POLICY ARENA: ‘Missing link’ or analytically missing?: The concept of social capital. Edited by John Harriss. An introductory bibliographic essay
✍ Scribed by John Harriss; Paolo De Renzio
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1997
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 196 KB
- Volume
- 9
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0954-1748
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
This paper oers a substantial review of the ways in which the concept of social capital' has been used in the recent theoretical and policy literatures. Attention is drawn to the signi®cant dierence between the way in which the term has been de®ned by its two major proponents, James Coleman and Robert Putnam. Putnam's usage, which is the one which has been taken over in development policy thinking by some in the World Bank, is subjected to substantial critique. It is concluded that policy arguments which pose civil society against the state, or which rest on the view that rich endowment in social capital' is a precondition for `good government', are almost certainly misconceived.