ABSTRACT
The concept of social capital relates social norms, rules, and reciprocal obligations to patterns of social and economic action (Woolcock, 1998). For James Coleman, “Social capital is defined by its function. It is not a single entity but a variety of different entities, with two elements in common: they all consist of some aspect of social structures, and they facilitate certain actions of actors” (Coleman, 1988: S98). Meanwhile, Pierre Bourdieu defined social capital as the “aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition . . . which provides each of its members with the backing of the collectively owned capital” (Bourdieu, 1986: 21). Economists have used the concept as a way of describing the “social something” (Hammer and Pritchett, 2006) that their econometric tools could otherwise not handle: the social relationships through which information is exchanged, risk managed, cooperation made possible, and so on (Hammer and Pritchett, 2006; Durlauf and Fafchamps, 2005; Fafchamps, 2006). Other social scientists have used social capital to explore how social relationships affect governance, democracy, livelihood and collective action (Woolcock, 2010).
