The forms of social capital. Theory and practice in community work

Sammendrag

In this chapter, addressed to students, practitioners and scholars within the social professions, the theoretical foundation of community work and the widespread application of ‘social capital’ within it will be discussed.

The chapter aims at furthering a critique of ‘social capital’ as presented by Putnam and others’, both with regards to its conceptualization (Portes, 1998) and its more hands-on application within community work (Deflippis, 2001). In this critique, it is argued that an understanding of social capital as ‘traits of communities’ is both logically flawed and ill-equipped at addressing vital areas of interest for social work broadly and community work specifically. In this chapter, it is argued that an adaptation of Bourdieu’s understanding of social capital, intrinsically linked to related concepts and theories, and thus to ideas of power and social stratification, would benefit community work in both its academic and practice-oriented endeavors.

It is further argued that the widespread utilization of ‘social capital’, by way of Putnam, has occurred because of an epistemological disjunction between the theoretical foundation of community work (community work as a ‘project’) and its practice (community work as ‘work’). Putnam’s social capital has been applied, in other words, as a way of bridging a gap between a critical theoretical foundation and a hands-on practical subject, by seeing social capital as an instrument of ‘capacity building’. We believe that this bridge has severe constructional flaws and could (and should) be mended by the reintroduction of Bourdieu’s social capital. This will certainly add complexity to the theory/praxis dialectic, but also a way out of a simplistic and instrumental adaptation within a critical and reflexive discipline.