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Typologies of Capital

As currently written, this article fails to discuss at all the main difference between the concept of social capital which descends from Bourdieu and the concept of social capital which descends from James Coleman, Putnam, et al. The typology of capital in which Bourdieu frames social capital as a type, is typed according to the FIELD in which the capital operates, while the typologies of capital used by Coleman and Putnam are typed according to the LOCUS of the capital resource. The impact of this distinction is that one label, 'social capital', is used to refer to two very distinct concepts, only loosely related to each other by the shared name and both being typologies of capital.

On top of this problem is the further issue that within typologies of capital, the type 'social capital' tends almost always to be a residual category that encompasses whatever varieties of capital are not explicitly broken out into the other named categories. This means that the content of 'social capital' as a category tends to depend heavily on the typology used by an author, particularly on what other types of capital are recognized. The impact of this problem on the field is worsened by the popularity of the term 'social capital' at least since Putnam's _Bowling Alone_ and the fact that the majority of the people using the term do not recognize its dependence on the structure of the typologies in which it is situated, must less situate it in that context. The present wikipedia article a glaring example of this ignorance. A prime example can be found in the very first sentence, which is false. Social capital is absolutely NOT a form of economic or cultural capital. Similar problems emerge with other statements in this article. 73.230.86.159 (talk) 18:11, 11 May 2017 (UTC) Blyden Potts

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My note on how to rebuilding this article

Let me first agree to Blyden Potts and confirming that social capital is NOT a form of cultural and economic capital. But this wrong introduction comes from a discussion on social capital in the early ninties/late eighties when Pierre Bourdieu distinguished cultural from economic and social capital. In the meanwhile Human Capital came up, so that we had to distinguish at minimum social capital (non-material social goods such as trust and helpfulness) from human (education/skills/Knowledge) and financial capital (all sorts of assets, credit). But such small changes won't make this article any better. Where to start? Well, the article features too many single and today outdated sources and therefore gets lost within a hermetic scholar's perspective. As well today we must not quote too many sources that are not available online by open access. Just to mention: the key works of Bourdieu, Putnam and Stiglitz/Ostrom are available online.

But from the history of this article I fear that rebuilding the article may leading to an editors war because the scholars who wrote it will not agree to reducing the definitions and sources and adding current updates. For the last I give two examples: 1) The World Bank, that run a Social Capital Initiative from 1997 to 2004, in which three Noble laureates participated (Sen, Stiglitz, Ostrom), recently picked up the issue by reclaiming to measure social capital as the social dimension of the UN Goals:The forgotten dimension of the SDG: Social Capital 2) The United Nations in early 2016 yet launched a project to measuring the Social Capital in 35 languages which happens in 142 countries yet. Although this is done by a small questionnaire that works on every Smartphone this a new development in measuring social capital.

So we can seperate two aspects of social capital:

  • The theoretical discussion on social capital and its history
  • The attempts that have been made to measuring and to applying social capital

So I would offering to having three sections:

  1. The definition(s) of social capital (by distinguishing from other forms of capital)
  2. The theoretical discussion on social capital and its history
  3. Measuring and applying social capital

The literature and links section should not feature too many secondary articles but being focused on the major contributions in the past (Bourdieu, Putnam, Coleman, Stiglitz, Ostrom, Fukuyama) and the current interpretation.

But I would only doing that in kind there is any acceptance for the rebuilding before. I can't investing time to having the changes deleted all the time. At the end a normal user and student should get a comprehensive overview on what social capital is. That includes some graphics such as:

  • Issues cutting across with social capital such as: voluntarism, social entrepreneurship, social cohesion, social impact, social inclusion and some more
  • A table for the four types of capital (financial/economic, human, cultural, social) that can be used to having an overview

So I would kindly asking you for your opinion on my proposal and to frankly telling me if you'd like to freeze the current version on what reason ever,Jörg Sutter (talk) 09:19, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

I reviewed the links and removed the ones which were blind links, outdated information (example: last news 2015) and non relevant texts that didn't contribute to either the general discussion or the application/measurement of social capital. As well I added the two links I mentioned in my proposal to rebuilding and updating the article. I will feature the classical texts with links when I reviewJörg Sutter (talk) 20:14, 17 October 2017 (UTC) the 162! links of the references in the old articleJörg Sutter (talk) 20:12, 17 October 2017 (UTC)