ABSTRACT
According to Robert Putnam (2001), who found trace of the expression in an article dating to 1916 (Hanifan 1916), social capital seems to be a quite early notion in human sciences. Nevertheless, this concept is conventionally attributed to the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1980), who developed and popularized it with an eye to highlighting its role in the preservation of social class from a macro-social perspective. Social capital in this context refers to the entirety of resources an agent can obtain from his/her social network: “the current or potential resources linked to the possession of a durable social network of more or less institutionalised relationships of mutual knowledge and mutual acknowledgement; or in other words the idea of belonging to a group” (Bourdieu 1980: authors’ translation.)
Influenced by Bourdieu’s work, James Coleman (1988) introduced the concept of social capital in a more micro-socioeconomic framework, relying on the hypothesis of rational individuals. Social capital is seen as a productive asset derived from the social structure that facilitates cooperation among rational individuals. Since the mid-1990s, Putnam popularized Coleman’s conception of a new factor of production through its ability to explain why some countries or regions develop further than others. Being involved in social organizations and sharing the same norms and values promote trust and facilitate cooperation and coordination for mutual profit (Putnam 1993; see also Helliwell and Putnam 1995). Subsequently, Francis Fukuyama (1995) emphasized the role of social capital as the key element fostering economic growth and development because it produces trust. His assertion relies on the usual neo-institutional theory stipulating that trust among people reduces transaction costs and thus fosters economic growth (North 1990).
