ABSTRACT

In order for an individual to be included, then, they need to have access to different forms of capital, from financial to human and social. Piachaud (2002) provides a useful checklist of the assets that an individual needs access to if he/she is to be able to participate fully in the activities of their society; these include financial assets (inherited, earned, won), other assets (such as land, other property), skills (abilities, education, training), public infrastructure (roads, schools, hospitals) and collective social resources, including networks and shared norms and values, which scholars including Bordieu, Loury, Coleman and Putnam (see, for a review, Dasgupta and Serageldin 2000) have all variously described as social capital. All these forms of capital are complementary, which means that they all need to be available in some form for an individual to flourish and develop. A good example of the consequences deriving from lacking access to many of these resources is provided in a study by Cleaver (2005), who illustrates the interlocking disadvantages (i.e. disadvantages that happen simultaneously and are interrelated) experienced by poor households in Tanzania. These include small family size, weak family networks, lack of assets – including labour power – which constrains their ability to engage in reciprocal collective activities and thereby build relations which they could then draw on for help, poor health, inability to articulate their issues in public fora, as well as the derogatory perceptions of other community members towards them. Many studies of poverty in both developing and developed countries observe that although poor people may have social links to others, these are weak links because the people they know more closely experience the same difficulties that they do, and therefore are not in a position to help them and spend most of their energies concentrating on their own survival. The implication of studies like this is that social capital cannot be understood as a ready substitute for other missing capitals (human, natural, financial), and the same issue has been found across a variety of contexts and countries, as illustrated in studies of youth disadvantage in the UK (Hobcraft 2003), social capital and micro-finance in Mexico (Casson and Della Giusta 2004), and the well-being of immigrant women in the UK (Della Giusta and Kambhampati 2006).