I think people develop social capital for perceived gain, just like other human action. I think that the government, by seeking to eradicate all ills has eliminated a lot of the perceived gain from developing social capital. For example, if you can get enough help from the government to survive, there is less perceived gain to be had in maintaining and cultivating relationships with your family, friends, and other organizations like churches. If someone makes you angry, why swallow your pride and forgive if you don't need them anyway? Also, if the help that you need comes to you as a right from a bureaucracy rather than from a person or persons whom you know personally and who gave to you voluntarily, there is less occasion for gratitude and to "pay back" what has been given (whether in kind or by some other favor).

I think secularization erodes social capital. First, I think people need to feel like they have values in common with another person or organization in order to be willing to contribute their time/effort/money. Why would you voluntarily contribute anything to a person or organization if you think there is a good chance that they will use that resource in a way that does not comport with your values? Religion tends to create a set of shared values among adherents and secularization tends to reduce the number of shared values.

Second, religion changes peoples' perception of gain. It may cause you to believe that there is greater gain to be had from the activities that contribute to social capital (volunteering, charity, etc.) either due to rewards after death or greater feeling of fulfillment even in life. This isn't to say that no non-religious person ever expects to feel greater fulfillment from doing these sorts of activities, but whatever perceived gain exists in a materialistic view of the world would also exist in a religious view of the world. Religion also may reduce the perceived gain from those activities that compete with activities that contribute to social capital. If this life is not all there is, then there is less perceived gain in maximizing your material (and recreational) well-being in this life, such as by working as much as possible, which makes you more likely to choose an activity that contributes to social capital.

So, I think that for the government to develop social capital, the most effective thing it can do is reduce the availability of social safety nets, but I'm sure some would consider this treatment worse than the disease. I don't think there is much the government can do on the religious front except to be vigilant in not suppressing it. Getting rid of public schools would probably help a lot because a lot of people would probably turn to religious education instead, but I again think that many people would consider this beyond contemplation.

I don't think it is a mistake to use economic terminology to describe non-monetary behavior because both monetary and non-monetary activity operate on the basis of perceived gain. It is just that monetary behavior can be quantified much more easily (because of markets) and so it is easier to conceptualize and to create a vocabulary around. Now that the concepts and vocabulary have developed in that simpler context, they can be used to elucidate human action that is more amorphous.

So, you, Unenlightened, and Erik don't like "social capital." What's the right word for what BC is talking about? Social values? Civic virtue? Community spirit? Quality of life? Or do you really have no idea what he is trying to get at? — T Clark

Well, think about the Social Credit Score system being put in place in China right now. Do you want to live in a world where your rights are in parts determined by how close-knit your family is? How quickly you reply to official letters? How many children you can be expected to have?

The step from simply quantifying Social Capital to ordaining society around such a score may seems dystopian, but it's the direction the world is taking.

In this case, rather, the paternalism is freaking disgusting. Why the hell should I tolerate that someone calls me "poor" in Social Capital just because I never speak to my family? Unless you've analyzed my finances, my lifestyle and my friendships, then you have no clue whatsoever.

& It is evident that you live in a county with solid social capital. You may have chosen to live there (as opposed to being raised there, but you weren't raised in a behavioral sink, either) and you may not be the "backbone" of the community but you are, I bet, a piece of a vertebrae.

A lot of places are very poor in social capital. You could live in a neighborhood where there was always trash in the street because your neighbors left it there. You could live in a community where property crime is endemic. You could live in a town where the police are corrupt, and nobody much cares. You could live where most male children will have arrest records by adulthood. You could live in a village where out-of-wedlock children are the rule--women with maybe 5 children and no regular partner, let alone a husband. You could live in a neighborhood where junked cars stay where they died for months at a stretch. You could live in a neighborhood without a fire department, volunteer or otherwise.

Social capital makes a big difference in everyone's lives.

Hey, to the best of my knowledge, Akanthinos, you weren't singled out by the CIA as either a particularly tragic or unusually fine specimen of social capital. In fact, it isn't an individual issue. The kind of capital we are talking about here is social, not individual, and it isn't measured in dollars at all.

Why the hell should I tolerate that someone calls me "poor" in Social Capital just because I never speak to my family? — Akanthinos

Nobody called you poor in social capital, because it isn't an individual issue. "Ecology" isn't about one particular weed amongst the nice flowers, it's about all the plants, weeds, flowers, trees, crops, bushes, grass, bacteria in the soil, worms, birds, and gophers all grouped together and measured en masse. Similarly, social capital is about all the people in the community, not the case histories of each individual.

If nobody in your county of residence speaks to their family, they have one hell of a deficit. If you don't speak to your family, it's statistically irrelevant.


So why don't you talk to your family?

I think Un is right to be suspicious about the idea, which, in effect and regardless of intention, is just another way to enmesh humans in a utilitarian grid of an increasingly administered world. — StreetlightX

It is astonishing that you find an effort to assess "the degree to which people in a community contribute to one another's wellbeing" as a plot to further dehumanize the world.

The very idea of social capital plays right into a strategy of increased psychic pressure and debilitation: not only your bills, family, food, and employment do you have to worry about, but so too your 'social capital'. It's another chapter in the fragmentation of the human psyche. — StreetlightX

Assessing the "wholesomeness" and "social vitality" of communities is another chapter in the fragmentation of the human psyche? Asking about mutual assistance contributes to anomie?

What planet are you living on?

The existence of social services counts as a contribution to the healthful community ecology of communities. (Do you like "healthful community ecology" better than social capital?) Unemployment is a social service, and your working in an agency as part of the program is social service, whether you were paid through the unemployment fund or paid as an agency employee.

[quote=unenlightened[/quote]I do what I need to to live, and I do what I can to help.[/quote]

All to the good of course, that you earn your daily bread and help others as the occasions arise and as you are able at the time to help others. In such a life you contribute to the healthy community ecology in which you live. You could do otherwise -- like, " help only yourself by taking cash from social services and "do nothing to help anyone".

My understanding of the term is that a volunteer fire service counts as social capital, whereas a paid fire service does not. — unenlightened

Unenlightened bends over backward till his ears are between his ankles.

I don't know about England or Australia, but in the US large cities have paid fire departments because swift and expert response is critical in a large city with many hazardous substances, high-rise buildings, dense population, and many buildings built close together. In a small rural town, the fires will either be an individual house fire (normally not very close to another house) or a barn fire, fueled by stored dried hay. When small towns do have larger fires, they summon help from other volunteer departments. In large cities, additional paid help is summoned from additional fire stations.

Fire departments are a part of healthy social ecology (a term I am using just for you since you can not stand "social capital" apparently.)

Hey, to the best of my knowledge, Akanthinos, you weren't singled out by the CIA as either a particularly tragic or unusually fine specimen of social capital. In fact, it isn't an individual issue. The kind of capital we are talking about here is social, not individual, and it isn't measured in dollars at all. — Bitter Crank

Well, it's not like I don't have already a dozen institution who'se only purpose in life is to quantify my social and national usefulness. And the distinction between the social and the individual is a red herring. You cannot dissociate the amalgam from the amalgamated, or vice-versa, simply because "it's not the issue". The issue here is the social capital that can become yet another point of pressure and conformity in a society increasingly devoted to "soft control", so to speak.

@Bitter Crank

I think the problem people are having with 'social capital' isn't that they think the stuff talked about in the OP is unimportant. Like, all of those subindexes all point to (in my opinion) absolutely vital stuff which any community will be utterly fucked if it loses.

I think the problem with the term is more like this. All of those disparate aspects of life can only come under a single heading once they've up and left. To take an analogy: empty nest syndrome. Let's say you married early, had kids (five red-cheeked cherubs) and spent the next thirty years tending to them. They leave. You feel awful.

Now how/why do you feel awful?

You could, if you wanted, break it into categories. (1)Felt Lack of Purpose Upon Awakening ( no one to help get ready for school) (2) Lack of Interest in Hobbies (You used to spend the days baking food, or mending clothes etcc.) (3) Decline of Communal Dinners (family is gone)

etc etc


Now say someone came into town, came to your apartment, tallied you on these categories and said aha! lack of Family Capital. Then they say....

Well, what do they say? When some community is lacking [x] and its a very big deal, and its a national deal, who comes in to help? Who comes in to fix things? Social Capital expert is who. The person who comes into town and looks around and says hey you guys enough of that, time to start working on social capital! What's your experience with experts like this? Do they not, almost uniformally, seem disconnected from the place they're trying to vitalize? If they threw a bingo night, wouldn't they kind of leave out the special sauce that made doug's bingo night work? And isn't that kind of linked to the fact that they're consciously trying to fix the Social Capital Deficit that they did their undergrad work on, whereas Doug was just trying to have a good night? Intuitively knew what would work and what wouldn't?

Your kids left. It fucking sucks. What do you now? Someone who breaks your homelife into categories and appraises them and then offers a Homelife Capital solution - how helpful is that going to be?

tldr: 'social capital' may very well be pointing to a real problem. It almost certainly is. But the very approach implied in 'social capital' qua deficiencyindicates a failure to grapple with whats going on. "Social Capital" is a technocratic word, and it tows in its wake a technocratic approach. But what if technocracy is the thing that cut social capital out in the first place (my opinion: It is. Look at the people who were whispering to Reagan and Thatcher as they put into place the policies that gutted rural communities. And look at the people whispering to Clinton while he did the same stuff with a democrat face. Why would we listen to that same sort of person, with that same way of talking, to discuss solutions?)

it seems like a big part of the guiding narrative for those of us who live in the US - is an overall suspicion of government (think separation of powers, federalism, etc.) and a corresponding emphasis on the importance of non-political or sub-(national)political things like individual responsibility, private charity, local politics, etc. — Erik

The New York Times and other newspapers have on a number of occasions published maps of the US which display state-by-state or county-by-county characteristics. One of the lessons of the maps is that the US is not nationally homogenous, and in fact is more homogenous within regions. Stephen Pinker has observed similar things about the US in his book Better Angels of our Nature.

The northern tier of states (more or less), or the far NW American states + the Upper Midwest + the NE American states have a much lower level of suspicion toward government than the SE, southern, and SW parts of the country do. It isn't entirely coincidental that the areas on the map at the beginning of this thread show healthier levels of social capital (or healthy human ecology) across the north, and much lower levels across the south.

The historical experiences, the politics, and the religions of the 3 northern regions opposing the 3 southern regions are different, and contribute to the quality of social capital that exist. The theme of resenting centralized authority (whether at the federal, state, or county level) is much higher across the south than the north. A preference for hard-edged individuality "I'm not responsible for your problems", and "it is up to you to take care of your own family" are more typical of the south than the north.

So, there are many parts of the US where you won't find individuals spouting suspicion towards government.

But think of the children! What planet could one be living on to see treating children as data as thoroughly detrimental to education???

But of course so too with 'social capital', which is as a much a disease as it is a cure. A Phramakon, if you will. It's really quite simple. Focus on infrastructure. Focus on healthcare. Focus on good education - new textbooks, good teachers, flexible extra-curricular programs. A well maintained, affordable, and extensive system of public transport. Well kept public spaces for recreation. The 'social capital' will flow from there. Not some arbitrary metricized rubbish, invention of technocrats and people with no ability to understand the shape of individual lives.

But of course so too with 'social capital', which is as a much a disease as it is a cure. — StreetlightX

I am thoroughly baffled that something I consider at least benign, but actually very desirable, social capital, to have elicited such negative responses. What is objectionable about determining the percent of families that are married couples with children? Two parents produce better outcomes for their children than one parent. It isn't mysterious why--there are four hands instead of two to do the work of raising the children, and generally two incomes instead of one, with lighter material burdens on both parents. Communities whose citizens are involved in civic affairs generally provide more satisfaction to residents than places where there is no civic engagement, or active hostility toward civic engagement.

Focus on infrastructure. Focus on healthcare. Focus on good education - new textbooks, good teachers, flexible extra-curricular programs. A well maintained, affordable, and extensive system of public transport. Well kept public spaces for recreation. The 'social capital' will flow from there. Not some arbitrary metricized rubbish, invention of technocrats and people with no ability to understand the shape of individual lives. — StreetlightX

Why does one community have good healthcare, good education with new textbooks, good teachers and well maintained buildings? How does it happen that City "A" has a "well maintained, affordable, and extensive system of public transport" and in city B, there is a minimal, barely functioning transit system? Why does one city have parks and recreation while another has only concrete and cars?

Whether it was present at the beginning of a city's history, or came about as a later reform measure, the infrastructure that makes a good city had to have advocates, interested citizens, and many citizens willing to accept a higher tax burden to get these public goods. (At least in the US, city infrastructure is often paid for by either property taxes or bonds repayable through property tax.) Good infrastructure usually doesn't come from heaven as a gift.

I mentioned in the OP that the county I grew up in (Fillmore) was not wealthy. It is quite hilly farmland, small farms, and very small towns. There is very little industry, no mining, and only small tourist attractions like a cave, a bike trail, and canoeing on a small river. Its population is about 20,000 in 860 square miles. It's about 92% NW European ethnicity.

Still, by measures of social capital, it is # 36 out of 2600 counties in the US. Why? Because it has very stable population, long-lasting community relationships (little geographic mobility), a stable but hardly vibrant economy, strong families, and good community institutions--churches, schools, and small town organizations. People have been willing over the last 100 years to tax themselves, volunteer, and pay for their communities' good features. That's what social capital is about -- the people.

There are neighborhoods in Minneapolis, wherein I live now, that have maybe 20,000 people living in comparative density, and simply can not pull together cohesively for any common purpose. Why? They lack social capital. Their population is very mobile (here today, elsewhere tomorrow), not very interested in pursuing education, not civically engaged, fragmented families, and associated poverty and crime. Other neighborhoods, same size, same diversity, same population, same city, are much more engaged and consequently obtain more infrastructure (like frequent bus service, better school maintenance, more street repair...). The overall infrastructure in the city is the same, but some areas engage with it and are nice areas in which to raise families (or live singly). There is less poverty, less dysfunction, less crime.

I'll grant you, good infrastructure is a public good, but citizens have to be willing to work for it, and use it for maximum benefit.

the infrastructure that makes a good city had to have advocates, interested citizens, and many citizens willing to accept a higher tax burden to get these public goods. — Bitter Crank

The issue, to begin with, is one of methodology: your approach, or at least the approach you've outlined here, looks to me like one of social atomism, where it's some kind of ephemeral 'good psychology' ('interested, willing citizens') that counts as what motivates good societies. But this is, to put it lightly, a discredited form of thinking when it comes to sociology: people are 'interested and willing' when they are given the means to do so, when they have the tools, instruments, and institutions that support, foster and encourage the cultivation of such interests and 'wills'. Interests and wills also do not come from heaven as a gift.

But this is more than just a discredited form of sociology: it also has disastrous policy consequences. The line that 'good infrastructure is a public good, but citizens have to be willing to work for it, and use it for maximum benefit', has been the justification and rationale for legions of neoliberal policymakers to divest public funds from public goods, and to demand that emphasis be placed on psychology before actual tangible investment. It conditions investment on 'good psychology' and ephemeral 'wills', mistaking effect for cause.

I meant it when I said that the elevation of 'social capital' as a concept comes at a time when it seems to be in crisis: but what is unspoken in all this is that the crisis of social capital is the very reason for it's elevated status: to throw the individual into crisis is the surest way to place focus on the individual and not on the institutions and the world in which he or she resides. Regardless of its well-intent, one cannot ignore the strategic role this kind of thinking does and has played out in real time.

There is a legitimate question here of virtuous and vicious cycles of social cohesion, path-dependent on local histories, and hwo to shift the one into the other, but 'social capital' as a rule, has no historical dimension. It's just metrical abstraction. I think you would do well to engage with @csalisbury's post here, which gets at alot of the concrete problems with the concept. He's right to note that 'social capital' names a real problem; but it's its manner of framing that causes all sorts of issues.

Yeah I was impressed with @csalisbury's last post as well. He clearly got the angle I was coming from: I'm not against trying to understand the causes of diminished social capital in the hopes of finding possible ways of increasing it - quite the opposite in fact - but IMO the means of getting there are not served by this sort of terminology. I think I would actually prefer to use a different term to describe the phenomena under investigation, maybe even using largely outdated ideas like "civic virtue" or "public spiritedness" or some such.

It's not like this one concept is an anomaly working in isolation - as a technical term used by experts who make their living studying issues like this within universities - within an otherwise poetic or at least less monetized public discourse. No, uses like this pervade everyday language and frame the way we perceive and respond to the world around us, setting up a system of values in which beings are reduced to a collection of exploitable resources to be studied, measured, manipulated, managed, etc. Human beings included.

When language is understood along these lines - e.g. as the "house of being" or as expressing a particular "form of life" - then simple shifts in language represent concomitant shifts in the way we understand ourselves and our world. Heidegger was apparently horrified, for instance, when young students around campus began talking about the "Uni" rather than the University. Seems like an absurd overreaction, but what we see as completely benign and/or more efficient/technical uses of language, he saw as intimating a new and more impoverished disclosure of our world.

To bring this full circle, if this world of advanced technology, global capitalism, managerial elites, research universities, etc. has led to a cumulative loss of social capital - and I think a compelling case can be made that it has - then nothing short of an equally radical transformation in the way we understand ourselves and our world can reverse that trend. That hypothetical shift would involve a corresponding shift in language. A sort of word mysticism, I suppose.

Good topic, though, @Bitter Crank. It's a ridiculously complex issue with so many contributing factors, but in many ways it's the one I find most worthy of study and reflection. My apologies if I offended you or anyone else here. Just wanted to take the clever response of @unenlightened and run with it. I've been impressed with the responses so far and feel like I've learned a few things from the contributors that I'll appropriate for my own ends.

This information was linked in the OP, but let me point it out

Where did the information and terminology for the Social Capitol Project come from?

The American Community Survey, the National Survey of Children's Health, and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System are produced respectively by The US Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control

The Internal Revenue Service, Master Business File (information on non-profits)

The Election Administration and Voting Survey (voting behavior)

The US Census Bureau (breakdowns of 10 Year and Special Surveys)

The Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics, FBI

University of Michigan Population Studies Center, Institute for Social Research

The rankings of states and counties was based on the following statistics. You can certainly quarrel with their choices, but this is what they used:

Share of births in past year to women who were unmarried
Share of women ages 35-44 whoare currently married (and not separated)
Share of own children living in a single-parent family

Share who report child spends at least 4 hours per weekday in front of a TV
Share who report child spends atleast 4 hours per weekday on electronic device, excluding homework
Share who report someone in the family read to child every day in past week

Share saying they get the emotional support they need only sometimes, rarely, or never
Average number of close friends reported by adults
Share of adults reporting they and their neighbors do favors for each other at least 1x/month
Share of adults reporting they can trust all or most of their neighbor

Share of adults who report having volunteered for a group in the past year
Share who report having attended a public meeting re. community affairs in past year
Share who report having worked with neighbors to fix/improve something in past year
Share of adults who served on a committee or as an officer of a group
Share who attended a meeting where political issues were discussed in past year
Share who took part in march/rally/protest/demonstration in past year

Registered non-religious non-profits plus religious congregations per 1,000

Average (over 2012 and 2016) of votes in the presidential election per citizen age 18+
Mail-back response rates for 2010 census
Share of adults reporting some or great confidence in corporations to do what is right
Share of adults reporting some or great confidence in the media to do what is right
Share of adults reporting some or great confidence in public school to do what is right

Violent crimes per 100,000

Share who report having made a donation of >$25 to a charitable group in past year

It's always nice to see a bit of African philosophy creeping into the forums.

"It takes a village to raise a child."

If I may make so bold, it still takes a village to raise a child badly. If parenting is not valued by the community, if schools are terrible, if the police are corrupt or biased, if the women are all unmarried, and the men are all selfish, it still takes all these people and institutions to raise a child.

the approach you've outlined here, looks to me like one of social atomism, where it's some kind of ephemeral 'good psychology' ('interested, willing citizens') that counts as what motivates good societies. — StreetlightX

As if societies are made of individuals, rather than that individuals are made of societies. As if it takes a child, or some number of children, to raise a village. How can it have been so backwardly understood?

Jesus replied, "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" — Matthew 4:7

We are talking of something of supreme importance - 'the good'. We are talking of love. And it is abominable to reduce love to a piece of paper from the city hall. To measure the strength of love, as of anything, is to find its breaking point. And then it is broken. I'm sorry to resort to the religious, but the sacred is immeasurable.

There is a social cohesion that arises from fear and hatred of a common enemy; there is a social cohesion that arises from intolerance for difference. There are marriages sustained in hatred by fear of social ostracism. Is this what is being measured? Is this the social capital being lauded?

As Michael Rosen points out above, the measurement of education is the devaluing of education, and not the valuing of it. The measurement of your relationships is the devaluing of them, and in the end the destruction of them.

Test the love of your partner by seeing if they still love you when you are horrible: eventually you will reach the breaking point, and be left with no relationship and a habit of making a deal out of a gift.
Thou shalt not test love, nor measure it.

Here endeth the lesson. The choir will now sing:

What about virtue? — René Descartes

I'll consider it at least.