ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an over view of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores processes of social capital formation within urban contexts that range across this very broad spectrum. It presents a much broader and at the same time more nuanced portrait of the current situation of and prospects for social relations embedded in today's urban milieu. The book attempts to place social capital theory and research in a critical engagement with contemporary issues of social complexity, inequality, cultural pluralism, and ethnoracial diversity and division constitutes the central. Contributors draw on contemporary theory and research in social capital, political economy, urban planning and policy, social movements, film studies, civil society, and action theory to explore how social norms, networks, connections, and ties are created, deployed and often frayed under conditions of social complexity, inequality, cultural pluralism, and ethnoracial diversity and division that increasingly characterize modern urban existence.
