Perhaps a Victorian image would have been more appropriate than the Edwardian one at the top of the post, since social capital is prusamably the product of a virtuous circle, generated by the activity of self-help groups and grass roots civic involvement.
As Putnam puts it: By analogy with notions of physical capital and human capital--tools and training that enhance individual productivity--"social capital" refers to features of social organization, such as networks, norms, and trust, that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit. Social capital enhances the benefits of investment in physical and human capital .
Doesn’t that rather remind you of this:
All these associations, societies, brotherhoods, alliances, institutes, and so on, which must now be counted by the ten thousand in Europe alone, and each of which represents an immense amount of voluntary, unambitious, and unpaid or underpaid work -- what are they but so many manifestations, under an infinite variety of aspects, of the same ever-living tendency of man towards mutual aid and support?
So Kropotkin is now on the World Bank’s development agenda ? Les hyènes du spectacle se servent mal des idées qu’elles récupèrent.
And as for Putnam’s statement that Our political parties, once intimately coupled to the capillaries of community life, have become evanescent confections of pollsters and media consultants and independent political entrepreneurs--the very antithesis of social capital. We have too easily accepted a conception of democracy in which public policy is not the outcome of a collective deliberation about the public interest, but rather a residue of campaign strategy , the old drunk prophet pointed out long ago that the enemy was the recomposition artificielle [de l'ancien langage commun] dans le spectacle marchand, la représentation illusoire du non-vécu.
What a tedious era you young people live in. Still, I’m glad to see you like Bilal.
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