According to Lin (2002), the notion of capital can be traced to Karl Marx, who studied the exploitive social relations between the bourgeoisie (the capitalist class that owns the means of production) and the proletariat (the labouring class that works for the bourgeoisie for a living). He saw capital as “part of the surplus value captured by capitalists or the bourgeoisie, who control
production means in the circulation of commodities and monies between the production and consumption processes” (Lin, 2002, p. 6). Social capital belongs to a group of alternative renditions of the classic theory of capital, or “neo-capital” theories, which maintain the basic premise that “capital is the investment of resources for the production of profit” (Lin, 2002, p. 8). These theories also include human and cultural capital.
Whereas the classic theory of capital suggests that it is the bourgeoisie which accumulates profit at the expense of labour, human capital posits that
labourers can also acquire capital by investing in skills and knowledge that can make them more useful to their employers. “The important distinction between physical and human capital is that human capital is the added value embedded in the laborers themselves. Typically, human capital is
operationalized and measured by education, training, and experience” (Lin, 2002, p. 80). Coleman (1988, p. S100) offers a similar definition of human capital when he states that “it is created by changes in persons that bring about skills and capabilities that make them able to act in new ways”. Cultural capital is an idea introduced by Bourdieu, who argues that “a
(e.g., education), which internalizes the dominant symbols and meanings in the next generation, thus reproducing the salience of the dominant culture” (Lin, 2002, p. 14). It is an idea that can be traced back to Marx and Engels and their famous assertion about ideology being the view of the dominant class. “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force” (Marx & Engels, 1970, p. 64). Just as Marx and
Engels argue that the dominant class “regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age” and ensure that these ideas are represented as “the only rational, universally valid ones” (Marx & Engels, 1970, pp. 64 & 66), so Bourdieu contends that the dominant class imposes its values and culture on the dominated class through formal and informal education that legitimises these values and culture by representing them as objective and universal (Lin, 2002). Cultural capital, therefore, is “the acquisition and misrecognition of the dominant culture and its values” (Lin, 2002, p. 15). While education is seen as a means to accumulate human capital by some, it is viewed by Bourdieu as a means to obtain cultural capital.
Social capital has many different definitions, but it generally refers to the notion of “investment in social relations with expected returns in the
marketplace” (Lin, 2002, p. 19). Like all other forms of capital, social capital is an asset into which other resources can be invested, in expectation of a future return; it is “appropriable” and “convertible”; and it can substitute or
complement other resources (Adler & Kwon, 2002, p. 21). In addition, like all other resources that fall within the ‘capital’ family, social capital is a productive resource that can be mobilised to enable “the achievement of certain ends that in its absence would not be possible” (Coleman, 1988, p. S 98). Social capital is different from its ‘siblings’ in that it is embedded in actors’ social relations with other actors. “It is not lodged either in the actors themselves or in physical implements of production” (Coleman, 1988, p. S98). Though their treatment of the concept is different, scholars agree that it is the social interaction between members of a group that makes the attainment of this form of capital possible. “To possess social capital, a person must be related to others, and it is those others, not himself, who are the actual source of his or her advantage” (Portes, 1998, p. 7).
The different forms of capital described in this section are related. In fact, Bourdieu (1986, p. 243) argues that economic, cultural and social capital are different guises of the same concept. He defines economic capital as capital “which is immediately and directly convertible into money and may be
institutionalized in the forms of property rights”; cultural capital as capital “which is convertible, on certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the forms of educational qualifications”; and social capital as capital that is “made up of social obligations (‘connections’), which is convertible, in certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the forms of a title of nobility”.
Social capital’s nature as an asset that exists in the relations among persons makes it an intangible good that is difficult to measure, despite a few
volume of social capital can be measured as a function of the size of an actor’s social network and the volume of the capital possessed by each individual in this network. Lin (1999, p. 37) specifies “valued resources”, including “wealth, power, and status”, embedded in social networks and accessed by individuals as plausible measures of social capital. Others, who define social capital by its function in fostering social cohesion and
cooperation in communities, propose a different set of measures. Woolcock and Narayan (2000, p. 240), for example, suggest measuring “membership in informal and formal associations and networks” as a proxy for social capital. However, some scholars argue that trying to quantify social capital is a futile exercise. In fact, they claim, this is one of the differences between social capital and other assets described by economists as capital. “Even if the benefits that flow from social capital can be measured, the capital label should be taken somewhat metaphorically as long as the effort involved in building social networks cannot be measured” (Adler & Kwon, 2002, p. 22).
3.3.2 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL CAPITAL THEORY