What is capital?
- “Accumulated labor which […] enables [agents] to
appropriate social energy in the form of reified or living labor.” -
Bourdieu
- Three types:
Economic Capital
- Money
- Factories
- Businesses
Cultural capital
- Culture, cultivation, assimilation
- Developing a way of seeing and acting in the
world
- Also education and technical skills
- Mostly “embodied”
Social Capital
- “the aggregate of the actual or potential resources
which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less
institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and
recognition”
- Bourdieu describes this as membership in a group
- Families
- Schools
- Parties
- Etc.
- Our social connections can help us to mobilize the
capital (cultural and economic) of others
What is capital for?
- Some goods are “purchased” with different kinds of
labor
- E.g., emotional support and friendship
- For Bourdieu, the goal is to improve and ensure
position in social space
- Capital can be traded for other kinds of capital.
- Money + time for education
- Gifts -> social capital
How can we identify when people have social capital?
- Closure and embeddedness
- Strong, dense, networks
- Reciprocal, repeated exchanges that encourage
cooperation
- Structural holes
- Connecting two groups
- Power to control information, gain new
information
- When might one or the other be beneficial?
Strength of weak ties
- One of the most cited social science papers ever
(> 55K citations!)
- Initial question:
- Survey showed that people found jobs through
acquaintances rather than friends
Strength of weak ties
- What are the “weak ties” that Granovetter refers
to?
- Why is information more likely to come through weak
ties?
- Strong ties have redundant information
- They are already tied to each other
- Weak ties are more likely to access new parts of
the network
Different relationships have different benefits
- Some types of social capital (cooperation, support,
etc.) are best served through dense cliques
- Others (innovation, information search, etc.)
require connecting distant groups (bridges and weak ties)
Societal level social capital
- Putnam argues for the idea of generalized social
capital
- Do people trust each other?
- Societies with trust are more successful.
- Trust is a public good
- Time, energy, and money can be spent on better
things
Social Capital