nations' experiences in this relationship with regard to the sustainability transition generally (see O'Riordan and Voisey, (1998) for an analysis of that transition), it may be posited that civic identity has five elements. These are not exclusive, and they may be contradictory.
1. Distinctiveness. Groups want to regard themselves as different from others for a number of reasons. the most obvious is agreed cultural norms, through which language, clothing, lifestyle, buildings and jobs all vary according to tradition and locality. Another obvious case is religion, though it follows that in some localities religious binds vary from the absolute to the ephemeral. Religion is not in itself a key indicator of identity. But in a multi-denominational world, religion can still be a highly significant determinant.
2. Exclusion. Groups will exclude themselves for others through norms of behaviour, through perceptions of their own solidarity, and through their attitudes to external authority. Those forced to locate somewhere, or who have had no choice in their search for somewhere to live, will look for norms that specifically exclude then from the world outside. They may indulge in various levels of criminality. This, too, reinforces exclusion
. 3. Resilience. Almost all social groupings can seemingly cope with the most arduous and unhopeful of circumstances. It is the unforgivingness that stimulates informed response. This might take the form of deploying charitable income for sustainability levies to upgrade their livelihood chances through education, training, or other forms of social uplift. It would also come in the manner of local exchange brokering schemes for services, or through micro-credit banking operations. Resilience is linked to livelihood, namely the capacity to earn income for a number of coalescing occupations, some of which may be illegal. 'Above all, resilience relies on rich social networks, and the reciprocity of social capital
. 4. Insecurity of income, of occupational status, of health, of family relationships, of state supported social security, and of criminal violence is another basis for creating identity. Arguably the vulnerable have to seek solidarities in the face of insecurity via formal and informal financial - social relationships. Reciprocity is of the utmost importance here, especially the unconditional reciprocity based on trust and associated networks.
5. Empowerment is the creation of self respect, and the capacity to be credible in the face of any need for participation and resistance. For empowerment to work, there must be both a political and a social responsiveness to the creation of self esteem and group identity, and to the facilitation of participation. These are still rare conditions, but their nurturing is vital in any transition to sustainability.
Identity may create solidarity and a sense of social cohesion, but it does necessarily lead to sustainability. Indeed, unless there are specific institutional arrangements in place, the likelihood is that civic identity will lead to disruptive and non sustainable outcomes. This is because much of identity creation is dependent on anger, resentment, frustration, or bonding through oppression. Trust, voluntary associations may create identity too. But generally, this will be of a most socially ordered kind. this may also prove to be comfortably self serving for particular class values and social agendas.
Conditions that promote identity and sustainability
From a series of case studies outlined in the references (see O'Riordan 1998) the following conclusions are reached.
1. Sustainability and democracy require new forms of multi-layered governance. Multi layered governance, refers to a flexible and spontaneous relationship between global, national and local relations involving partnered budgets and policy co-ordination across governmental boundaries. The rise of devolution and the emergence of coupled budgets for combined public purposes, plus the growing social responsiveness of business, combine to create a more favourable setting for more open governmental relationships, both at the formal and informal levels.
2. Local identity may be enhanced by charitable sustainability trusts. There is a strong case for raising locally levies on damage to natural and social capital. The very act of raising such levies ensures that better measures of these coupled "capitals" will have to be found. One way of assisting this is the creation of sustainability indicators, the prime interests of the UK based organisation the Local Government Management Bill (1996). Generally in Europe, ecotaxation is very much the focus of attention, through which local income is beginning to be raised in a number of exciting ways. How to use this money will require variants of deliberative and inclusive processes (O'Riordan, 1997).
3. The maintenance of the social fabric is an honourable activity. A sound social fabric is also exceedingly efficient economically in the medium to long term, as it allows the facilitation of business and the conducts of communication with the public by means that are effective, fair and efficient. So there is a case to create, and to reinforce the creative elements of civic identity by measures that recognise the sustainability benefits of socially maintaining lifestyles and behaviour. We may be a long way from that in the formal economy. In the meantime, we can make use of public-private partnerships of various types to promote the cause, and to provide valuable case experience.
4. Constructive empowerment requires creative Local Agenda 21 initiatives. LA21 is the local government version of Agenda 21, as defined in Chapter 28 (O'Riordan and Voisey, 1998, 231-234). This is a highly varied localisation of sustainability based on initiatives towards empowerment democracy, income redistribution, community trust building, and interconnected experimental schemes. The best LA21 examples are located in communities that are deliberately seeking to empower as part of their commitment to sustainability (Walters, 1998).
5. Visionary leaders must be allowed to flourish, yet be sensitive to equity and vulnerability. It is by no means clear that the transition to sustainability will enable all those who are already vulnerable to be empower. Indeed, there is evidence for a Norwich study, empowerment effects may actually widen the disparity of disempowerment. This is because the alienated and vulnerable may not have the motive nor the capacity to respond. Such matters are enormously difficult to monitor, and can be addressed via good sustainability indicator exercises.
6. Sustainability indicators can be a key influence, but require deliberative and inclusive processes for their full effectiveness. Sustainability indicators are community led indices of promotion for cherished sustainability ends. They require a mix of measurement and feeling, and also require physical parameters as well as social monitoring of related parameters. For a fuller summary of various approaches to the creation and management of sustainability indicators, see Cadman and Willis (1998).
- Sustainability indicators are community initiated measures of states of well-being or disadvantages, that can be used to:
- identify those most vulnerable to any change, and why
- spot critical aspects of ecological functioning on resource availability close to thresholds of collapse or phase change
- focus on those most able to assist others in the process of empowerment · generate clearly understood measures of progress towards a better society, economy and environment
- provide a focus for partnered co-operation between formal and informal aspects of government and community well-being.
The purpose of sustainability indicators is to:
- help define sustainable development in programmatic terms
- co-ordinate data collection, policy integration and accessible reporting
- set performance targets and ensure accountability and responsiveness
- create a sense of participatory momentum
For sustainability indicators to succeed, there should be in place:
- a genuine commitment to participatory democracy
- a willingness to experiment with an informal democracy alongside a formal democracy
- a participatory process that is sincerely inclusive of all relevant and legitimate interests
Cadman, D. and Willis, S. 1998. A review of sustainability indicators. London: Jackson Environmental Institute,.
Local Government Management Board. 1996. Sustainability Indicators for LA21: Evidence for Case Studies. LGMB, London.
O'Riordan, T. (ed.) 1997. Ecotaxation. London: Earthscan
O'Riordan, T. 1998. Democracy, Sustainability And Locality. Report to the EC. University of East Anglia, Norwich: CSERGE
O'Riordan, T. and Voisey, H. (eds.) 1998. The Transition to Sustainability: The Politics of Agenda 21 in Europe. London: Earthscan
Walters, A. 1998. Empowerment, Social Identity and Sustainability: A Case Study of Mile Cross, Norwich. University of East Anglia, Norwich: CSERGE
SOCIAL CAPITAL AND CIVIL SOCIETY: A POLITICAL SCIENTIST'S APPROACH
Lisa Young
Department of Political Science, University of Calgary
Lisa Young is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Calgary. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1996, and subsequently spent a year as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia. She has published articles in Canadian Public Policy, Party Politics, and the Canadian Journal of Political Science as well as several book chapters. Her research interests include political parties, women's involvement in Canadian politics, and electoral law and reform. Much of her current research focuses on the issue of citizen discontent in contemporary Canadian politics.
B.A. Hons. (Winnipeg, 1988), M.A. (Carleton, 1991), Ph.D. (Toronto, 1996).
"Social Capital," along with "civil society," "civic engagement" and "social cohesion" have become the ubiquitous catch-phrases in both academic and public policy discussion. As they have gained currency, their meanings have been expanded or subverted to suit the various political and social agendas. As a result, precise meanings for these terms tend to elude us. The very meaninglessness of the terms has, arguably, increased their attractiveness. It's very difficult to argue with the notion that a society ought to be "civil," or the idea that a society with norms of interpersonal trust and co-operation is more desirable than one that lacks these elements. Nonetheless, there is much within the debate around these concepts that requires careful and critical discussion. When considered carefully, these concepts are not as benign as they seem at first glance. Even more important, however, are the linkages that are hypothesised to exist between social capital, on the one hand, and economic prosperity or functioning democratic governance on the other.
It is important to note the nostalgia that lies at the heart of the civil society and social capital literature. It harkens back to an era of citizen engagement that may never have existed. And, if that era ever did exist, it was predicated upon the existence of the nuclear family with a single wage earner and it existed primarily, if not entirely, among the middle class. To talk seriously about ushering in a new era of citizen engagement means either harkening back to the family form of the 1950s or in some way easing the time pressures in dual parent families. Moreover, it is essential to understand that this argument is fundamentally communitarian, as it emphasises mutual obligations over individual entitlements. As such, it runs counter to much of North American political culture and political thought. The importance of that clash should not be underestimated.
Political Science Looks at Civil Society and Social Capital
The notion of civil society, meaning essentially the associations that exist between the state and the purely private realm (and sometimes between the market and the purely private realm) was first articulated by Hegel (who saw it as a lesser entity than the state) and has a consistent place within Western political and democratic theory. De Toqueville was a great champion of civil society, arguing that Americans' propensity for banding together in voluntary associations (everything from town councils to charitable organisations) was their greatest defence from state tyranny. Empirical political science in North America lost track of the idea of civil society some time in the past fifty years, focussing instead on questions of institutional design, pluralist representation of interests, the attitudes and behaviours of individual citizens, the interests and capacities of the state, and the politics of social movements.
The notion of civil society found its way back into the North American political science lexicon some ten years ago, as students of political development noted the importance of a thriving civil society if democratic government was to flourish. That the term became associated with the movements to overthrow Communist governments in the Soviet Bloc could only make it more appealing. It was not, however, until Robert Putnam published a book, Making Democracy Work, which argued that democratic government flourished in some regions of Italy because of their rich associational life, and then an article, "Bowling Alone," which decried what he later called 'the strange disappearance of civic America' that the notion of civil society truly took hold in the mainstream of North American political science.
I strongly suspect that the enthusiasm with which Putnam's work was embraced had less to do with the merits of his work (there is considerable room for discussion of the operationalisation of the concept of "civil society" and his measures of civic engagement) than with an idea whose time was ripe. Putnam put forward this argument at a time when cynicism about government had reached all-time highs, faith in the ability of the state to address significant social problems had all but disappeared, governments appeared substantially impaired by their indebtedness and with declining capacity relative to a rapidly changing globalised economic system. In any case, Putnam's work was seized upon by both the left and right as offering a new avenue for discussion and "civil society" and the related concepts of "social capital" (which originates with Bourdieu and Coleman, both sociologists), civic engagement and social cohesion came into vogue among political scientists.
The discussion around social capital is very much interdisciplinary, given the presumed linkages between society, democracy, and the economy. Political science is very much engaged in the entire debate. To the extent that there are any discipline-specific interests in the debate, they would be: (1) the role of the state relative to social capital, be it in explicitly encouraging its formation, or (in some views) displacing civil society and thereby inhibiting the formation of social capital; and (2) the relationship between social capital and functioning democratic governance
The Clash Between Communitarianism and Liberalism
Calls for "civil society," social capital, or social cohesion are fundamentally communitarian. They emphasise citizens' obligations over their entitlements; they emphasise cohesion over individual freedom and choice. As such, they run counter to the political culture of both the United States and Canada. Contemporary North Americans tend not to be willing to conform to expected behaviours, limit their personal freedom for the common good or abandon the notion of entitlement.
That said, there is a longing for community. Not coincidental that there's a trend toward "neo-traditional communities". BUT even the people who buy into this concept really only experience (or for that matter want to experience) communal life. Don't take public transit, don't attend town meetings, don't necessarily want to conform to other norms of community living such as those enforced by religious organisations. Their social worlds may very well revolve more around their workplaces than their geographic communities. In this sense, they are living out the liberal ethos of self-determination. In short, there are profound limits on the extent to which communitarian solutions can be applied in highly liberal societies.
Putnam, Robert D. (1993) Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press
SOCIAL CAPITAL: TENTATIVE CONCLUSIONS AND HYPOTHESES TO EXPLORE
Rod Dobell (Workshop Chair)
School of Public Administration
University of Victoria
Rod Dobell grew up in Vancouver, studying economics and mathematics at UBC before going on to MIT for a PhD in Economics. He was appointed Assistant Professor of Economics at Harvard and taught there for four years before returning to Canada to participate in establishing the Institute for Policy Analysis at the University of Toronto, where he was Professor of Political Economy. Since then he has served as Deputy Secretary (Planning) in the Treasury Board Secretariat of the Government of Canada, as Director of the General Economics Branch at OECD, as President of the Institute for Research on Public Policy, and as Professor and Director of the School of Public Administration at the University of Victoria (1978-84), where he was more recently named as the first appointment to the Francis G. Winspear Chair for Research in Public Policy (1991-97), and remains as Professor of Public Policy. He served as President of the Canadian section of the North American Institute until the tenth anniversary of the Institute this past August.
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Hypotheses to explore (1)
It is useful to distinguish
- cultural capital (values, beliefs, knowledge systems, traditions)
- social capital (quality of relations among individuals in networks and communities)
- institutional capital (more structured forms of ‘rules in use’, constitutions
- human capital (individual capacity to participate effectively in networks)
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Hypotheses to explore (2)
Social capital can be accumulated by building up
- trust
- confidence in (ultimate) diffuse or generalized reciprocity
- confidence in acceptance of rules and norms
- expectations of general compliance
- networks of connectedness
- confidence in shared context, values
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Hypotheses to explore (3)
Social capital is productive--can
- assure more ‘efficient’ use of information
- reduce transactions costs
- increase social capacity to reconcile perspectives and agree on the framing of issues
- increase social capacity to find consensus on response to problems
- improve compliance and reduce monitoring and enforcement costs in community management
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Hypotheses to explore (4)
Reduced information costs or transactions costs lead to greater economic efficiency and reduced ecological stress in meeting any particular menu of wants, or satisfying any specified array of human and social needs
This is a ‘de-materialization’ argument |
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Hypotheses to explore (5)
Higher social capital stock also improves social performance--makes it easier to agree on programs of social action that shift the menu of wants to more sustainable form (a resocialization argument), through
- increased compliance with agreed rules and roles
- better community management of commons
- social action to change individual behaviour (e.g., imposition of ecotax or regulatory limits)
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Determinants of social capital
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- Education (formal, traditional, tacit)
- Technology (TV, PC,…)
- Degree of equality (income, wealth, access, acceptance)
- Borders (national, provincial, group)
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Measures
Trust
Participation
- in active volunteer groups
- in advocacy groups
- in membership groups
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Consequences of social capital
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Social performance hinges on:
credibility
- of primary information sources
- of intermediary media and communications
confidence in institutions (government)
- as provider of services
- as forum
- as source of info on risks
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Measures
Trust
Participation
- in active volunteer groups
- in advocacy groups
- in membership groups
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- improved economic performance (reduced ecological footprint)
- improved government performance (more effective policy)
- improved social performance (greater context, cohesion)
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| Programs of collective action for sustainability are problems of collective action in a commons
As scale increases, problems of confidence in (abstract) knowledge grow; hypotheses about global dynamics are easily contested |
Effectiveness of programs of collective action in the global commons rests on willingness:
- to accept conventional science in respect of global dynamics
- to accept precautionary approach
- to accept cooperator’s posture
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This willingness in turn hinges on confidence in the process, confidence in ultimate reciprocity and gains from cooperation, capacity to sustain civic science, deliberative and inclusive processes
Thus, finally, the issues comes back to policy capacity in social processes--requiring us to push on to DAMASCUS
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ANNEX A: Changes In Policy Culture
Rod Dobell (Workshop Chair)
Public Administration, University of Victoria
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BOISE (1960s and 70s)
[Bold Inference and Social Experiment]
- A phase of confident conviction and clarity about cause and consequence;
- Landscape was clear, plain and could be understood;
- Maybe naïve, but always comforting in its conviction that more research and more knowledge would yield better results;
- ‘Evidence’ purports to be observation about a real world.
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SOCIAL CAPITAL AND POLICY CULTURES:?
From BOISE to DAMASCUS, with detours via MOBILE and ROME
- Visions of science in support of collective decision processes have traveled a long road. We still have the problem of seeing how people along the way can communicate their distinct perspectives and interests to be reconciled in such processes.
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ROME (1970s and 80s)
Results-Oriented Management and Evaluation
- Fallback to accounting; resting on rectitude
- Generally accepted principles punctuated by periodic pronouncements backed by infallible authority of a conventional nature
- ‘Value for money’ symbolism is central
- ‘Evidence’ is about satisfaction with service, drawn from surveys of users
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MOBILE (80s and 90s)
(Marketplace Of Big Ideas and Libertarian Economics)
- In the face of unmanageable information demands, one approach is to decentralize to market institutions, using price information.
- The justification is not so much any assured optimality in any one calculation, as it is a procedural assurance of adjustment to eliminate errors (‘creative destruction’).
- Individual liberty promotes social benefit.
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DAMASCUS (onwards)
Democracy and Markets and Socially-Constructed Understandings of Science
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Mysterious, ambiguous, diverse, conflicted
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Mixing mysticism and tradition with modernity, technology, and conventional science
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Integrated deliberative processes and civic science
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ANNEX B: Social Capital - An Annotated Bibliography*
December 1998
Prepared for the Non-Profit Sector Research Initiative
Project on Social Capital and the Non-Profit Sector
in Threatened Coastal and Rural Economies
and the
Inner Coast Natural Resource Centre
Alert Bay, British Columbia
Almond, Gabriel A. and Sidney Verba. 1963. Civic Culture. Boston: Little Brown
Anderson, T.L. and R.T. Simmons. 1993. The Political Economy of Customs and Culture: Informal Solutions to the Commons Problem. Lanham, MD.: Rowman and Littlefield. Axelrod,
Banfield, Edward "The Moral Basis of A Backward Society," which covered much of the same ground covered by Putnam, but 40 years earlier
Bates, R.M. 1989. "Contra-Contractarianism: Some Reflections on the New Institutionalism." Politics and Society. 16:387-401.
Bellah, R., Sullivan, W., Swidler, A. and Tipton, S. M. 1985. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Society. New York: Harper and Row.
Ben-Porath, Yoram. 1980. "The F-Connection: Families, Friends, and Firms and the Organisation of Exchange." Population and Development Review, 6:1-30.
Berry, W. 1993. Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community. New York: Pantheon.
Berkes, Fikret and Carl Folke. 1995. "Investing in Cultural Capital for Sustainable Use of Natural Capital" In Investing in Natural Capital. A. Jansson et al. Editors. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.
Berkes, Fikret and Carl Folke. 1993. "A Systems Perspective on the Interrelationships Between Natural, Human-Made and Cultural Capital." Ecological Economics. Vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 1-8.
This paper presents a system view of the environment and the human environment relationship. Ecological-economists regard human-made capital and natural capital as fundamentally complimentary. For global sustainability, the authors contend that human resource flows need to be integrated with ecosystems in a systematic fashion.
Blakeley, Roger. Social Capital and Public Policy.
With social cohesion an important concern, social capital and its relations to public policy are popular topics in New Zealand. In New Zealand, many believe there has been a loss of social trust, sense of belonging, and security. There is a need for "local solutions to local problems" and that social outcomes will best be delivered by people closest to the community itself.
Blanchard, Anita and Tom Horan. 1996. "Can We Surf Together if We're Bowling Alone? An Examination into Virtual Community's Impact on Social Capital." Paper presented at the American Sociological Association Session on the Internet and Social Change, August 1996. Claremont, CA: The Claremont Graduate School Research Institute. http://www.cgs.edu/inst/cgsri/surfbowl.html
Robert Putnam (1993) has developed a theory of social capital to explain the effect of decreasing community participation and civic engagement on declining institutional performance. Subsequently, there has been much speculation as to whether emerging virtual communities can counteract this trend. The authors apply the findings of computer mediated communication and virtual communities to the networks, norms, and trust of social capital and also examine the possible effects of virtual communities on the privatisation of leisure time. They conclude that social capital and civic engagement will increase when virtual communities develop around physically based communities and when these virtual communities foster additional communities of interest. Through a preliminary analysis, the researchers identified potential communities of interest including education, exchange of general community information, and opportunities for government and political participation. They conclude with a discussion of current trends and research needs.
Brander, James. 1996. "Evidence and Debate on Economic Integration and Economic Growth: Comment." In The Implications of Knowledge-Based Growth for Micro-Economic Policies, ed. Peter Howitt, pp. 155-160. Calgary
How should our understanding of knowledge based growth affect public policy toward international trade, international investment, and international integration? Natural resource dilution and how it relates to human capital and education is analytically linked throughout this article. Convergence and technology transfer, and the ethics and sustainability of industrial growth, are also raised in this article.
Buckland, Jerry. 1998. "Social Capital and Sustainability of NGO Intermediated Development Projects in Bangladesh." Community Development Journal, Vol. 33, No.3, July, pp.236-248.
This paper discusses destructive forms of social capital (e.g., racial barrier, industrial dominance, specialisation, and relationships of dependency). Also, the link between physical and human capital to social capital is made: "the introduction of physical and human capital through development interventions requires a concomitant promotion of social capital if development projects are to be effective and institutionally sustainable. Existing patterns and levels of social capital are likely insufficient to meet new demands resulting from the accumulation of new economic capital. If development is to take place that is equitable, balanced, and sustainable, then social networks and constructive normative behaviour must be extended."
Burkley, S. 1993. People First: A Guide to Self-Reliant, Participatory Rural Development. London: Zed Books.
Coleman, James, S. 1986a. "Social Theory, Social Research, and a Theory of Action." American Journal of Sociology, 91: 1309-35.
Coleman, J.S. 1986b. Individual Interests and Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Coleman, James. 1988. "Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital." American Journal of Sociology. Volume 94 (supplement), pp. S95 - S120.
The concept of social capital is introduced and illustrated, its forms described, the social structural conditions under which it arises are examined, and it is used in an analysis of dropouts from high school. Three forms of social capital are examined: obligations and expectations, information channels, and social norms. "Social capital is defined by its function. It is not a single entity but a variety of different entities, with two elements in common: they all consists of some aspect of social structure, and they facilitate certain actions of actors - whether persons of corporate actors - within the structure. Like other forms of capital, social capital is productive, making possible the achievement of certain ends that in its absence would not be possible."
Coleman, James. 1990. The Foundations of Social Theory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Collier, Paul. 1998. "Social Capital and Poverty"
Craig, G. and M. Mayo (eds.). 1995. Community Empowerment: A Reader in Participation and Development. London: Zed Books.
Edwards, Bob and Michael W. Foley. 1998. "Social Capital and Civil Society Beyond Putnam." American Behavioural Scientist. Vol. 41, no. 6 (May, 1998).
Edwards, Bob and Michael W. Foley. 1997. "Social Capital and the Political Economy of Our Discontent." American Behavioural Scientist. Vol. 40, no.5, pp. 669-678, (March/April 1997).
The concept of social capital is refined and operationalised. The authors offer a definition of social capital that is within the social structures rather than the individual. The authors cite global economic restructuring and the push to downsize the welfare states as factors contributing to the general decline in social capital. A synthesis of a number of papers on social capital presented in this edition of the American Behavioural Scientist.
Ellis, Bill. 1995. "Alternatives: Cooperative Community Economics." New City Magazine. 16.3/4: 44-46
The fundamental problem with putting sustainability into practice is that the global economic system is based on self-interest, reductionism, and materialism. Ellis calls for a return to the more basic value of community health, and an escape from the western mono-culture of industrial growth. He identifies the major problem with implementing alternative economics as the lack of central organisation around ideas of local economic control. As a result, mainstream economics and academia are unaware of the possibilities for expansion of existing social cohesion.
Etzioni, A. 1994. Spirit of Community: The Reinvention of American Society. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Amitai Etzioni's Communitarian movement began in the early 1990s. It is not a political party, but a network of academics and political leaders who are frustrated by the failure of national political parties to deal with problems such as crime and child welfare. Experts on law, civil rights, politics, ethics, and sociology, they borrow from the right and the left, blaming materialism and an excessive focus on individual rights for the disintegration of civic life. Communitarians support the traditional family, favour moral instruction in the schools, and would fight crime by limiting some civil rights.
Etzioni, Amitai. 1996. "The Responsive Community: A Communitarian Perspective Communities." American Sociological Review. Vol. 6, pp.1-11. February.
A responsive community bends the proper balance between individual freedom and community order. Society has a need for order. Individuals have a need for individual autonomy. As modern levels those needs may be complimentary but if either is over emphasised will produce conflict. The responsive community find a balance between the two forces.
Evans, Peter. 1996. "Government Action, Social Capital and Development: Reviewing the Evidence on Synergy" World Development, Vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 1119-1132.
Firey, Walter. 1960. Man, Mind and Land - A Theory of Resource Use. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press.
Foley, Michael W. and Bob Edwards. 1998. "Beyond Tocqueville: Civil Society and Social Capital in Comparative Perspective." American Behavioural Scientist. Vol. 42, no. 1 (September, 1998).
Fox, J. 1996. "How Does Society Thicken? The Political Construction of Social Capital in Rural Mexico." World Development. Vol. 24, no.6, pp. 1089-1103.
Working with evidence derived from a specific case study, Fox considers the complex limitations to social capital formation. Newly industrial undemocratic countries are highly sensitive to their domestic political situation and non-governmental external influence (e.g., the church). A broadening and deepening of autonomous social capital requires freedom of association, positive and anti-negative incentives, each of which is explored.
Friedmann, J. 1987. Planning in the Public Domain: From Knowledge to Action. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Fukuyama, Francis. 1995. Trust: Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. New York: The Free Press.
Fukuyama's central thesis is that there are high trust societies / cultures and low trust societies. In high trust societies, groups or cultures, greater levels of social capital are generated leading to higher rates of economic growth, particularly in the transition to post-industrial economies.
Grootaert, Christiaan. 1998. "Social Capital: The Missing Link"
Hancock, Trevor. 1996. "Healthy, Sustainable Communities". Alternatives. Vol. 22, no.2, pp.18-23.
Hancock identifies the city as the pivotal locale of change. He calls for a more holistic approach to governance requiring new skills, new processes, and new structure, and therefore an essential shift from economic development to human development. This would, in turn, bring significant changes in design and operation; human development being more centred on health and social well-being, environmental quality and ecosystem health, as well as economic activity. The major challenge is determined to be government unwillingness to decentralise control.
Hanson, Steven D., Lindon J. Robison and Marcelo E. Siles. 1996. "Impacts of Relationships on Customer Retention in the Banking Industry." Agribusiness, Vol. 12, no. 2, pp.1-9.
Friendly relationships between banks and their customers increased the financial incentives required by competitors to entice customers to more their funds. A survey of 1000 found that friendly compared to unfriendly relationships increased the interest rate deferential on deposited funds required for a customer to switch financial institutions by 74 basis points. A survey of 194 Michigan bank executives found a major advertising goal, staff interaction with customers, and community involvement is to develop and maintain relations with bank customer and to portray and image that the bank cares about the community it serves.
Harman, W. 1988. Global Mind Change. New York: Warner Books.
Harris, Judy. 1995. "Renewing our Economic Citizenship." New City Magazine. Vol. 16, no.1, pp. 48-50.
This article emphasises that mainstream economics today is limited to commerce, and therefore is not a useful guide to local economic development because it doesn't include those amenities that meet needs but are not processed, exchanged or consumed. There must be acknowledgement of a variety of ways of provisioning found in non-western cultures, and a re-conceptualisation of the idea of value beyond "free enterprise". Once we become adept at observing the full range of formal and informal economic activity that takes place in rural and bush regions, the inadequacy of the hierarchical, evolutionary, and often parasitic relationship between city and country is no longer acceptable.
Harriss, John and Paolo de Renzio a bibliographic review and some of the points above Dec. 97 issue of the "Journal of International Development", a collection of articles on social capital
Helliwell, John F. 1996. Do Borders Matter for Social Capital? Economic Growth and Civic Culture in U.S. States and Canadian Provinces. Working Paper 5863. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Hines, Colin and Tim Lang. 1996. "In Favor of a New Protectionism." In The Case Against the Global Economy, eds. Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith, pp. 485-493. San Francisco: .
Orthodox economics fails to acknowledge the social and environmental costs of globalisation, which has resulted in service sector industry stress, job loss, and lower wage economies. The structure of transnational corporations has created a culture of insecurity. Hines concludes by outlining the benefits of protectionism; maximum local trade within diversified, sustainable local economies and minimum long distance trade.
Hodge, R. A. 1995. Assessing Progress Toward Sustainability: Development of a Systemic Framework and Reporting Structure. _School of Urban Planning, Faculty of Engineering. Montreal: McGill University.
Howitt, Peter. 1996. "On Some Problems in Measuring Knowledge-Based Growth." In The Implications of Knowledge-Based Growth for Micro-Economic Policies, ed. Peter Howitt, pp. 9-29. Calgary: .
A critical outline of the conceptual foundations of national income accounting is introduced, with an examination of the differences between the production of capital goods and the production of knowledge. Issues of exchange, use, depreciation, and obsolescence are raised for each respective industry. Howitt argues that the real question is one of meaning, not measurement, and that the underlying problem is the assumption that knowledge is unchanging and freely available.
Innes, J.E. 1995. "Planning Theory's emerging paradigm: communicative action and interactive practice." Journal of Planning Education and Research, Vol. 14, no.3, pp. 183-190.
Jackman, Robert W. and Ross A. Miller. 1998. "Social Capital and Politics." Annual Review of Political Science. Vol.1, 1998.
Jenson, Jane. 1998. "Mapping Social Cohesion: The State of Canadian Research." CPRN Discussion Paper No. F|03, November 1998. Ottawa: Canadian Policy Research Networks.
Knack, Stephan and Philip Keefer. 1997. "Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff? A Cross-Country Investigation." Quarterly Journal of Economics. Vol. 112, no.4, pp. 1251-1288. November 1997.
The link between social capital and economic performance is explored with some surprising outcomes. Group membership are found to be not directly related to trust, income disparities seem a more important factor. This research, based on World Values Surveys of 29 market economics, suggests that trust and civic co-operation are stronger in countries with strong institutions.
Knight, J. 1992. Institutions and Social Conflict. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Kumar, Satish. 1996. "Gandhi's Swadeshi: The Economics of Permanence." In The Case Against the Global Economy, eds. Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith, pp. 418-424. San Francisco: .
What motive can there be for the expansion of the economy on a global scale, other than the desire for personal and corporate profit? Kumar emphasises that economic dependence on external market forces leads to community vulnerability as well as environmental deterioration. Self-sufficiency of the community is the ultimate goal, proving that the driving force behind mass production is the cult of the individual.
Lang, R.E. and S.P. Hornburg. 1998. "What is social capital and why is it important to public policy? Editors' introduction." Housing Policy Debate.
Most studies of computer-mediated communication (CMC) have focused on conceptions of the technology as a tool, rather than as a constructed environment while popular discussions of CMC activity already commonly incorporate the ideas of "virtual" culture and community. This paper frames the study of CMC in a cultural context, and grounds this study in a theoretical base of anthropological or sociological research on culture.
Lean, M. 1995. Bread, Bricks and Belief: Communities in Charge of their Future. West Hartford: Kumarian Press.
Leonard, J.E. 1994. "Rededicating Ourselves to Community." Journal of the Community Development Society, Vol. 25, no.1, pp. 35-44.
Libecap, G.D. 1995. "The Conditions for Successful Collective Action." In Robert O. Keohane and Elinor Ostrom, eds. Local Commons and Global Interdependence. London: Sage Publications.
Loury, Glenn C. 1977. "A Dynamic Theory of Racial Income Differences." In P.A. Wallace and A. Le Mund, eds. Women, Minorities, and Employment Discrimination. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
Loury, Glenn C. 1987. "Why Should We Care About Group Inequality?" Social Philosophy and Policy. Volume 5, no. 1, pp. 249 - 271.
Social discrimination resulting from economic biases, though accepted, can have serious effects on productivity. In a multiethnic society, discrimination on the basis of how things have been in the past needs to be revisited. Optimally, jobs could be assigned by judging merit and not background. This preferential treatment policy only serves to make already existing "communal and clannish feelings" more rigid which results in decrease in productivity.
Milton, J. Esman and Norman T. Uphoff. 1984. Local Organisations: Intermediaries in Rural Development. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
O'Connor, Pauline. 1998. "Mapping Social Cohesion." CPRN Discussion Paper No. F|01, April 1998. Ottawa: Canadian Policy Research Networks.
Olsen, Mancur. 1982. The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities. New York: Yale University Press.
Ostrom, Elinor. 1992. Crafting Institutions for Self-Governing Irrigation Systems. San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies Press.
Pacione, Michael. 1997. "Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) as a Response to the Globalisation of Capitalism." Urban Studies, Vol. 34, no.8, pp. 1179-1199.
Employing the assumption that the capitalist development model is no longer an appropriate economic system, this paper considers Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) as a possible approach to the challenge of reconciling social and economic identity. LETS are arguably a viable response to the hegemonic influence of global capitalism. Empirical evidence is drawn from the case of LETS in Glasgow, Scotland.
Portes, Alejandro and Julia Sensenbrenner. 1993. "Embeddedness and Immigration: Notes on the Social Determinants of Economic Action." American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 98, no.6, pp. 1320-1350.
Immigrant communities are analysed under four types of social capital, defined here as interjection, reciprocity transactions, enforceable trust, and bounded solidarity. Immigrant populations tend to rely on bounded solidarity and enforceable trust. While providing many benefits, social capital can also be restrictive.
Portes, Alejandro. 1998. "Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology." Annual Review of Sociology. Vol. 24.
Putnam, Robert D. 1993a. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Putnam's three most cited works have largely been responsible for a surge in popular understanding of the concept of social capital and have also defined the terms of public debate. Making Democracy Work reports on the study of the necessary conditions for creating strong, responsive and effective representative institutions. In it, a successful democratic institution is defined as being both responsive and effective: sensitive to the demands of the citizenry and effective in using limited resources to address those demands. Putnam follows the development of the Italian experiment with regional government introduced in 1970 and offers a glimpse into the conditions that underlie and give rise to good governments and bad governments. And while each of the fifteen regional governments created in 1970 were established with identical constitutional structures and mandates, their effectiveness at providing for the wishes and needs of the region's citizens is mixed and there were dramatic differences in social, economic, political and cultural contexts between the regions. Some regions, in terms of social and economic development, ranked with developing countries whereas others were on the verge of the post-industrial. Political differences were also evident, ranging from feudal patron-client enclaves to post-modern neo-city states, from ardently Catholic areas to the communist "Red Belt". However, it was their differences that made the study of the dynamics and ecology of institutional development ideal in the context of the regional government experiment interesting.
Putnam, Robert D. 1993b. "The Prosperous Community: Social Capital and Economic Growth." The American Prospect. Spring, pp. 35-42.
The Prosperous Community is a summary of the much longer Making Democracy Work, and provides a very good outline of the basic concepts along with a thorough summary of the literature and its applicability to issues of community and economic development.
Bowling Alone presents evidence of a decline in social capital over the post-1960s period drawn from participation levels in civic and political activities. The explanations that are offered for this decline (residential mobility, suburbanisation, the welfare state, race and ethnicity, and the changing role of women) are analysed in greater depth in The Strange Disappearance of Civic America. The primary culprit is television, with the deterioration of social capital actually beginning in the 1940s. Other factors studied: the movement of women into the labour force; mobility; demographic transformations (e.g., family dynamics); technological transformation of leisure. Indicators which Putnam uses include voter turnout, membership in societies, newspaper readership, volunteerism, neighbourliness, trust, union membership, PTA and religious affiliations. Counter trends, such as membership in "tertiary associations" (e.g., environmental groups) are less important because active participation is not required. Putnam also sketches a research agenda: sort out the dimensions of social capital; determine what types of organisations most effectively embody social capital (mutual reciprocity, resolution of dilemmas of collective action); study how public policy impinges or assists social capital formation.
Putnam, Robert D. 1995b. "The Strange Disappearance of Civic America." Political Science. Winter, 1995.
Putnam, Robert D. 1996. "The Decline of Civil Society: How Come? So What?" Optimum: The Journal of Public Sector Management. Vol. 27, no.1.
Putzel, James "dark side of social capital", Dec. 97 issue of the "Journal of International Development", a collection of articles on social capital
Rawls, John. 1987. "The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus." Oxford Journal of Legal Studies. Vol. 7, no.1, pp. 1-25.
Rawls finds that a consensus affirmed by opposing theoretical, religious, philosophical and moral doctrines provides the strongest possible foundation for public policy. That is, public policy based on such an "overlapping consensus is more likely to be both just and resilient than is public policy devised by less inclusive means.
Renn, O. et al. 1995. Fairness and Competence in Citizen Participation: Evaluating Models for Environmental Discourse. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Rheingold, Howard. 1993. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. (see Lawley)
Ritchey-Vance, M. 1996. "Social Capital, Sustainability and Working Democracy: New Yard Sticks for Grassroots Development." Grassroots Development, 20, pp. 3-9.
This paper discusses what measures of community-based development take into account both success in the short run and sustainability over time, highlighting how measurement or preoccupation with tangible results may mask or overshadow the underlying causes and conditions of development/underdevelopment. Some indicators which are discussed include: voluntary time or labour to project; knowledge of civic rights and responsibilities; linkages with other groups/networks; behaviour and attitudes about environs; tolerance for diversity; degree of co-ordination between agencies. Data variables which are advanced are: practices, relations, resources, democratic activities, basic needs, income, employment.
Robinson, John and Jon Tinker. 1996. "Reconciling Ecological, Economic and Social Imperatives: Towards an Analytical Framework" SDRI Discussion Paper Series 95-1: 1996: 3-27.
Beginning with an introduction to the current conceptual framework of sustainability and the practical limitations of using this model, the article moves towards reconciliation by means of dematerialization and re-socialisation. The policy wedge strategy is illustrated as a possible means of uniting the three prime systems of biosphere, market, and human society. This can be achieved through the devolution of management, combined with an improved analytical framework.
Robison, Lindon J. and Marcelo E. Siles. 1997. "Social Capital and Household Income Distribution in the United States: 1980, 1990." October 1997. Department of Agricultural Economics and Julian Samora Research Institute, Michigan State University.
The role of social capital in affecting the terms of trade is examined and the effects that social capital has on income disparity in the U.S. are examined. Social capital effects income disparity by altering the terms of trade. A theoretical model shows that as social capital is developed between two agents, the income of both agents will grow, and the disparity in income between them will decrease. Social Capital increases trading opportunities and increases specialisation. Analysis of empirical evidence from the U.S. shows that as social capital increases, income disparity decreases.
Robison, Lindon J. and Allan Schmid. 1998. "Can Agriculture Prosper Without Increased Social Capital?" Department of Agricultural Economics and Julian Samora Research Institute, Michigan State University.
In the context of rural community, social capital reflecting goodwill, loyalty, etc., can contribute to overall success. The values, caring and concern among people and institutions denote social capital. It has various motivations that touch on several virtues extant in humans. The growth or progress of most communities, in this case rural is largely dependent on resources of social capital within communities.
Rogers, C. 1980. A Way of Being. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Schiff, Martin. 1995. "Social Capital, Trade and Optimal Migration Policy"
The idea of a learning society assumes that certain types of social arrangements are more likely to promote lifelong learning than others. Yet although the idea of a learning society has been widely and enthusiastically embraced by politicians and educators, there has been little debate over the precise types of social arrangement which promote communication, reflexivity and mutual learning over time. Specific studies of learning within such social institutions as the family or the workplace have rarely been accompanied by a wider conceptual framework on societal learning. This paper considers the relationship between human and social capital, not only in respect of the educational attainment of school-leavers, but more widely in the context of the learning society.
Schultz, Theodore W. 1981. "Investment in Human Capital." American Economic Review. 51 (March): 1-17.
Schultz, Theodore W. 1981. Investing in People: The Economics of Population Quality. Berkley: University of California Press.
Investments in human capital is linked to economic development. Schultz makes the case for investing in education and healthcare in developing countries as a way to enhance economic growth. Through a series of case studies, he shows linkages between these investments and increased wages, productivity, and technology adoption.
Sirianni, Carmen and Lewis Friedland. 1995. "Social Capital and Civic Innovation: Learning and Capacity Building from the 1960s to the 1990s." Presented at the Social Capital Session of the American Sociological Association Annual Meetings.
Verba, Sidney, Kay Schlozman and Henry Brady. 1995. Voice and Equality: Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
A major study of the voluntary sector in America, based on 15 000 interviews. Walzer, Michael. 1980. Radical Principles. New York: Basic Books. Wilson, Patricia A. 1997. "Building Social Capital: A Learning Agenda for the Twenty-First Century." Urban Studies. Presents the idea of social capital as confronting two of the central tenets of mainstream economics: 1) scarcity - social capital is free; 2) "economic man" - social capital lends credibility to the individual-in-community: "the community is not a collection of atomistic individuals bumping into each other's self-interest, but rather is a network, a web of individuals-in-community." Strong links presented between social capital and productivity and prosperity. The intangibles of social capital: trust, civic engagement, etc., can no longer be relegated to the fringe of development planning. Community building must become a central focus of development planners.
Woolcock, Michael. 1998. "Social Capital and Economic Development: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis and Policy Framework." Theory and Society, 27(2):151-208
The Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America is an initiative launched by Professor Robert D. Putnam at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. This multi-year dialogue focuses on how we can increasingly build bonds of civic trust among Americans and their communities.
The Center for Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector (IRIS), at the University of Maryland, College Park, was founded on the premise that countries with healthy institutions have correspondingly healthy economies. Thus, IRIS offers a virtually unique perspective on economic development. IRIS researchers and consultants assist fledgling democracies and newly industrialising countries to build robust democratic, legal, and economic institutions which provide both a foundation and a guiding hand for future broad-based, stable economic growth. IRIS is working with the World Bank's Initiative on Defining, Monitoring and Measuring Social Capital.
This conference was designed to bring together academics, students and practitioners from different disciplines and divergent practical interests who share an interest in social capital and its consequences. The goal of the conference is to define the essential characteristics of social capital, measure its importance, and investigate its practical uses.
From the Robert Schuman Centre of the European University Institute - Florence, a working paper entitled Interorganizational Networks and Social Capital Formation in the South of Italy). Contains a measure of interorganizational relations between public agencies and private interest groups (an important indicator of social capital by Robert Putnam's standards) in the region of Sicily, using sociometric network analysis, done twice over a period of about 4 years. The paper includes an extensive critique of Putnam's work on Italy, and contains an abstract of the working paper and the address from where it can be ordered http://www.iue.it/PUB/rsc_fm.html
A special feature on social capital and trust in News of the European Consortium for Political Research: ECPR News, Vol.9, No.3, Summer 1998. Contributions by Margaret Levi (Washington, Seattle) on "A State of Trust"; by Carles Boix and Daniel Posner (Ohio State and Harvard) on "Social Capital: The Politics Behind"; by Marco Maraffi (Milan) on "Voluntary Associations, Political Culture and Social Capital in Italy: a Complex Relationship"; and by Paul Whiteley (Sheffield) on "Economic Growth and Social Capital". http://www.essex.ac.uk/ECPR
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