Social Capital Conceptualisation
Any conceptualization of social capital aims to simplify the complexity of the social world to assist in the development of an understanding of the structures and processes that affect a variety of outcomes. The challenge is to make tradeoffs between competing objectives simplification to facilitate increased understanding, and maintenance of the complexity to maximize validity. In the past, many efforts to conceptualize social capital have resulted in over-simplification and therefore questionable operationalization. There are considerable unknowns surrounding our current understanding of social capital theory. We know that various relationships exist between determinants, structural elements and consequences or manifestations but interactions are largely unknown.
Anything that has an impact on social interactions can be seen as a determinant and any situation arising because of social interactions can be seen as a manifestation. We know some of the elements in between but have little understanding of the processes. This highlights the importance of establishing a rigorous conceptualization, as the appropriate operationalization of social capital must be based on a rigorous conceptualization. Read more
|
About The Author
Tristan Claridge completed a Masters thesis on social capital theory in 2004 at the University of Queensland. Although Tristan originally wanted to apply social capital theory to natural resource management outcomes in Australia, he found that the current understanding of social capital was not sufficiently conceptualised to allow this application. This site is the result of extensive investigation into social capital from various perspectives, sociology, political science, economics and psycology. Where the majority of authors on the subject seem to approach social capital from a uni-disciplinary point, Tristan has cross cut these disciplines in this study. Read more
|
