Social capital - Elisabeth Backe-Hansen, NOVA

2 The emperor’s new clothes..... Few books have probably influenced international debates about social politics as much as Robert Putnam’s ”Making democracy work” from 1993 Between 1991 and 2001 the number of scientific publications per year with social capital in the title, the abstract or among the key words increased from almost none to almost 250

3 In Great Britain social capital has become a key concept governing policy-making Reparing and increasing social capital is seen as a way to alleviate social problems, including effects of globalisation and individualisation, fragmentation of society and diminishing political participation

4 The concept attracts researchers from many disciplines, which makes for many different definitions Criticism is also rife, because of imprecise definitions, because the concept is seen as tautological and because negative effects of social capital are under- reported in much of the literature And – a child and youth perspective is mostly lacking

5 Even when one tries to operationalize social capital in a way that captures the well-being and life chances of children and young people, the question arises as to whether we are in essence talking about social networks – thus the issue about what’s new for our purposes

6... Or a functional approach to defining indicators? Still, it is argued by several authors that the concept holds out promises for looking at children and young people’s social networks in new ways, and The concept holds out promises for incorporating both structure and agency in thinking about children and young peple’s well-being

7 How has social capital been measured? Some authors have operationalized social capital directly and used measures based on such operationalisations The most well-known example: the trust dimension In addition: indicators based on bonding, bridging and linking social capital

8 Second, and far more commonly so far, authors have constructed post-hoc indicators of social capital based on data that have already been collected for other purposes Examples: School achievement (Young in Oslo, 2000) Positive development among at-risk youth

9 In conlusion... In spite of the criticism levelled at the concept, it still holds out promises of new knowledge However, the concept needs to be concretized according to each specific purpose When using the concept in relation to children and young people’s well-being, the network dimension seems most relevant