Product Description

The idea of social capital is increasingly prominent in international, national, and local policy-making and in the social sciences. However, its rapid rise to prominence has not been matched by proper scrutiny of the idea and its consequences. This book provides the first full critical analysis of social capital, written by authors from a wide range of disciplinary and policy backgrounds. The book asks searching questions: Is the concept of social capital really new? Does it offer significant anaytic purchase? Can it be an operational, as opposed to rhetorica concept? Can policies based on social capital deal with conflict and social exclusion? These issues are explored through studies of education, health, political science, urban regeneartion, economic development and other areas and disciplines. The authors - who include academics, professionals and policy specialists - are all distinguished and prominent contributors in their own fields.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #446160 in Books
• Published on: 2000-11-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Stephen Baron, University of Glasgow, Scotland

Customer Reviews

Useful collection of academic essays
This is a useful collection of academic essays on aspects of Social Capital, prefaced by a good introduction to the subject. However, the entire book could have been entitled "British and European Perspectives on Putnam's Social Capital Agenda". That wouldn't have been as snappy, of course, but this is fundamentally a fleshing out of the project begun by Putnam from a non-USA point of view. Many of the essays are challenging -- considering refugees as social capitalists, for example -- but they are challenging to the reader, not challenging to thesis set out in Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.

This is slightly disappointing, since the narrative set out in the introduction is i) Bourdieu, ii) Coleman, iii) Putnam. One might have expected a more active revisiting of Bourdieu's critique of social capital, or an alternative challenge.

Like any collection of essays by different authors, this is a book to dip into and dip out of, and the well-presented notes, index and bibliographies make it a sound addition to any programme of study.

Nonetheless, it does not quite live up to its title. Perhaps "Social Capital, Mildly Critical Perspectives" or even "Admiringly Critical Perspectives" would have been more exactly accurate.