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Skeptical Views on Social Capital

This section collects works of authors skeptical about the usefulness of the concept of social capital for social sciences. Great part of these studies belongs to the field of economics and addresses problems like the difficulties of measurement, the shortcomings of the empirical research, the role of social capital in the World Bank's research activity, and the opportunity to consider social capital as another form of capital, together with human and phisical capital.

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Essential Readings

• Arrow, K. (1999), Observations on Social Capital, in Dasgupta, P. and Serageldin, I. (eds), Social Capital. A Multifaceted Perspective, The World Bank, Washington D.C.

• Durlauf, S.N., Fafchamps, M. (2004), Social Capital, The Centre for The Study of African Economies Working Paper Series, No. 214, The Berkeley Economic Press.

• Fine, B. (2001), Social Capital versus Social Theory. Political Economy and Social Science at the Turn of the Millenium, London and New York, Routledge.

• Harriss, J. (2002), Depoliticizing Development: the World Bank and social capital, London, Anthem Press.

• Solow, R. (1999), Notes on Social Capital and Economic Performance, in Dasgupta, P. and Serageldin, I. (eds), Social Capital. A Multifaceted perspective, The World Bank, Washington D.C.

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Further Readings

• Bowles, S., Gintis, H. (2000), Social Capital and Community Governance, University of Massachussets Department of Economics working paper.

• Cleaver F. (2003), The inequality of social capital: agency, association and the reproduction of chronic poverty, Paper presented at the conference Staying Poor: Chronic Poverty and Development Policy, University of Manchester 7 – 9 April 2003.

• Das, R.J. (2004), Social capital and poverty of the wage-labour class: problems with the social capital theory, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Volume 29, Issue 1, Page 27.

• Dasgupta, P. (2002), Social Capital and Economic Performance: Analytics, University of Cambridge and Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics, Stockholm, mimeo.

• DeFilippis, J. (2001), The Myth of Social Capital in Community Development, Housing Policy Development, Volume 12, Issue 4, 781-806.

• Durlauf, S.N. (1999), The Case "Against" Social Capital, Focus, Vol. 20, N.3, Fall 1999.

• Durlauf, S.N, (2002), On the empirics of social capital, University of Wisconsin, Department of Economics, mimeo.

• Durlauf, S.N. (2002), The Empirics of Social Capital: Some Skeptical Thoughts, Social Development Strategy Working Paper, The World Bank.

• Edwards, B., Foley, M., Diani, M. (eds.) (2001), Beyond Tocqueville: Civil Society and the Social Capital Debate in Comparative Perspective, Hanover, NH, University Press of New England.

• Encarnacion, O.G. (2003), The Myth of Civil Society: Social Capital and Democratic Consolidation in Spain and Brazil, New York, Palgrave MacMillan.

• Englebert, P. (2001), The World Bank and the Unsuspected Virtues of Social Capital, Unpublished English version of “La Banque Mondiale et les vertus insoupçonnées du capital social", in Gilbert Rist (ed.), Les mots du pouvoir : sens et non-sens de la rhétorique internationale, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2002, 83-100.

• Fine, B. (1998), From Bourdieu to Becker: Economics Confronts the Social Sciences, International Papers in Political Economy, 5(3), 1-43.

• Fine, B. (1999), The Developmental State Is Dead - Long Live Social Capital?, Development and Change, Vol. 30, Issue 1, Page 1 (January 1999).

• Fine, B. (2002), Globalisation and Development: The Imperative of Political Economy, Preliminary Draft for the Conference “Towards a New Political Economy of Development: Globalisation and Governance”, Sheffield, July, 2002.

• Fine, B. (2003), Review Essay of: Christian Grootaert and Thierry van Bastelaer (eds),The Role of Social Capital in Development: An Empirical Assessment, Journal of Agrarian Change, October 2003, vol. 3, no. 4, 586-603(18).

• Fine, B. (2004), Social Capital for Africa?, Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa - 53, 2004, 29-52.

• Fischer, C.S. (2001), Bowling Alone: What's the Score?, Paper presented to "Author Meets Critic: Putnam, Bowling Alone" session of the meetings of the American Sociological Association, Anaheim, California, August 2001.

• Foley, M.W., Edwards, B. (1997), Escape from Politics? Social Theory and the Social Capital Debate, American Behavioral Scientist 40, 5 (March/April 1997), 550-561.

• Foley, M.W., Edwards, B. (1999), Is It Time to Disinvest in Social Capital?, Journal of Public Policy 19, 2, 199-231.

• Gidwani, V. (2002), New Theory or New Dogma? A Tale of Social Capital and Economic Development from Gujarat, India, Journal of Asian and African Studies, Volume 37, Number 2, 1 March 2002, pp. 83-112(30).

• Harriss, J. (2001), Public Action and the Dialectics of Decentralisation: Against the Myth of Social Capital as "The Missing Link in Development", Social Scientist 29, No. 11-12 (2001), 25-40.

• Harriss, J. (2001), Social Capital Construction and the Consolidation of Civil Society, Development Studies Institute, Working Paper N. 01-16, London School of Economics.

• Lemann, N. (1996), Kicking in Grouops, Atlantic Monthly, April 1996, 22-24.

• Manski, C. (2000), Economic Analysis of Social Interactions, NBER Working Paper No. w7580.

• Markusen, A.R. (1999), Fuzzy Concepts, Scanty Evidence, Policy Distance: The Case for Rigor and Policy Relevance in Critical Regional Studies, Regional Studies, Vol. 33, No. 9: 869-884.

• Molyneux, M. (2002), Gender and Silences of Social Capital: Lesson from Latin America, Development and Change 33(2), 167-188.

• Morrow, G. (ed) (2001), An Appropriate Capital-isation? Questioning Social Capital, Gender Institute, Research in Progress Series, Issue 1, October 2001 (special issue), London School of Economics.

• Ponthieux, S. (2004), The concept of social capital : a critical review, Paper presented at the 10th ACN (Association de comptabilité nationale) Conference on National Accounting, Paris, 21-23 January 2004.

• Portes, A., Landolt, P. (1996), The Downside of Social Capital, The American Prospect no. 26 (May-June 1996), 18-21, 94.

• Quibria, M.G. (2003), The Puzzle of Social Capital. A Critical Review, Asian Development Review, Volume 20, Number 2.

• Schuurman, F.J. (2002), Social Capital and the Post Washington Consensus, Paper presented at the Conference “Towards a New Political Economy of Development: Globalisation and Governance”, Sheffield, July, 2002.

• Smith, S.S. (2002), It May Be Social, but Why Is It Capital? The Social Construction of Social Capital and the Politics of Language, Politics & Society, Vol. 30, No. 1, 149-186 (2002).

• Sobel, Joel, Can We Trust Social Capital?, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XL (March 2002), 139-154.

• Solow, R.M. (1995), But Verify, The New Republic (September 11), 36-39, Review of F. Fukuyama (1995), Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, New York, Free Press.

• Solow, R.M. (1997), Tell me again what we are talking about?, Stern Business Magazine 4(1).

• Streeten, P. (2002), Reflections on Social and Antisocial Capital, Journal of Human Development, 1 February 2002, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 7-22(16).

• Tarrow, S. (1996), Making Social Science Work Across Space and Time: A Critical Reflection on Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work, American Political Science Review 90, 389-397.

• Wilks, A., Lefrançois, F. (2002), Blinding with Science or Encouraging Debate? How World Bank Analysis Determines PRSP Policies, The Bretton Wood Project.

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