Dynamics of social capital

Social capital is termed to be one of the important topics in today's era. We are social animals and we share special bonds, links as well as bridges among the people living in our society. Social capital is the link among individuals making them easier to cope properly with the other people living in the society, knowing one's norms, values, understandings which help the individuals to trust, cope, and work with each other properly. We cannot live in isolation. Money is not everything for us but to adjust and resist in the society we need to live in harmony. Hence, social capital provides us a special way to interact with the people living in our society who share common interests, culture or traditions.

Dynamics of social capital

Social capital can be defined as the network in which people living in a specific society work with one another for the proper functioning of the society.The social capital also includes the tangible as well as the intangible resources, where the relationship among these resources is included, the effect(either negative or positive) among people and other groups of the society. The philosopher's ways to define the social capital was highly focused on considering the social capital as the resource which should mainly be used for the benefit of the public and their welfare.They also added the point that social capital helped for the cooperation and create a good as well as supportive relationships among the people of the particular society, community and the nation which helped to solve many social problems relating to the disorders in the modern societies such as crime, deviance etc. The social capital provides benefit to the people through the creation of the social relationships among them where their skills and their attributes helped them to enhance their skills in different fields.

According to OECD, the social capital is defined as “networks together with shared norms, values, and understandings that facilitate co-operation within or among groups”. From this definition, we can know that network means the link between people or individuals living in the certain area or a community. Lets now talk about the network between the teachers, friends, colleagues and other, they share norms, values, and the understandings among one another. These social norms and values are highly questioned rules in our community today. The norms and values are not apparent until and unless they are broken in some manner. For an example: If a child is attacked by an adult then the rule or some norms against the child right is violated by the adult. The societies are found to be in certain dilemma debating about the change in values among the people.

Importance of social capital

We, the people of society are bounded by an amazing term known as the social capital. The social capital was made popular by Robert Putnam. What comes to our mind by seeing the word capital is money, but the term social capital is totally different it is not money in actual but the interest groups, friends, colleagues etc. Since people work together in the society, they get linked with each other through a special network.The social capital has its own significance and it helps us create these special relationships in the society.

Bonds: Bonds include special links among the people who share the common identity. For example, people of the same family, life partners, and other people who are linked with the cultures, traditions, and ethnicities.

Bridges: Bridges links people on the basis of their identity shared among themselves. For example bridge between student and teacher, boss and employee etc.

Linkages: Linkage among people of one group or culture, tradition, or interests among the other through the special social ladder.

Criticisms of social capital

Like the other theories of sociology, the social capital was not free from the critics. The major critics of Putnam's theory of social capital were it was wrong in explaining the theory in terms of its meaning which explained social capital as eroding rather than evolving. Despite joining the groups in our societies, we share people who are fighting for each other, who share our beliefs only in terms of quarrels and fights. The social networking among the individuals also creates the dominance of highly powered people to the inferior ones. We can also hear many criticisms about the social capital , it is very hard to understand and it gives a certain amount of double meaning among the people. They also argue that the social capital is poorly defined in our societies.

References

Social capital: reconceptualizing the bottom line.

Journal of Economic and Social Geography (TESG)

Hei Hang Hayes Tang (2002) "New Arrival Students in Hong Kong: Adaptation and School Performance"

Social capital: reconceptualizing the bottom line. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 5 (2), 81-86.