ABSTRACT
Cross-cultural social capital represents the second form of capital in my concept of good neighbourhood. Social capital, a product of social embedding and interaction and expressed in social networks and social trust (Putnam 2000), can be culturally ‘neutral.’ At the same time, social capital, when bonding or bridging (ibid.), can be inherently cultural, as I have already pointed out in Chapter 2. In multicultural societies, we often witness social capital that is bonding within the different ethno-cultural communities rather than bridging across ethno-cultural boundaries: Hungarians more often associate with Hungarians, Slovaks with Slovaks, Serbs with Serbs, and so on. This prevalence of bonding social capital has resulted in ethno-cultural segregation in many spheres of life (“we live side-by-side”) and has contributed to social and political tensions as well as to a lack of mutual understanding and respect. Therefore, to overcome segregation and its negative side-effects in multicultural societies, bridging social capital that is cross-cultural is necessary for establishing good-neighbourly relations.
