WEBINAR: Tristan Claridge: Exploring the theoretical foundations and meaning of social capital

The webinar will be held twice – at 8am UTC and 8pm UTC on Friday, April 8th, 2022 – to make it accessible to people in different time zones.

This webinar will explore the differences between the main conceptual approaches to social capital and their theoretical foundations. Social capital has a variety of different meanings, and this tends to create confusion, with the same term meaning different things. Several authors have attempted to categorise the different conceptual approaches, such as the network, normative, and resource approaches. This is helpful; however, the approach adopted by any specific research project often does not fit neatly into these categories, and it is not clear how different aspects of different approaches relate to each other.

Tristan will outline a typology designed to improve our understanding of the relationships between the different conceptual approaches to social capital. The typology attempts to clarify what social capital is and aims to separate its source from its form and outcomes. This allows us to consider how different conceptual approaches to social capital focus on different aspects of the proposition that “relationships matter”. It may help us better understand the theoretical foundations of different approaches, the causal relationships involved, and what research questions each approach is best suited to explore. The typology also highlights what is missing and helps us consider the assumptions embedded in different approaches such that we have the opportunity to improve the quality of our research involving social capital. This webinar aims to help clarify the meaning and approaches to social capital, provoke new ideas, and engage researchers from different conceptual approaches in discussions about the similarities and differences.