social capital versus social history
TRANSCRIPT
This article was downloaded by: [University of New Hampshire]On: 19 November 2014, At: 20:25Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Social HistoryPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rshi20
Social capital versus social historyBen Fine aa School of Oriental and African Studies, University of LondonPublished online: 25 Feb 2010.
To cite this article: Ben Fine (2008) Social capital versus social history , Social History, 33:4,442-467, DOI: 10.1080/03071020802410445
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03071020802410445
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
DISCUSSION
Ben Fine
Social capital versus social history*
1. INTRODUCTION
Social capital has enjoyed a meteoric rise across the social sciences over the past two decades.
Its leading proponent, Robert Putnam, has been identified as the most cited social scientist in
the last decade of the millennium. Social capital has rapidly assumed the role of standard
concept across a range of disciplines and topics, including economics, politics, sociology, and
management and business science. It has also been heavily promoted by the World Bank,
having been seen as the ‘missing link’ in development (studies). Corresponding policy fixes
have equally been anticipated in developed countries, with its promotion and acceptance at the
highest levels of government, inspiring major household surveys of its incidence. Only
globalization seems to have been more important to social science over the period that has seen
both so suddenly and fully gain prominence and widespread acceptance.
Dario Gaggio has opened up for social historians the concept of ‘civil society’ as derived
from Putnam’s identification of ‘social assets (trust, norms of reciprocity and networks of
interpersonal relations)’ that he called ‘social capital’.1 Gaggio draws attention to the way in
which this was judged to be the connection between ‘the traditional concerns of sociology (the
origins and consequences of sociability) and some of the hottest research agendas in economics
(the production of public goods and its relationship with economic development)’ (500). He
posed the question as to whether this might lead to ‘a new appreciation of economic action by
historians’ (499). It is this argument that I wish to revisit in this and seven other sections.
Despite its short life, social capital already has a ‘history’, or a number of histories, for it has
evolved almost as quickly as it has emerged, and its use has been rediscovered in the past. In
addition, its incidence and impact within and across disciplines have been diverse, not only in
the degree and manner of acceptance but also through whether it has also inspired vocal
*Thanks to the editors and an unknown refereefor invaluable suggestions.
1D. Gaggio, ‘Do social historians need socialcapital?’, Social History, XXIX, 4 (November 2004),499–513.
Social History Vol. 33 No. 4 November 2008
Social History ISSN 0307-1022 print/ISSN 1470-1200 online ª 2008 Taylor & Francishttp://www.informaworld.comDOI: 10.1080/03071020802410445
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
opposition or silent disdain. Not surprisingly, social capital has drawn upon history for
illustration. Putnam’s classic study of Italy ranges from the twelfth century to the present day.2
He subsequently posits the decline of American associationalism identified by de Tocqueville
as characteristic of the nineteenth century.3 Further, with its focus on civil society, social
capital inevitably engages in similar preoccupations as history. Yet, paradoxically, as observed
by Gaggio, in one of the first critical attempts by an historian to come to terms with social
capital, historians have not adopted the concept, as is confirmed in Section 3.
Implicitly, at least, Gaggio offers good reasons why social capital should not have been
successful in attracting historians. It is because, for him, there is only one version of the
concept that is acceptable, drawing upon the work of radical sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. This
leads Gaggio into a radical critique of Putnam. The latter had taken functionalist rational
choice sociologist James Coleman as original exponent of social capital, on which see
Section 4, and so prompted the departure from Bourdieu’s approach. As a result, the bulk of
the literature that followed in the wake of Putnam is dismissed by Gaggio as methodologically
eclectic, opportunistically seeking a third way out of the individualistic orgy of the 1980s,
negligent of political economy, unduly reifying the separation between civil and political
society, and insensitive to the salience of context.
Despite these criticisms of social capital, Gaggio encourages historians to participate in its use
in order to drive out its erroneous manifestations and restore it in the image of Bourdieu. As
suggested in Section 7, it is questionable whether social capital can be satisfactorily rescued in
principle, even through Bourdieu. In practice, whether bringing Bourdieu back in or not, the use
of social capital within history is liable to subject it to the same poverty of outcome as has
universally occurred across its application to other disciplines and topics. This has been
recognized by Gaggio himself. Why should history be superior?
This difference of assessment of the potential of social capital for historians is built up out of
a series of arguments. First, in Section 2, is offered an account of the extent to which social
capital has become definitionally chaotic, potentially incorporating almost any variable and
method (but with empiricism to the fore) and open to any application. Nevertheless, social
capital tends to overlook the traditional concerns of much social science, especially history,
through lack of consideration of power, class, conflict and so on, as well as failing to situate
itself within a systemic understanding of society and social change, especially where the
economy is concerned. This is paradoxical for a term that includes both social and capital.
Moreover, these and other terms deployed by the social capital literature are invested with
such a bland content that the concepts which it does broach tend to be degraded and
homogenized in content, so much so that I have referred to a McDonaldization of social
theory.4
2R. Putnam, R. Leonardi and R. Y. Nanetti,Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in ModernItaly (Princeton, 1993).
3R. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse andRevival of American Community (New York, 2000).
4B. Fine, ‘Social capital goes to McDonald’s’,Plenary Address, Critical Management StudiesConference, University of Manchester, July
2007, text available from author. For other workon social capital, especially in the context of‘economics imperialism’, see http://www.soas.ac.uk/economics/research/econimp/. And for thebest website on social capital, in part for at leastacknowledging critical literature, see http://www.socialcapitalgateway.org
November 2008 Social capital versus social history 443
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
In this light, Section 4 examines one aspect of the ‘history’ of social capital – how a search
has been made for its use in the past. This is shown to be a flawed approach, for what is more
important to recognize is how the concept essentially has nothing other than a nominal
history, reinvented to provide it with a tradition to underpin present-day application. Indeed,
to the extent that social capital does have a past, it belongs to an alternative and overlooked
history, one which emphasizes social capital as both economic and systemic. This begins to
explain why historians should have been slow on the uptake as far as social capital is concerned,
preferring to retain the economic and the systemic. But, in addition, as shown in Section 5,
those (economic) historians inclined to accept the social capital view of the world had already
an alternative way of doing so prior to social capital’s emergence, by relying upon the new
institutional economics. On the other hand, (social) historians emphasizing the systemic and
the contextual would find little of appeal in social capital (Section 6) – unless, of course, it
could be modified by bringing Bourdieu back in. This is an aspiration, as already suggested,
that is in part flawed and liable to be futile against the momentum of the social capital
juggernaut. Thus, as argued in the final section, Gaggio’s exhortation for historians to engage
with social capital is welcome, but not if it is to be by restoring it through Bourdieu, progress
though this may be. Rather, historians have more to offer by way of critical rejection of social
capital, drawing upon their own expertise and situation in relation to the other social sciences.
2. APPETITE WITHOUT LIMIT?
The most striking feature of social capital is its gargantuan appetite across the social sciences.
From humble beginnings, in terms of the quip that, ‘It’s not what you know, it’s whom you
know that counts’, social capital has spread rapidly across disciplines and applications. This
mantra from the scholarship of life has been turned into a corporate enterprise with many
affiliates within the academic world. From a simple causal relationship to (desired and
desirable) outcome, social capital has been fragmented into all varieties of interpretation.
Broadly, three different types of social capital have come to the fore, forging a template within
which to categorize its highly diverse forms. These are the structural, the cognitive and the
relational forms of social capital corresponding, for example, to networks or organizations,
mutual understanding or culture, and trust or reciprocity, respectively. These broad categories,
in part overlapping, are wide enough to admit an extensive membership, networks ranging, for
example, from within the family to any aspect of civil society. There are favoured variables as
far as defining social capital is concerned, such as levels of trust, networks of connections and
associational life. But the literature never fails to astonish with its invention. Colour of skin
alone, with some justification once entering the expansive world of the conceptualization of
social capital, becomes one of its elements, providing for better life outcomes.5
The hypothesized causal consequences of social capital also continue to grow without
apparent limit, promising positive outcomes across more or less any economic, social, political
and ideological functioning. Once again, there are more common areas of application such as
educational achievement, community development, economic growth and (local) governance.
The novelty and ambition of applications continue to surprise. A survey of literature on social
5M. Hunter, ‘‘‘If you’re light you’re alright’’:light skin color as social capital for women of
color’, Gender and Society, XVI, 2 (April 2002), 175–93.
444 Social History vol. 33 : no. 4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
capital and health, for example, suggests those with it are liable to be less likely to suffer
accidents, mental problems, coronary heart disease, insomnia, short temper, teenage
pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, low birth weight of children, suicide, fatalism,
addiction to drugs including smoking and alcohol (but excluding cannabis), dental caries, and
feelings of sadness, stress, anxiety and ill-health!6
Thus there are many different types of social capital affecting many different types of
outcomes. The mechanisms by which these are realized often remains opaque, as does the
source of social capital itself (how it is created and sustained). There is also the issue of
distinguishing the impact of social capital from other variables that might be present either in
parallel or as its determinant. More specifically, if trade unions, classes and the state, for
example, are important to outcomes alongside social capital, and do themselves create or
condition social capital, then their exclusion (as has generally been the case) from consideration
will tend to bias, probably overstate, the role of social capital. The latter might just be a proxy
conduit for more important determinants.
This is, in part, nothing more than a cautionary tale over not conflating correlation with
causation, but more than this is involved in the expanding scope of social capital, for its own
definition is so amorphous that other conditioning variables tend to be incorporated as part of
the definition of social capital itself. Inevitably, as the literature has evolved, the salience of
omitted variables to outcomes comes to the fore whether for theoretical reasons or because
case-studies or empirical work more generally have rendered account of these variables
unavoidable. The response of the social capital literature can be dubbed as the ‘bringing back
in’ of such variables as soon as social capital as social interaction explodes out of its straitjacket
of personal interactions. The most extreme example of this is provided by Szreter, one of
Britain’s leading social capitalists, who seeks to rescue social capital from criticism by bringing
back in class, power, politics, ideology, mass unemployment, globalization, inequality,
hierarchy, the state and history, alongside a whole array of other analytical fragments.7
Interestingly, his own historical study of health and social capital in Britain appends the latter as
an afterthought whose absence explains all deficiencies and for which New Labour Third
Wayism needs to take more note, for problems arose out of ‘a surplus of bonding social capital
only, among the comfortably-off, and a deficiency of bridging and linking social capital’.8
Here, the reference to bonding, bridging and linking social capital is further evidence of
both the expanding universe of social capital and the attempt to contain its incoherence after
the event. The division into three types of social capital, as relational, cognitive and structural,
has already been noted. This is innocuous as far as it goes, if presuming the divisions to be
reasonably hard and fast, but it does not go very far and could be said to be characteristic of any
approach to social theory. This categorization has been complemented by the equally bland
attempt to reaggregate across the hundreds of variables that have made up social capital by
categorizing it as bonding (within groups), bridging (across groups) and linking (used variously,
and at times ambiguously, to refer to connections across hierarchies and power, as opposed to
those from lower to higher levels as in bringing back in the higher state to connect it to the
6B. Fine, ‘Social capital and health: the WorldBank through the looking glass after Deaton’.Available online at http://www.soas.ac.uk/cdpr/seminars/43279.pdf
7S. Szreter, ‘Health, class, place and politics: socialcapital and collective provision in Britain’, Con-temporary British History, XVI, 3 (Fall 2002), 27–57.
8ibid., 52.
November 2008 Social capital versus social history 445
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
lower civil society). There tends to be some presumption that bonding capital is bad (as it can
lead to coercion or nepotism), and that bridging capital is good (as it signals cooperation) as is
linking capital as issues of power and conflict melt into cooperation or the state supports or
sustains such cooperation. The problem is that bonding, bridging and linking cut across the
traditional variables of social theory – such as class, gender, race and so on – and, as a result,
overlook that one person’s bond is another person’s bridge etc., or vice versa depending upon
context and issue, even for the same person, as with white male workers, for example. Such
tensions and conflicts within society cannot be wished away by aggregating social divisions and
complexities into the otherwise neutral categories of bonding, bridging and linking.
And, tellingly, social capital has tended to exhibit a number of no-go areas despite these
being at the heart of social interaction. Generalizing absolutely over such an extensive
literature is foolhardy, but omissions (apart from the economy in much of the non-economic
literature other than as some ephemeral object to be enhanced) include class, the state, trade
unions and political parties (although political participation by voting and otherwise has
received considerable attention without much of it to the substance of the politics
concerned).There has also been a neglect of gender, race and ethnicity, these beginning to
force their way onto the agenda after complaints of neglect (with disability now making a plea
to be included).
The reasons for these omissions are to be found in the analytical location of social capital
structurally. As a middle-range concept, it seeks to occupy a space within civil society,
interacting with but having its own independent effect on some aspect of society more
generally. Consequently, the more obvious and standard determinants of economic and social
functioning fade into the background, and with them go the standard variables of socio-
economic analysis such as power, conflict and hierarchy as emphasis is placed upon the
possibility and virtues to the individual of cooperation and collectivity.
From the perspective of social history, these omissions are extremely unattractive, especially
when they are complemented by what has been a more or less total disregard by social capital
of both the international and, for want of a better term, the elite – and, even more so, the
international elite. For its preferred domain is at the sub-national level (anywhere from family
to community or region), and its agents are the strata ranging from the impoverished to the
improvable. Those who hold and exercise power and privilege through the state are notable
for their absence (although benevolently applauding the notion from the sidelines). This,
together with other omissions, is hardly an attractive recipe for social history where one might
have hoped to find a more nuanced understanding of the factors making either for major
historical change or social stability, and the roles of power, class, conflict, gender, race, class,
etc. upon them.
Further, there are grander approaches to civil society, and its relationship to society more
generally, that have been more or less completely neglected by the social capital literature but
which are familiar to, and deployed by, historians. One of these, the gift relationship, derives
primarily from anthropology and its supposed antithesis to commodity relations.9 With
whatever validity it is applied, the opposition between gift and commodity is at least as rich as
social versus other types of capital as a means of approaching the historical as a relationship
9For critical overviews, see B. Fine, The Worldof Consumption: The Material and Cultural Revisited
(London, 2002); C. Lapavitsas, Social Foundations ofMarkets, Money and Credit (London, 2003).
446 Social History vol. 33 : no. 4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
between the economic and the non-economic. Social capital has only occasionally and casually
been used in passing in the historical gift literature.10
A second alternative to social capital of appeal to historians is the analytical framework posed
by Polanyi, and the interaction between the commercial and the traditional, as captured by his
notions of the double movement (spread of the market and social protection) and
corresponding (dis)embeddedness. Once again, despite its potential affinities with the subject
matter and the strength of this tradition, Polanyi has been studiously ignored by the social
capital literature, although Granovetter and embeddedness have had some, predominantly
indirect, presence through appeal to networks. Interestingly, in the broader critical literature
on social capital, it has explicitly been seen both as an impoverished contribution relative to
Polanyi and as a way of promoting some form of compromise between neo-liberalism and
Third Wayism.11 As Craig and Porter put it, in part referring to social capital, such concepts
‘are hardly substitutes for the engines of social contest and embedding Polanyi
described. . . . Thus, a Polanyian perspective also encourages the prising apart of these
consensual domains and rationales, to see whose interests, contests and voices are being
smothered.’12 And, for Robison, social capital is simply the technocratic and neo-liberal
reflection of Polanyi’s double movement in the era of globalization under US hegemony.13 In
a JSTOR history journal search on Polanyi, the score is at least double that for social capital,
indicating where the discipline’s preference lies. But, possibly, the greatest put-down for social
capital in this respect comes from Granovetter. As modern pioneer, he is the least sophisticated
proponent of embeddedness,14 confessing to having drafted his classic contribution without
any thought of Polanyi,15 but he also describes how he sought unsuccessfully to push Putnam
to be more refined when the latter first mooted use of social capital. If social capital lies to the
other side of Granovetter in the understanding of the relationship between the economic and
the social, it is hardly surprising it has had little appeal to social historians.
These points are reinforced by consideration of an issue that has been kept in reserve until
now, although it was raised at an early stage of the literature, for everything is further
complicated by what has variously been termed dark, negative or perverse social capital. There
can be no presumption that outcomes will be beneficial for those with social capital, or those
without, either by their own or by external criteria. By its nature, social capital is both
10See J. Bestor, ‘Marriage transactions inRenaissance Italy and Mauss’s essay on the gift’,Past and Present, CLXIV (August 1999), 39; B.Cooper, ‘Women’s worth and wedding giftexchange in Maradi, Niger, 1907–89’, Journal ofAfrican History, XXXVI, 1 (1996), 121–40; and P.Benedict, ‘Faith, fortune and social structure inseventeenth-century Montpellier’, Past and Present,CLII (August 1996), 61. For Chinese guanxi associal capital and gift, see A. Kipnis, ‘The languageof gifts: managing guanxi in a north China village’,Modern China, XXII, 3 (July 1996), 285–314; M.Yang, ‘The gift economy and state power inChina’, Comparative Studies in Society and History,XXXI, 1 (January 1989), 25–54.
11D. Craig and D. Porter, ‘The Third Way andthe Third World: poverty reduction and social
inclusion strategies in the rise of ‘‘inclusive’’liberalism’, Review of International Political Economy,XII, 2 (May 2004), 226–63; R. Robison, ‘Neo-liberalism and the future of the world: markets andthe end of politics’, Critical Asian Studies, XXXVI, 3
(September 2004), 405–23.12Craig and Porter, op. cit., 257–8.13Robison, op. cit.14M. Granovetter, ‘Economic action and social
structure: the problem of embeddedness’, AmericanJournal of Sociology, XCI, 3 (November 1985), 481–510.
15See Thomas D. Beamish, Greta Krippner,Mark Granovetter, Nicole Biggart, Fred Block, etal., ‘Polanyi symposium: a conversation onembeddedness’, Socio-Economic Review, II, 1 (Jan-uary 2004), 109–35.
November 2008 Social capital versus social history 447
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
inclusive and exclusive, so benefits for one can be at the expense of others, with obvious
relevance from the distribution of social capital across traditional socio-economic variables
such as rich and poor, powerful and weak, gender, race, age, class and so on. The putative
positive impact of social capital for one grouping can be at the expense of another. In addition,
social capital can be reasonably perceived to be negative in and of itself in light of its nature as
well as its purpose. Obvious and frequently cited examples are the Mafia, Nazism and the Ku
Klux Klan. From a conceptual point of view, the dark side to social capital is hardly surprising
since the analytical structure underpinning it is identical to that deployed by neo-liberalism’s
emphasis upon the virtues of the market, anti-statism, and the inevitability of rent-seeking
and/or corruption in case of non-market intervention. And the same social capital may be
positive in one instance but negative in another, depending on what, where, whom and how.
In general, though, the literature takes a benevolent view of social interaction with
corresponding implications for (how to achieve) social, and historical, change. It is surely no
accident that Fukuyama should quickly jump on the social capital bandwagon, perceiving it as
bountiful in developing countries but not in a way corresponding to modern political and
economic organizations and hence an obstacle to development.16 For him, familial ‘groups
have a narrow radius of trust’,17 and also the ‘economic function of social capital is to reduce
the transaction costs associated with formal coordination mechanisms like hierarchies,
bureaucratic rules, and the like’.18 So, for Fukuyama, globalization is the antidote, having
become the bearer of different types of social capital to developing countries, creating the
functionally new and destroying the dysfunctionally old.19 Does (modern) social capital also
bring the end of history, and a recognizable euthanasia of the historian? As Szreter puts it with
stunning clarity:20
It is implicit in this reading of social capital theory that there is an optimal dynamic
balance of bonding, bridging, and linking social capital, which simultaneously facilitates
democratic governance, economic efficiency and widely dispersed human welfare,
capabilities and functioning.
Such a stance has telling implications for development and transition as history in the
making, for social capital has been heavily promoted by the World Bank and has played a
correspondingly significant role in development studies. In a nutshell, social capital has served
as an ideal concept for easing the transition from the Washington to the post-Washington
Consensus.21 World Bank social capitalists have now accepted the analytical criticisms of social
16F. Fukuyama, ‘Social capital and develop-ment: the coming agenda’, SAIS Review, XXII, 1
(Winter/Spring 2002), 34.17F. Fukuyama, ‘Social capital and
civil society’, IMF Conference on SecondGeneration Reforms, Institute of PublicPolicy, George Mason University, 1 October1999, 3.
18ibid., 4.19F. Fukuyama, ‘Social capital, civil society and
development’, Third World Quarterly, XXII, 1
(February 2001), 7–20.
20S. Szreter, ‘The state of social capital: bringingback in power, politics, and history’, Theory andSociety, XXXI, 5 (October 2002), 580.
21For social capital from the World Bank itself,see A. Bebbington, M. Woolcock, S. Guggenheimand E. Olson,* ‘Grounding discourse in practice:exploring social capital debates at the WorldBank’, Journal of Development Studies, XL, 5 (June2004), 33–64; and A. Bebbington et al. (eds), TheSearch for Empowerment: Social Capital as Idea andPractice at the World Bank (Bloomfield, 2006). Andfor critique and context, see B. Fine, C. Lapavitsas
448 Social History vol. 33 : no. 4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
capital and confess to having deployed it as a strategy to persuade World Bank economists to
take the social seriously. But, other than enhancing the economist’s rhetoric, the post-
Washington Consensus has primarily been used to legitimize the continuation of neo-liberal
policies in return for aid, albeit under the guise of being more state-friendly and promoting the
functioning of both market and non-market.
From humble beginnings, social capital has also mushroomed in its application to transition
economies. The World Bank sponsored a social capital initiative to explain ill-health in Russia
by distribution of social capital – this modest aim to be set against the drama of mortality rates
having risen over the country’s transition, unprecedented for a relatively developed economy.
In this vein, absence of social capital at all or of the right type has been seen as the cause of
malaise within transitional societies. The inevitable conclusion is that successful transition
depends on creating the right type of social capital, and/or social capital is seen as ameliorating,
for some at least, the negative excesses of an otherwise unexplained transition. For
Korosteleva,22 eastern Europe is subject to social capital as ‘the shadow societies of vertical
networks based on blat . . . rendering the official ‘‘democratic’’ settings inefficient and often
invalid. Such a system is also a good method of keeping discontent under control by diverting
the grievances and dissatisfaction to informal infrastructures that can deal with specific
concerns more efficiently.’ It all becomes a matter of, ‘How can a society break through to the
‘‘virtuous circle’’ that produces positive social capital?’23 Significantly, then, the bulk of this
literature has regressed to the modernization framework, taking some sort of ideal western
market democracy as its goal. Whether secure property rights (free from state interference and
inherited oligarchs), political participation through a well-functioning electoral system, or a
vibrant civil society, social capital offers analytical and policy panaceas. Yet this has, mercifully,
been recognized by the social capital literature itself to have unduly homogenized over a
highly diverse set of transitional societies for which individual histories and continuing context
are of decisive importance. As the most comprehensive and sophisticated review of the
literature puts it:24
The use of the term can be pseudoscientific and lead to poor quality research . . . pro-
blems with its definition, operationalization and measurement, as well as with
determining its sources, forms and consequences.
But there is still seen to be scope for continued use of social capital if avoiding ‘cultural
essentialism, ahistoricism, functionalism, blind rational choice adherence, apolitical attitude
and reductionism’, if only because it is ‘obvious that social capital has now firmly established
and J. Pincus (eds), Development Policy in theTwenty-First Century: Beyond the Post-WashingtonConsensus (London, 2001); B. Fine, Social Capitalversus Social Theory: Political Economy and SocialScience at the Turn of the Millennium (London,2001), chap. 8; B. Fine, ‘Social capital in wonder-land: the World Bank behind the looking glass’,Progress in Development Studies (forthcoming); andK. Jomo and B. Fine (eds), The New Development
Economics: After the Washington Consensus (Delhiand London, 2006).
22E. Korosteleva, ‘Can theories of social capitalexplain dissenting patterns of engagement in theNew Europe?’, Contemporary Politics, XII, 2 (June2006), 186.
23ibid., 187.24D. Mihaylova, Social Capital in Central and
Eastern Europe (Budapest, 2004), 136.
November 2008 Social capital versus social history 449
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
itself in scholarly discourse and development practice and has a life (or many lives) of its own
which cannot easily be dismissed’.
3. THE HISTORICAL DOG THAT DID NOT BARK
Such a conclusion would appear to be inevitable from the evidence of Google. In debate over
the intellectual origins of social capital, Farr reports that ‘an internet search records some six
million items, among them the names of the Social Capital Foundation, Social Capital
Partners, Social Capital, Inc., and a new self-help book, Achieving Success through Social
Capital’.25 At a more academic level, I undertook full-scale literature searches on social capital
on three occasions, in 1999, 2002 and towards the end of 2006. For each, use was made of the
social science citation index, using social capital to search across title, abstract or key word, and
library catalogues were similarly searched for books on the topic. The task has become
increasingly taxing and difficult with over a thousand new articles for the last search, together
with a hundred or more new books teased out.
In addition, specifically for this article at end of 2006, a JSTOR search was made on social
capital. This has the advantage of being able to specify history journals alone. It has the
disadvantage of being subject to what those journals are, or are not, and a variable moving wall
of a few years across journals with access denied to more recent years – the most recent history
journal reference on social capital was to 2004. The JSTOR search, though, has been more
comprehensive, covering presence of the term anywhere in the text of the journals. No doubt,
there might have been better ways of going about seeking to place social capital in history
relative to the social sciences. But this is all liable to be good enough, with the general search
revealing more recent contributions across history, and the JSTOR search indicating its
presence during the formative and growth years.
Overall, these exercises confirm the relative absence of social capital from history journals.
While the JSTOR search threw up 292 items, only 161 of these were articles, with many book
reviews and front and back pieces (adverts etc.) making up the numbers. Only nineteen items
scored for title or abstract, over half of these coming from the special double issue on social
capital of the Journal of Interdisciplinary History (see below). Many of the items arose from area
publications such as the Journal of Southern African Studies or those also only related to history
such as Economic Geography that, none the less, did benefit from coverage as history journals.
Further, the ‘relevance ranking’ in the articles as far as social capital is concerned, an artefact of
the search engine provided as a service to readers, proved to be extremely low. One element in
relevance is the number of times the term appears and, across the articles covered, this soon
degenerated into one or two alone, frequently as a word in a cited reference only. By way of
contrast, general JSTOR searches across history journals for post-modernism and globalization
offered 3430 and 1558 items, respectively, and consumption essentially revealed a score of 216
on the narrower search by title or abstract.
The absence of social capital from history is confirmed by a useful, and independent, study
of the concept’s birth and growth by Forsman, a librarian offering a bibliographic study for
social capital of some quantitative and qualitative sophistication.26 She divides the diffusion of
25J. Farr, ‘In search of social capital’, PoliticalTheory, XXXV, 1 (February 2007), 54.
26M. Forsman, Development of Research Networks:The Case of Social Capital (Abo, 2005).
450 Social History vol. 33 : no. 4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
social capital across the social sciences into three waves: the first to economics and sociology;
the second to education and medicine; and the third to business and psychology. History is
notable for its absence but, as will be seen, as and where it does make a presence, it does offer
insight even if by way of exception.
4. SOCIAL CAPITAL AS PLOUGHMAN’S LUNCH
One, possibly the single most important, way in which social capital has been addressed
historically, if not in history, has been through its own intellectual history as a term. A mini-
industry has emerged around who first used the term, when and how. Bourdieu is
acknowledged as the modern originator of the term and, after James Coleman, came Putnam
as the social capital superstar, popularizing the term in academia and beyond. Who preceded
them? The literature has stretched back further to highlight the work of, and presumed
precedent set by, Lyda Hanifan, in particular. However, by far the most accomplished
contribution of rediscovery in this vein has been Farr.27 He has brought the use of social capital
by John Dewey to the fore, implicitly charging earlier fans of Hanifan of oversight. And so the
search can go on for other and/or earlier pioneers.
I take an entirely different approach, that social capital does not have an intellectual history
at all, although such a history has been invented in light of its recent eruption.28 In setting aside
social capital as a concept with historical origins of its own, three arguments are of importance.
First, as already seen, the volume and influence of the literature over the past decade have been
as extraordinary as they had been so scarce before that. This, then, is not to suggest there is no
intellectual history or context to social capital, only that this must be used to explain its absence
in the past, not to trace its presence from there.
Second, then, why is use of social capital so minimal in the past (especially when present-day
proponents tend to argue that it was there in all but name)? One reason is that social capital is a
sort of oxymoron, with a minority critical literature appropriately questioning the extent to
which social capital is either social or capital, let alone both.29 In a nutshell, the terminology or
category of social capital bears with it a number of oppositions. If social capital is distinctive,
there must be some capital that is not social. The vast majority of social theory, and certainly
social history, mainstream neo-classical economics apart, with its methodological individualism
and physicalist interpretation of capital as a productive object or input, tends to see (economic)
capital in its social and historical context, as attached to capitalism. So there will be an aversion
to adopting a term that at least implicitly regards the economic as constituted by a capital that is
not social. By the same token, there will be an aversion to attaching the notion of social capital
to something that is non-economic, especially once the economic is associated with capitalism
and its market/non-market distinctions. In short, use of social capital carries connotations of
27J. Farr, ‘Social capital: a conceptual history’,Political Theory, XXXII, 1 (February 2004), 6–33. Seealso Farr, ‘In search’, op. cit., in response to B.Fine, ‘Eleven hypotheses on the conceptualhistory of social capital’, Political Theory, XXXV, 1
(February 2007), 47–53.28Fine, ‘Eleven hypotheses’, op. cit.
29See, for example, S. Smith and J. Kulynych, ‘Itmay be social, but why is it capital? The socialconstruction of social capital and the politics oflanguage’, Politics and Society, XXX, 1 (March 2002),149–86, and J. Roberts, ‘What’s ‘‘social’’ about‘‘social capital’’?’, British Journal of Politics and Interna-tional Relations, VI, 4 (November 2004), 471–93.
November 2008 Social capital versus social history 451
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
economic capital being either private/individual or asocial. Who can accept such a
categorization of the economic other than Bourdieu as exception that proves the rule?
Third, as is evident from the ‘search and find’ intellectual history of social capital, this
conundrum has not entirely deterred its use in the past. None the less, those uses that do not
conform to the present perspective of social capitalists have simply been overlooked. This is
especially true, for example, of O’Connor’s Fiscal Crisis of the State, once a standard
contribution to the political economy of the welfare state in which social capital essentially
serves to represent state expenditures for social reproduction and, as such, is both economic
and social category.30
However, the JSTOR search through the social capital literature brings to light for the first
time, if not surprisingly, other more refined, interesting and significant marriages of the social
with capital, and ones that are appropriately used by historians. There has been a missing
history of the social capital of history. For historians, and others, have been concerned with
social as economic capital, not as its antithesis, and not least as differing social forms of economic
capital are attached to historical change. Leaving aside social capital as a capital city to nation or
region, the most common and least remarkable usage, other than in being overlooked in
intellectual histories, is use of social capital to stand for economic infrastructure, especially but
not exclusively transport. Such social capital is reasonably deemed in historical studies to be a
key element in economic development. And it is but a short step from social capital as physical
or economic infrastructure to its more general position as social and economic infrastructure,
incorporating education, for example. Strikingly, then, Dube et al. Suggest, in examining
Canada’s economic prospects, ‘Social capital is taken to include schools and universities,
churches and related buildings, hospitals, roads and streets, airports, sewer and water systems,
and other buildings and installations appertaining to public institutions and departments of
government’, with some agonizing over arbitrary boundaries in constructing statistical series
and the presence or not of direct or indirect profit motive (social capital as social or business
services).31 But they ultimately settle on a definition that is the reverse of its current location
within civil society, ‘assets for which society as a whole, through the medium of governments
and other public institutions, desires to assume a direct and continuing responsibility’.32
Inevitably, then, these considerations attach social capital to the role of the state, public
expenditure and nationalized industries, the opposite of its use today. Indeed, McDougall sees
social as state capital,33 Zobler as any economic other than physical capital,34 Simon argues that
social capital in the form of roads is a major factor reducing malnutrition,35 and Nast sees social
capital, as infrastructure, as the means of combating racial disadvantage by rectifying unequal
provision.36
30J. O’Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State(New York, 1973).
31Y. Dube, J. E. Howes and D. L. McQueen,Housing and Social Capital, Royal Commission onCanada’s Economic Prospects (Ottawa, 1957),1–2.
32ibid., 3.33D. McDougall, ‘Discussion of Shoyama and
Davis and Legler papers’, Journal of EconomicHistory, XXVI, 4 (December 1966), 553–5.
34L. Zobler ‘An economic-historical view ofnatural resource use and conservation’, EconomicGeography, XXXVIII, 3 (July 1962), 189–94.
35J. Simon, ‘The effects of population onnutrition and economic well-being’, Journal ofInterdisciplinary History, XIV, 2 (Autumn 1983),413–37.
36J. Nast, ‘Mapping the ‘‘unconscious’’: racismand the Oedipal family’, Annals of the Association ofAmerican Geographers, XC, 2 (June 2000), 215–55.
452 Social History vol. 33 : no. 4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
On a different tack, as is entirely reasonable, social capital has appeared in the history
literature as the total or aggregate of economic capital. But, in general, such usage has been far
from mundane because it has been endowed with an analytical content that goes far beyond
adding up over individual capitals, and in a variety of ways. In general, there is the
presumption that the whole is more or different than the sum of the individual parts. To a large
extent, stepping outside the social capital literature, historical or otherwise, this is a matter of
economic theory or political economy. It concerns the workings of the economy as a whole,
and the place of the social as total capital within those workings. This is most obvious in the
case of Marxist political economy, and Marx himself, in addressing the laws of motion of
capitalism. More generally, it is indicative of the social capital in this sense having properties
that are different from, or independent of, the individual components out of which it is
constituted.
By the same token, social capital once considered in aggregate, systemically, can be broken
down again into its separate components in ways that differ from how it was made up out of
individual capitals. Thus, themes that have occurred across the history literature with explicit
reference to social capital include its national and international distribution, ownership and
control, its monopolization, and its impact upon the prospects for inducing productivity
increase through spillovers, diffusion or whatever. These and other themes around the total, or
social, capital are so well worn as to be obvious ports of call for occasional reference to them in
the past as social capital.
Another strand of the history literature lies somewhere askew of the infrastructure and total
capital approaches, for the idea of social capital can be attached to society and not just to
individuals. For all forms of revolutionary socialism, this is an incentive to highlight the
exploitation of those who work by those who do not, merely by virtue of (collective)
ownership or not of a portion of the social capital. Kelso quotes from the French cooperative
labour movement of the 1870s to this effect.37 The social capital should be owned by those
that produce it. Such considerations, in the context of solidarity over risk of injury in South
Wales coal mining, lead Bloor explicitly to reject social capital. Thus, ‘the Fed and the South
Wales miners were not engaging in civic effort, rather they were engaging in a process of
transformative conscientization. . . . Only if the coal owners and managers [and government
officials] are excluded from South Wales civic society can the collective health behaviour of
the miners be linked positively with contemporary analyses of social capital.’38 Or, as Smith
and Kulynych put it more generally, ‘for Putnam to conceptualize . . . [working class]
solidarity as a form of social capital makes a mockery of . . . aspirations that working-class
solidarity can help birth a new world not plagued by capitalist economic, political and social
relations’.39
Similarly, sentiments against the ravages of capitalism, but in favour of its reform, are to be
found in Catterall’s study of the British inter-war labour movement.40 Once understood as the
37M. Kelso, ‘The inception of the modernFrench labor movement (1871–79): a reappraisal’,Journal of Modern History, VIII, 2 (June 1936), 179.
38M. Bloor, ‘No longer dying for a living:collective responses to injury risks in South Walesmining communities, 1900–47’, Sociology, XXXVI, 1
(February 2002), 92.
39Smith and Kulynych, op. cit., 169.40P. Catterall, ‘Morality and politics: the Free
Churches and the Labour Party between the wars’,Historical Journal, XXXVI, 3 (September 1993), 683.
November 2008 Social capital versus social history 453
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
capital of society, social capital for the labour movement, and especially for nonconformist
socialists, took on responsibilities of its own as well as requiring responsibility of individuals.
Social capital must be put to the public and individual good through moderating the excesses
of private ownership even to the point of abolishing it. Of course, milder stances can be
adopted, as reported by Elwitt’s study of education and the social question in late nineteenth-
century France. There is an appeal to social capital to show its human face, not least that, ‘the
summons to the rich held the hope that they would appear with generous purses’.41 For Smith,
though, in his account of the Tonypandy community in 1910, the social capital brings both
cheap consumer goods and entertainment as well as ‘the prevailing grimness of the
[manufacturing] environment’.42
Historical study and use of social capital as an economic category with social effect also arises
out of the impact of capitalism upon what has gone before. For, at the opposite extreme
politically to critique of social capital as reflecting negative aspects within the workings of
capitalism as a whole is the critique of the latter’s destructive implications for the powers (social
capital) of the ancien regime, as described by Wilson of early nineteenth-century Action
Francaise.43 Similarly, the claims of social capital against capitalism are to be found among
those who still retain an attachment to the land, and traditional forms of ownership. Social
capital takes on a meaning that is incompatible with capitalist ownership, social or otherwise.44
Thus, land as social capital is economic by departing from the principles of private ownership
and use.45
But the quintessential social capital of capitalism is money, and its ‘networks’, for the most
obvious collective and hence social form of ownership of capital is that attached to finance. As
Bryer perceptively reveals in his study of the controversy over the emergence of limited
liability in the UK in the 1850s, this is simply a commercial matter of efficiently pooling
society’s finances for the purposes of accumulation. Indeed, this ‘distinction between a world
fit for individual capitalists and a world fit for social capital, was the axis on which the debate
turned, a debate over, and choice between, different theories of political economy’.46 In short,
limited liability needed acceptance of social capital both in practice and in principle and, for
Bryer, this is itself best expressed by Marx for whom:47
With unlimited liability capital could not free itself from the idiosyncrasies of its owner
and conform to the law of social capital, to be employed to earn the risk-adjusted general
41S. Elwitt, ‘Education and the social questions:the Universites Populaires in late nineteenth-centuryFrance’, History of Education Quarterly, XXII, 1
(Spring 1982), 59.42D. Smith, ‘Tonypandy 1910: definitions of
community’, Past and Present, LXXXVII (May 1980),172.
43S. Wilson, ‘A view of the past: ActionFrancaise historiography and its socio-politicalfunction’, Historical Journal, XIX, 1 (March 1976),146.
44M. Fischbach, ‘Britain and the GhawrAbi ‘Ubayda Waqf controversy in TransJordan’,
International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, XXXIII,4 (November 2001), 536.
45See also I. Logan and K. Mengisteab, ‘IMF–World Bank adjustment and structural transforma-tion in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Economic Geography,LXIX, 1 (January 1993), 1–24.
46R. Bryer, ‘The Mercantile Laws Commissionof 1854 and the political economy of limitedliability’, Economic History Review, L, 1 (February1997), 44.
47ibid., 49.
454 Social History vol. 33 : no. 4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
rate of profit. From the point of view of social capital, an ‘equal return for equal capital’
was of a higher moral order than the responsibility of individual capitalists for their debts.
Thus, with limited liability, we have social capital without risk of loss of other assets contingent
upon collective performance, something anticipated in the commenda of mediaeval
Mediterranean trade, although Udovitch sees this as a reason for asserting that, ‘in the
commenda there is no social capital formed’, despite profits and risks being shared by investors
and their agents.48
Yet it is the stock exchange that is social capital par excellence. You share simply by putting
up money to buy. Barsky and de Long view it ‘as a social capital allocation mechanism’.49 This
is hardly controversial, although from Keynes onwards, if not before, there have been different
views than theirs over its efficacy in anticipating and generating the swings of the twentieth-
century economy in response to bull and bear markets. Does social capital in this form generate
sufficient investment, allocate it efficiently, and temper rather than generate economic crises?
Posing, let alone answering, such questions will not be found in the modern social capital
literature. Indeed, I do not even know of a single study of the social capital, in this sense, of
that legendary network of associates known as yuppies that drive the financial system or at least
its inflated rewards. Consequently, given how social capital has been deployed by historians, if
to a limited extent, two tentative conclusions can be drawn. On the one hand, attachment to
social capital as an economic category as discussed above can have prompted its more recent
use to be viewed with dismay. On the other hand, social capital as it has now become may
have discouraged historians from using the term at all. It is, for example, now widely
impossible to talk about economic and social infrastructure as social capital without running
the risk of being totally misunderstood. Put another way, from the perspective of historians, is
it possible that the appropriation of the term social capital in its modern form has driven out its
use in other ways, not least by historians themselves?
Furthermore, as revealed, the invented intellectual history of social capital is one that has
totally overlooked these other uses. It would be a mistake, though, to end the account of that
history at this point, for in taking the long view the most immediate history underpinning the
emergence of social capital has also tended to be overlooked (as well as how little but in diverse
ways that social capital has not been used in the past). This has two crucial elements. One,
already remarked, is how Bourdieu’s approach has given way to that of Coleman as
inspirational source. The second, totally overlooked in the literature, without exception,50
concerns the origins of social capital for Coleman himself (other than to refer to his empirically
flawed accounts of the relationship between social capital as family and neighbourhood and
educational attainment). Coleman was a late participant in the social exchange debate that began
in the 1960s and that sought to base social theory on aggregation across individual interactions,
primarily basing its methodological individualism on psychological motivation. Just as the
leading proponents of social exchange admitted defeat, Coleman adopted the remarkable
48A. Udovitch, ‘At the origins of the westernCommenda: Islam, Israel, Byzantium?’, Speculum,XXXVII, 2 (January 1962), 198.
49R. Barsky and J. Bradford de Long, ‘Bull andbear markets in the twentieth century’, Journal ofEconomic History, L, 2 (June 1990), 268.
50Although this is fully documented inFine, Social Capital versus Social Theory, op. cit.,chap. 5.
November 2008 Social capital versus social history 455
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
expedients of switching from psychological to economic motivation, and terminologically
switching from social exchange to social capital. This both launched the latter and detached it
from the humiliation of social exchange to which Coleman himself never made any reference.
In addition, newly discovered are the earlier rational choice origins for social capital in
the work of James Buchanan, the Nobel Prize Winner for public choice theory. For him: ‘The
simple exchange of apples and oranges between two traders – this institutional model is the
starting point for all I have done.’51 But Buchanan is not dismissive of the social as such as
opposed to the individual as if trading fruit, for he is wary of the loss of America’s idealized
tradition of liberty:52
My diagnosis of American society is informed by the notion that we are living during a
period of erosion of ‘social capital’ that provides the basic framework for our culture, our
economy, and our polity – a framework within which the ‘free society’ in the classically
liberal ideal perhaps came closest to realization in all of history.
This was, in fact, first published by Buchanan in 1981. And the quote continues: ‘My efforts
have been directed at trying to identify and to isolate the failures and breakdowns in
institutions that are responsible for this erosion.’53 In effect, putting this provocatively,
Coleman uses Buchanan without acknowledgement (with Putnam to follow Coleman),
surprising not least as Coleman and Buchanan were heavily involved together in The Public
Choice Society from its origins, suggesting there is no way that Coleman could not know of
Buchanan’s views on social capital.
The explicit rationale for social capital as far as Coleman is concerned is the single-minded
promotion of rational choice theory. Within the social capital literature this has been
acknowledged, to some extent, but the use of social categories of analysis and the buffer
provided by Putnam have tended to conceal this motivation. Indeed, social capital to a large
extent is inconsistent with rational choice theory, seeking to deploy social categories
independent of their individualistic origins or at least some mix of the two. Thus, it cannot be
argued that the suspicion of the rational choice origins of social capital had deterred historians,
for these have been more concealed than highlighted by the literature itself. The one
exception is with the economic.
5. WHY NOT FROM ECONOMICS TO HISTORY?
For the vast bulk of the social capital literature, economics does not figure at all. The economic
at most sits unexamined in the background or is the object favourably enhanced by the
presence of social capital. Significantly, this does imply a breach with the purest commitment
to laissez-faire. Markets work imperfectly in the absence of social capital or, putting it more
positively, markets work better in its presence. But, crucially, and reflecting its lack of systemic
51Quoted in S. Amadae, Rationalizing CapitalistDemocracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational ChoiceLiberalism (Chicago, 2003), 151.
52J. Buchanan, Liberty, Market and State: PoliticalEconomy in the 1980s (Brighton, 1986), 108, cited inAmadae, op. cit., 151–2.
53J. Buchanan, ‘Moral community, moral order,or moral anarchy’, Abbot Memorial Lecture, no.17, Colorado College (Colorado Springs, 1981).
456 Social History vol. 33 : no. 4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
and critical content, such putative economic benefits are presumed in the absence of any
economic analysis itself. However the economy performs, and whichever economy it is, it
does better if supported by social capital.
This has placed social capital in a particular relationship with mainstream economics. It has
meant that the concept has been treated with suspicion since, from an orthodox perspective, a
capital should be a stock purposively built up by deliberate investment and underpinning a
return. However, this partly physicalist interpretation of capital has also been the basis for
broaching (social) capital as those (productive) resources that depart from this simple formula.
While natural, physical, human (and, more generally, personal) and financial capital serve as
the core in resource allocation, efficiency and equilibrium, social capital stands for anything
else, not private or tangible, that might contribute to economic performance. Significantly,
one of the earliest economists to deploy the notion of social capital was Gary Becker, the most
hard-boiled and leading proponent of his so-called economic approach to social science in
which all economic and social phenomena are reduced to the ‘as if’ market-based
consequences of rational optimizing individuals. As the co-organizer with Coleman of the
rational choice seminar at the University of Chicago, he was the pioneer economist in using
social capital as a residual explanatory factor after taking all other types of capital into
account.54
It is not surprising that Becker’s early use of social capital should have been overlooked by
the majority of the literature, economic or otherwise. His as if perfect market approach to
economic and social analysis departs from the ethos of social capital in the latter’s emphasis on
both the imperfections of the market and the potential for motives other than economic
rationality even when pitched at the individualistic level. Like Bourdieu, but at the opposite
extreme, Becker is an embarrassment. Consequently, the more natural home for social capital
within mainstream economics is the market imperfections, especially information-theoretic,
approach that emphasizes the significance of transaction costs (and how social capital might
reduce them). Without going into details, this argues both that markets work imperfectly and
non-market responses are explained by this, with the possibility of tempering and even
eliminating inefficiencies. Social capital neatly falls within the realm of this economic framing
of the rationale for the non-market or non-economic.
There are, though, three important aspects of the incorporation of social capital into
economics. First, as argued by Fine and Milonakis,55 the highest priority within an orthodoxy
that excludes alternatives to an unprecedented degree is its commitment to its technical
apparatus of production and utility functions and, to a high if lesser extent, its commitment to
its technical architecture of optimization, efficiency and equilibrium. As a result, social capital
is treated, and often appears formally, as an element in a production or utility function as if a
material input or consumption good, respectively. Alternatively it is presumed to reduce
transaction costs or to smooth the operation of the market. Second, mainstream economics
purports to assess theory against the evidence through econometrics. This has rendered social
capital a particularly attractive avenue for investigation as its many dimensions and
54Fine, Social Capital versus Social Theory, op. cit.,chap. 3.
55B. Fine and D. Milonakis, From EconomicsImperialism to Freakonomics: The Shifting Boundaries
between Economics to Other Social Sciences (London,2009).
November 2008 Social capital versus social history 457
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
corresponding data sets, generally available or case-study constructed, fit readily into
professional practices.
Third, social capital has emerged across the social sciences just as economics imperialism, or
its colonization of the other disciplines, has entered a new phase corresponding to the shift
away from Becker’s economic approach, reducing the social to the narrowly conceived
economic rationality in as if perfect market conditions. By contrast, the market imperfections
approach to economics has opened up the social as never before, both in scope and palatability
to the other social sciences. Not only is the market no longer seen as primarily perfect, but the
non-market or social is also seen as significant as the endogenized response to those
imperfections. To put it in the vernacular, institutions, customs, history, culture and, of course,
social capital now matter to economic performance, and economists can prove it by
mathematics, and especially through game theory!56
This new phase of economics imperialism has spawned a range of new fields in and around
economics, or developments within them: the new economic sociology, the new institutional
economics, the new political economy, the new economic geography, the new
financial economics, the new development economics, the new welfare economics and so
on. These have offered corresponding incursions into the other social sciences. But the nature
and extent of its impact across the social sciences is uneven, reflecting both the continuing
dynamic of colonized disciplines and, in particular, the acceptability of the methods and
content of mainstream economics. For, while the new phase of economics imperialism does
accept the salience of the non-economic, it continues to rely upon the technical apparatus and
architecture of the methodological individualism associated with economic rationality.
All this is pertinent to the general reception of the new economics imperialism within
history, and of social capital in particular. The discipline is marked by a division between
‘economic’ and ‘social’ history, whose origins derive from the earlier assault of mainstream
economics upon history in its earlier phase of economics imperialism, giving rise to the
cliometric revolution, or aptly named new economic history.57 Inevitably, social history has
either steered away from the economic altogether, on which see below, or has deployed an
entirely different basis for its economics in its understanding of capital, capitalism, class, power,
institutions and so on.
With the new phase of economics imperialism, however, cliometrics has itself gone through
a corresponding reform, and advance on its own terms, to give rise to what can be dubbed the
newer economic history.58 It purports to accept the criticisms of the new economic history for
its neglect of institutions, culture, etc., and to re-engage with social history on these terms.
Some time after this initiative had been launched, one of its originators, Peter Temin, felt it
appropriate to suggest to the readers of the Journal of Economic History that it is ‘kosher to talk
56ibid.,57N. Lamoreaux, ‘Economic history and the
cliometric revolution’ in A. Molho and G. Wood(eds), Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpretthe Past (Princeton, 1998).
58B. Fine, ‘From the newer economic history toinstitutions and development?’, Institutions andEconomic Development, I, 1, 105–36; Fine and
Milonakis, op. cit.; D. Milonakis and B. Fine,‘Douglass North’s remaking of economic history:a critical appraisal’, Review of Radical PoliticalEconomics, XXXIX, 1 (March 2007), 27–57 andReinventing the Economic Past: Method and Theory inthe Evolution of Economic History (London, 2010;forthcoming).
458 Social History vol. 33 : no. 4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
about culture’ as a force of economic history.59 He made explicit reference to Putnam and to
social capital, seeing it as a force for industrialization and as a reason why ‘historians need to
make these connections themselves to get through the plethora of information and
communicate with economists’.60 Indeed, little less modest than Putnam’s claim that social
capital is the key to differential development between the north and south of Italy over the best
part of a millennium, Temin argues ‘that the particular form of social capital I call Anglo-
Saxon culture was uniquely suited to the progress of industrialization over the past two
centuries’.61
This is very big history on a very wide scale, and there are good reasons why the
corresponding overtures to social historians will and should have failed in light of the
continuing antipathy to mainstream economics even in its market imperfections version. Most
telling, Temin’s casual use apart, with its exaggerated claims, is the limited extent to which
social capital has been used by economic as opposed, paradoxically, to social historians (see
below). If, indeed, Temin and his culture are the historical handmaidens of mainstream
economics, social capital should have been adopted within (the newer) economic history itself
at an early stage, and extensively, just as it has across the other social sciences. Why has this not
been the case?
The simple and compelling answer is that an equally flexible and all-encompassing category
was already in place within the new(er) economic history prior to the emergence of the social
capital juggernaut. It was the idea of institutions and its corresponding attachment to the new
institutional economics; see Hadiz for a critique of the new institutionalism with social capital
as a component part in the context of decentralization in Indonesia.62 And, just as the single
figure of Putnam more than any other has symbolized social capital, so the idea of institutions
as the residual explanatory factor for economic history has been identified with Douglass
North. As a leading figure in founding the new economic history, he subsequently refined his
analysis to incorporate property relations followed by institutions. Significantly, these are
defined as the formal or informal arrangements through which society governs itself and the
economy, either more or less efficiently through customary behaviour and ideological beliefs.
There is an exact analytical correspondence with social capital; and North’s treatment of
institutions in this way attained its analytical pinnacle and point of reference for the new
institutional economics and economic history with the publication of Institutions, Institutional
Change and Economic Performance in 1990.63
Thus, just as social history has had scant regard for social capital, especially in light of the
direction it has taken, so economic history has had no need for it. For the latter, this is an
accident of the division of the discipline into these two camps, and the evolution of the
new(er) economic history around the trajectory taken by Douglass North and the new
institutional economics more generally. For the former, the more palatable version of social
capital for social historians associated with Bourdieu was already in decline by the mid-1990s as
the concept took off. At most, social capital for social historians occasionally retained that link
59P. Temin, ‘Is it kosher to talk about culture?’,Journal of Economic History, LVII, 2 (June 1997), 267–87.
60ibid., 282. See also 272.61ibid., 268.62V. Hadiz, ‘Decentralization and democracy
in Indonesia: a critique of neo-institutionalist
perspectives’, Development and Change, XXXV, 4
(September 2004), 697–718.63D. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and
Economic Performance (Cambridge, 1990).
November 2008 Social capital versus social history 459
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
while discarding the uses that had equally occasionally arisen on an entirely different basis in
the past.
6. FROM SOCIAL CAPITAL TO HISTORY
This all provides the context within which to review in more detail, if selectively, the impact
of social capital on history. The obvious starting point is the special two-part issue of Journal of
Interdisciplinary History,64 and, presumably, there must have been some social capital, as it were,
putting this together, not least with Putnam contributing as an author. It was edited by
Rotberg, who offered an introductory essay entitled ‘Social capital and political culture in
Africa, America, Australasia, and Europe’ that, together with the chronological span of
the articles, indicated the putative geographical as well as the historical scope of the
contributions.65 What is most significant about the double special issue is that it is the
exception that proves the rule. Presumably, it was intended to be the launching pad for social
capital within history. If so, it has failed miserably. There have been no further special issues
(which are common across the other social sciences), and limited numbers of subsequent
contributions that do fully embrace the notion as opposed to casual mention in passing.
In this vein, contributions from within history have tended to fall on either side of the
discipline in economic or social orientation, flirting with the new institutional economics and
its analytical foundations in offering an alternative in line with the new economics imperialism
or following a cultural route without economic content, respectively. Some fall across the
divide, as social capital is a recipe for eclecticism, and the motivation and origins for
contributions in using, or referring to, social capital are idiosyncratic and not always
transparent. What follows is a cursory overview, drawing predominantly upon the JSTOR
search.
For the economic, Allen and Reed construct duelling from 1500 to 1900 as a screening
device, a means of demonstrating commitment to, and gaining, patronage, a way of
overcoming informational imperfections with regard to loyalty to the crown.66 Carp points
positively as social capital to the bonds between firefighters in the eighteenth-century United
States, not least in Charleston and the South more generally, a consequence of their defence of
private property and their connections with local politicians.67 This allowed them to take a
lead in the fight for independence from Britain, and even to start fires in order to prevent
property falling into British hands. One cannot help but wonder, however, about the
implications for slavery and racism.68 Carmona and Simpson deploy social capital in their
account of the rise and fall of sharecropping in Catalonia, but essentially rely upon the moral
hazard, opportunism and principal-agent discourse of the new information-theoretic approach
64Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXIX, 3–4
(1999), reprinted as R. Rotberg (ed.), Patterns ofSocial Capital: Stability and Change in HistoricalPerspective (Cambridge, 2001).
65R. Rotberg ‘Social capital and politicalculture in Africa, America, Australasia, andEurope’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXIX, 3
(Winter 1999), 339–56.66D. Allen and C. Reed, ‘The duel of honor:
screening for unobservable social capital’, American
Law and Economics Review, VIII, 1 (March 2006),81–115.
67B. Carp, ‘Fire of liberty: firefighters, urbanvoluntary culture, and the revolutionary move-ment’, William and Mary Quarterly, LVIII, 4
(October 2001), 781–818.68For this for contemporary New York, see
S. McNamee and R. Miller, The Meritocracy Myth(Lanham, 2004), 76.
460 Social History vol. 33 : no. 4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
to economics.69 This has itself been prominent in new literature on sharecropping, offered as
an alternative to analyses based on class and power (and, it would appear, sharecroppers’ own
self-perception). As they put it, ‘Contemporaries often considered the contract synonymous
with ‘‘exploitation’’ and ‘‘impoverishment’’, terms frequently found in the more traditional
literature on sharecropping.’70 Contracting is also perceived to be difficult across scattered
Australian gold mines at the end of the nineteenth century, meaning less social capital by
which to come to amicable agreements and, hence, more costly litigation in the courts.71 In an
early application in this vein, the notion of social capital, referencing Coleman, has been
deployed to explain the laying of plank roads in New York as a reflection of the ability of
community spirit to overcome the problem of free riders.72 Unfortunately, for the authors, by
comparison with the contemporaneously published Putnam on Italy, they do not seem to have
been able to project planks to present-day US civil society.
Not surprisingly, social historians have referenced social capital when dealing with gender
and marriage (see also below). For Brightman, social capital facilitates foraging and hunting in
primitive societies but offers more in terms of standard anthropological concerns with taboo
and gender politics.73 In Kapteijn’s study of northern Somali, with reference to gifts,
bridewealth and reciprocity, women are social capital for their men, and children for their
mothers, relations that tend to be undermined by commercialization and the state.74 And
Pouwels sees marriage as the social capital by which merchants could integrate themselves and
promote their business along the African east coast prior to 1800.75
In an unwitting anticipation of a rapidly growing literature on (lack of) social capital and
crime (or any other deviancy), McIntosh suddenly imports the idea into her response for a
debate on the Controlling of Misbehavior across the medieval/early modern divide.76 It
accumulates with the formation of the nation-state, again anticipating social capital as
modernization. She wishes to incorporate religion and social factors. To do so, she
draws ‘upon the powerful concept of ‘‘social capital’’’. Her analytical opportunism, freely
referencing Bourdieu, Coleman and Putnam as an unproblematic troika of sources, is scarcely
concealed:77
Regardless of whether one prefers a definition drawn from sociology/political science or
a more anthropologically focused usage, social capital is produced by interactions between
people, either informally or through more structured associations. . . . Because social
69J. Carmona and J. Simpson, ‘The ‘‘RabassaMorta’’ in Catalan viticulture: the rise and declineof a long-term sharecropping contract, 1670s–1920s’, Journal of Economic History, LIX, 2 (June1999), 290–315.
70ibid., 290.71B. Khan, ‘Commerce and cooperation:
litigation and settlement of civil disputeson the Australian frontier, 1860–1900’, Journal ofEconomic History, LX, 4 (December 2000), 1088–119.
72J. Majewski, Christopher Baier and DanielKlein, ‘Responding to relative decline: the plankroad boom of antebellum New York’, Journal ofEconomic History, LIII, 1 (March 1993), 106–22.
73R. Brightman, ‘The sexual division of fora-ging labor: biology, taboo, and gender politics’,Comparative Studies in Society and History, XXXVIII, 4
(October 1996), 687–729.74L. Kapteijns, ‘Gender relations and the
transformation of the northern Somali pastoraltradition’, International Journal of African HistoricalStudies, XXVIII, 2 (1995), 241–59.
75R. Pouwels, ‘Eastern Africa and the IndianOcean to 1800: reviewing relations in historicalperspective’, International Journal of African HistoricalStudies, XXXV, 2–3 (2002), 385–425.
76M. McIntosh, ‘Response’, Journal of BritishStudies, XXXVII, 3 (July 1998), 291–305.
77ibid., 294.
November 2008 Social capital versus social history 461
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
capital serves to link individuals and groups, operating both laterally and vertically, it is an
important explanatory tool when examining the development of a participatory nation-
state.
And, also, one that controls ‘misbehaviour’. Significantly, as Gaggio also recognizes,78 her
contribution to the special issue of the Journal of Interdisciplinary History is one that emphasizes
the positive gains and role of women in medieval and early modern England, as opposed to
their exclusion and oppression.79
Other, more sophisticated uses of social capital are explicit about their ties to Bourdieu-type
interpretations and uses of the concept. Shetler focuses on as limited an object as a Kiroba text
of popular history as a form of social capital in Tanzania since it depicts a constellation of
networks and social relations that can inform and sustain those who draw upon it.80 Pellow
perceives the powers and legitimacy of chiefs as representing their shifting social capital in
response to shifting circumstances in turn of the last century Accra, not least in being
contingent upon British patronage.81 Smith allows for intersection between race, ethnicity and
gender, as colour of skin as social capital allows for a better marriage in Guatemala.82 Franklin
has inspired a number of studies of the way in which Afro Americans have used their social and
other capital to promote community education and other advances, although the social capital
of racism is equally important in the history of ‘exclusion’.83 MacHardy does deploy
Bourdieu’s approach to address dissent among Protestant nobles in sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century Habsburg.84 The same is so of Schoenbrun’s account of gendered relations around the
East African Great Lakes before the fifteenth century.85 Without explicit reference to
Bourdieu as such, Muldrew rounds up ‘the social capital of display’ in and of itself as a feature
of early modern England, and through generosity, ‘[Silver] plate was also an important item in
gift exchange’.86 But such social capital is perceived to have been under threat from money or
monied capital, for the ‘hoarding of money, and the advantage it gave one person to do what
they wanted, were always seen as a threat to trust, sociability and the circulation of social
capital upon which early modern exchange depended’.87
78Gaggio, op. cit., 509.79M. McIntosh, ‘The diversity of social capital
in English communities, 1300–1640 (with a glanceat modern Nigeria)’, Journal of InterdisciplinaryHistory, XIX, 3 (Winter 1999), 459–90.
80J. Shetler, ‘A gift for generations to come: aKiroba popular history from Tanzania and identityas social capital in the 1980s’, International Journal ofAfrican Historical Studies, XXVIII, 1 (1995), 69–112.
81D. Pellow, ‘The power of space in theevolution of an Accra Zongo’, Ethnohistory,XXXVIII, 4 (Autumn 1991), 414–50.
82C. Smith, ‘Race–class–gender ideology in Gua-temala: modern and anti-modern forms’, ComparativeStudies in Society and History, XXXVII, 4 (October 1995),723–49. See also Hunter, op. cit.
83V. Franklin, ‘‘‘ Location, location, location’’:the cultural geography of African Americans:
introduction to a journey’, Journal of AfricanAmerican History, LXXXVII, 1 (January 2002), 1–11.
84K. MacHardy, ‘The rise of absolutism andnoble rebellion in early modern Habsburg Austria,1570 to 1620’, Comparative Studies in Society andHistory, XXXIV, 3 (July 1992), 407–38 and ‘Culturalcapital, family strategies and noble identity in earlymodern Habsburg Austria 1579–1620’, Past andPresent, CLXIII (May 1999), 36–75.
85D. Schoenbrun, ‘Gendered histories betweenthe Great Lakes: varieties and limits’, InternationalJournal of African Historical Studies, XXIX, 3 (1997),461–92.
86C. Muldrew, ‘‘‘Hard food for Midas’’: cashand its social value in early modern England’, Pastand Present, CLXX (February 2001), 78–120, 111.
87ibid., 119.
462 Social History vol. 33 : no. 4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
Literature for the modern period sends this antithesis between social capital and money into
reverse, with the one serving to support the other in light of the need for trust of the borrower
on the part of the lender. Interestingly, this theme within the newer economic history and the
newer financial economics has been muted as far as social capital is concerned, except when it
comes to Grameen Banking and the like, for the new institutional economics suffices for the
purpose. Yet for van Leeuwen, at least, such money allowed an entree into higher status
through charitable giving.88 The poor themselves, though, are perceived to have had less
honourable motives, displaying ‘an intuitive knowledge of the value of what sociologists and
anthropologists call social capital’, creating norms of mutual support, ‘not solely a form of
spreading risks over time’ but also as a means of accessing information on support from
others.89 In short, as far as social capital is concerned, ‘The virtual certainty that an investment
would pay off in the future naturally increased the willingness to invest.’
But, by a long way, the most accomplished use of social capital in history is to be found in
Ogilvie’s book on women in early modern Germany, and the role of guilds.90 Her starting
point is social networks, and these are used to frame the creation and significance of social
capital (which only really appears in her book after page 340). Networks only become social
capital through closure, by restricting membership as well as allowing it, whether by gender,
ethnicity, religion or whatever.91 Just as inclusion can benefit those who are members, so
exclusion can harm those who are not. She concludes, ‘Social networks generate social capital,
which not only facilitates collective action but also sustains commonly shared norms . . . these
norms not only penalized women in each generation, but perpetuated and entrenched
themselves, penalizing future generations’.92 She seems, however, to go further in her article,
recognizing that guilds ‘achieved or lost power not as a function of whether their social capital
offered efficient institutional solutions to market failures, but as a function of whether it
endowed them with a powerful bargaining position within the local institutional and political
framework’.93 In other words, ‘social capital’, and she herself uses inverted commas, is a
consequence of the social networks of power, and not the more or less effective correction of
market imperfections as would be proposed by economic theory and its extrapolation to
history. With this approach, and its application, there can be few complaints, but it is far from
clear what light is shed by appealing to social capital, or that it is open to generalization from
one case-study to another.
7. HISTORY BY BRINGING BOURDIEU BACK IN?
Whether for economic history by being beaten to the starting line by new institutional
economics or for social history in filling a mixed but small bag of applications, social capital is
notable for its absence from history. Is there a greater role for social capital in social history if,
as is suggested by Gaggio, it draws upon Bourdieu’s approach? The latter’s profile in the
88M. van Leeuwen, ‘Logic of charity: poor reliefin pre-industrial Europe’, Journal of InterdisciplinaryHistory, XXIV, 4 (Spring 1994), 596.
89ibid., 603.90S. Ogilive, A Bitter Living: Women, Markets,
and Social Capital in Early Modern Germany(Oxford, 2003).
91ibid., 341.92ibid., 352.93S. Ogilvie, ‘Guilds, efficiency, and social
capital: evidence from German proto-industry’,Economic History Review, LVII, 2 (December 2002),329.
November 2008 Social capital versus social history 463
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
literature sank considerably during the late 1990s as rational choice functionalist sociologist,
Coleman, and then Putnam came to the fore. But, recently, Bourdieu has become more
acknowledged once again, especially as a way of bringing ‘context’ back in.
There is much to commend in Bourdieu’s approach to social capital. First, he sees it as one
among a number of capitals, alongside the cultural, symbolic and economic, all but the last of
which have tended to be subsumed under social capital in the subsequent literature. Second,
while appeal to these different types of capital is generalized across a huge historical range, from
the Sun King to contemporary French society, Bourdieu is adamant that each application is
context-specific, for which he posits his own investigative apparatus involving habitus and
field, corresponding notions notably absent from other social capital literature. Instead, context
for the social capital literature has generally been limited to the acknowledgement of the
presence of other variables rather than attention to meaning grounded in discursive practices.
Third, Bourdieu is focused upon questions of class, power, conflict and the way in which
different capitals are formed and play a role in reproduction and transformation. Again, the
contrast with the subsequent literature is striking.
Despite, or even because of, these favourable elements, Bourdieu’s notion of (social) capital
also exhibits serious weaknesses. First and foremost is the limited understanding of economic
capital. If this were there, for example, then it would be impossible for other capitals to range
so freely historically across contexts where the economic has yet to develop its modern forms
and which play an influential role on the symbolic, cultural and social. For, once capital as such
is pinned down, it is necessary to have distinguished between capitalism and its economics, and
that of other historical periods where capitalism does not prevail. ‘Habitus’ and ‘field’ are
permissive in this respect, but they make little headway from an analytical point of view.
In addition, it is precisely the peculiar nature of ‘economic’ capital, and its attachment to
capitalism, that has inspired social theory to comprehend the special relationship between the
economic and the non-economic, ranging over Weber’s Protestant ethic and rationality and
order, Polanyi’s embeddedness and double movement, anthropology’s gift versus commodity,
and so on. Despite his emphasis on context, Bourdieu’s notion of capital floats too freely across
history in failing to identify the structures, processes and relations to which capital and
capitalism are attached.
Second, and an exception that proves the rule, is the fluidity that accompanies the notion of
capital in Bourdieu, of whatever type and context. Specifically, for him, if not exactly as if a
price relationship, each capital is money-like in the sense of being exchangeable to greater or
lesser degree into another type. But the qualitative and quantitative nature of such relations are
so diverse and variable, with the exception of money capital itself, that it makes little sense to
treat the cultural, symbolic and social as if they were capital.
It also courts the risk, not only of taking the economic as given, but as non-social as opposed
to the non-economic. By contrast, for Marxist political economy, for example (economic)
capital is profoundly social with definite relations, structures, forms, processes and laws of
development of its own as well as with profound implications for corresponding impact upon
the cultural, symbolic and social (as non-economic). This is not a matter of reducing these to
the economic but of not reducing the economic to the asocial.
Of this, of course, Bourdieu is not deeply guilty if only because of his insistence upon class,
power, conflict, etc., and context, even if not drawing heavily upon a political economy of
capitalism. If the social capital literature had confined itself to Bourdieu-type analyses, there
464 Social History vol. 33 : no. 4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
would be only little of which to complain, and we would have received a bag of disparate case-
studies with nothing to connect them to one another other than a common and peculiar
terminology. Such was the situation before Coleman trumped Bourdieu, after which the
common terminology is taken to suggest that the different case-studies share something
substantive in common, the social as represented by social capital. Paradoxically, as indicated,
Bourdieu was sidelined during social capital’s meteoric rise, but he is now being brought back
in on a piecemeal basis as an incoherent fixing device for context for the unduly abstract social
capital, so diverse and contingent is its scope of application. Significantly, Bourdieu’s other
types of capital, and his emphasis on class, conflict and power, etc., remain notable for their
absence other than occasionally as a token addition of context. The point is that while
Bourdieu can be brought back in,94 this does not mean you get Bourdieu back by doing so, as
is evident from the attempt by Svendsen and Svendsen to construct a social capital with
‘Bourdieuconomics’ that moulds him in a market imperfection direction, entirely compatible
with mainstream economics.95
Is this necessarily the case, or does history have the capacity to use social capital to restore
Bourdieu within its own borders and even, by example, without? Gaggio presumes so, but
without much account of history’s own dynamic and relations with the other social sciences,
and why it, unlike other disciplines, should be able to avoid social capital’s unsubtle charms.
Essentially, his case rests on his own case-study, for which he finds Bourdieu and social capital
of use. But, as addressed here, the bigger historiographical questions concern why history
should not have jumped the social capital bandwagon already and, if it had, what would have
been the result.
8. THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE?
It is apparent, and with Gaggio in agreement, that there have been compelling reasons why
social history should have eschewed social capital in view of its content and momentum. Will
this continue to be the case? Across the profession, there are three potential, not mutually
exclusive, directions that might be followed. One is for social capital to gather strength and to
prosper, contingent in part upon how social capital itself evolves, most likely within newer
economic history as it opportunistically complements or displaces ‘institutions’ at the current
edge of mainstream economic history. The second option, at the opposite extreme, is for
historians to continue in the main to ignore social capital although, as and when it does prosper
on or across the discipline’s boundaries, it will prove both irksome and potentially a Trojan
horse for the previous outcome. Significantly, a recent book on civil society fails to address the
social capital phenomenon, apparently because it was not to be taken seriously.96 At the very
least, historians can hardly be expected to take seriously the claim by social capitalists that they
are bringing back in civil society or civilizing economists, for whatever the validity of social
94Szreter, ‘The state of social capital’, op. cit.,616–17.
95G. Svendsen and G. Svendsen, ‘On the wealthof nations: Bourdieuconomics and social capital’,Theory and Society, XXXII, 5/6 (2003), 607–31 andThe Creation and Destruction of Social Capital:
Entrepreneurship, Cooperative Movements andInstitutions (Cheltenham, 2004).
96J. Hall and F. Trentmann (eds), Civil Society: AReader in History, Theory and Global Politics(Basingstoke, 2005).
November 2008 Social capital versus social history 465
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
capital’s claim that it rectifies the absence of civil society across the other social sciences, this is
laughable as far as (social) history and historians are concerned.
Nevertheless, the third option, and the one favoured here, is for historians to engage fully
and uncompromisingly critically with social capital by exposing its legion deficiencies and
offering constructive alternatives, that reject it rather than proposing new, improved versions.
This is a departure from Gaggio although, as already observed, there is considerable agreement
over the impoverishment of the bulk of the social capital literature as it is. But there are also
differences. His stance is one of acknowledging the limitations of social capital and of putting
these right in individual case-study. This is a possibility, as social capital is sufficiently fluid
conceptually that it can take on any mantle; but it is also to take an unduly narrow view of the
intellectual dynamic of social capital for the following reasons.
First, Gaggio takes insufficient account of the collective weight of the critical deficiencies of
social capital that have been exposed here and which explain the historian’s reluctance to
engage. Second, in particular, this means that individual contributions, however scathing and
reconstructive, will be deployed to legitimize and not to move social capital from its current
trajectory of simply absorbing criticism as addition of another variable. Third, and most
important, Gaggio takes no account of the broader intellectual environment that has spawned
social capital.
Social capital has thrived in that intellectual context peculiar to the 1990s, in which there has
been a dual reaction against the extremes both of neo-liberalism and post-modernism. Like its
counterpart, globalization, but as its complement and opposite in many respects, social capital
has rejected the idea that markets work perfectly and embraced the idea of getting real about
how people go about their (daily) lives.97 The global, though, is notable for its absence from
the world of social capital, with the exception of a more recently burgeoning literature around
global management. Social capital is more about communities accepting the world as it is and
bettering themselves on this basis.
Thus, while both globalization and social capital parallel one another in seeking to come to
terms with the nature of contemporary capitalism, and extend their insights into the past, they
otherwise differ considerably in content and direction (although each is equally promiscuous, if
selective, in range of application, method and impact). Globalization has been won away from
the neo-liberal agenda that the market is benevolently triumphant over the state. Instead, it has
been situated systemically, as a matter of power and conflict, where the role of the state
remains significant, and context by time and place is paramount (as neatly captured by the
notion of glocalization). By contrast, social capital has compromised with neo-liberalism, is
middle range at the expense of the systemic (with roots in methodological individualism), and
is most uncomfortable if not self-destructive in bringing back in power, conflict, etc., and,
most significantly, the contextual.
On the whole, history’s disregard for social capital is a reflection of the discipline’s positive
qualities. But it is precisely because of these that it should critically engage with social capital,
shedding light on the methodological and theoretical lessons that can be gleaned historically for
understanding the past and contemporary capitalism. The point is not only to halt social capital
97B. Fine, ‘Examining the idea of globalizationand development critically: what role for political
economy?’, New Political Economy, IX, 2 (June2004), 213–31.
466 Social History vol. 33 : no. 4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014
in its tracks but also to offer alternatives to social science, currently as open as it has ever
been, in the dual retreats from post-modernism and neo-liberalism. Otherwise, there is the
prospect of the creeping if not forward march of social capital across the newer economic
history, correspondingly reducing the scope and influence of a genuine economic and social
history.
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
November 2008 Social capital versus social history 467
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f N
ew H
amps
hire
] at
20:
25 1
9 N
ovem
ber
2014