ABSTRACT
Social capital may be hard (or contentious) to define, but I know it when I see it. Or, more precisely, I know it when I experience it, currently as an elected official in what I am confident is a community particularly rich in social capital. This recent experience has sharpened my existing intellectual interest in the contextual sources of civic and political engagement. Social or political capital, which I define broadly as interpersonal and interinstitutional connections which provide resources to accomplish collective civic and political goals, cannot-in my opinion-be reduced to attributes of individuals. So despite the many pieces of useful survey-based research which help us understand, for example, how membership in particular kinds of organizations develops particular kinds of civic skills, this kind of individual-level research can only get us part of the way towards understanding the community dynamics that create varying levels of engagement (and political effectiveness) among citizens. The Social Capital Benchmark surveys have allowed interesting analysis of various sorts of intra-individual connections, but these connections are studied, for the most part, as individual attributes (whether considered as dependent or as independent variables).
