Networks of trust and reciprocity function as a productive asset, and their decline degrades collective capacity.
Coleman and Putnam's concept. Putnam argued in Bowling Alone in 2000, using multiple indicators, that American civic participation and social connectedness had declined. The measurement of social capital, the aggregation of bonding and bridging ties, and the causal consequences all remain debated.
In practice
- The critique is that the measures conflate different things: bridging and bonding capital have opposite effects.
- A tightly bonded community with no bridging ties has high social capital by one measure and is closed to outsiders by any other.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation is information: networks carry knowledge of who can be trusted, which lowers the cost of cooperating. Another is enforcement, since reputation within a dense network punishes defection without courts.
- In its favour
- Measured associations between civic participation and outcomes such as health, crime and government performance are consistent across many studies.
- Against it
- Measurement is disputed, bonding and bridging ties are often pooled when they behave differently, and the causal direction is hard to establish, since prosperous and stable places may produce civic life rather than the reverse.
- Standing
- The measurement of social capital, the pooling of bonding and bridging ties, and the causal consequences all remain debated.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Networks & Collective Behavior
- Essay
- How connections shape what crowds do