ABSTRACT
Most scholarly thinking makes little if any impact in the wider world. Countless notions come to be formulated, systematised, debated, applied, criticised and evaluated, before vanishing into the dusty archives of the history of ideas. Social capital is not like that. Its sudden rise to prominence in the social sciences has touched a wider public. Thanks to the lively populist streak in his language, Putnam has gifted headline writers a series of vivid and easy attention-grabbers, such as television being a ‘culprit’, or proliferations of picnics and choirs as a solution. The interdisciplinary character of the concept has created wide coalitions of scholars with differing academic expertise, and of course they have also focused on issues that also engage policy-makers, such as health, crime, regeneration, employment and educational attainment. Treating networks and shared norms as a form of capital has given the idea some resonance among economists, opening doors into the usually closed, clubby world of serious policy debate. And the language of capital has immediate practical purchase among a wider audience: after all, if you can have capital, you can invest it prudently, or you can hide it under the bed and let its value dwindle.
