Dissertation Draft, Chapter Two
A Pragmatic Definition of Social Capital
In this chapter I discuss and illustrate the definition of social capital used in this study based on my fieldwork. I also discuss why I believe Dewey would have preferred this definition, which is based on overt action, to the conventional modern definition of social capital which is based on norms and relationships. I begin by describing some of the prosocial behavior which I encountered when I first entered the field and began to prepare the community computer center for use. As the reader will see, many wonderful individuals came forward to help with the task. I use these examples to illustrate the action-based definition of social capital I present. I then go on to explain why this is the more appropriate definition of social capital from the standpoint of Dewey's pragmatic philosophy.
When I arrived in La Herencia the room which was to be the computer learning center was unfinished, dusty and being used for storage. It was full of old furniture and miscellaneous materials and a lot of surplus junk. It had no lights, no electrical wiring, unpainted walls, and not a single computer that worked. It would take the first several months of my time in La Herencia and a lot of help from other people to get the room to the point where it could begin to be used as a computer center.
The transformation of this unused space into a community computer center would not have been possible without the generosity of many very good people who contributed the labor and materials to make the community center possible. They gave unselfishly from their hearts, not because they hoped to gain something but simply because they hoped to help make Colonia La Herencia a better place for the children and families who live there.
It is the contributions of people like this, who give of their time, labor and financial resources, expecting nothing in return which in my opinion represent the true nature of social capital. There is a fair amount of discussion in the academic community and in the policy world about what social capital really is. In my opinion social capital is the value of what individuals are willing to contribute, be it in terms of labor, materials, expertise, or financial support, for the social good and for which they are not expecting compensation. Why individuals behave in this way has been a subject of philosophical speculation for many years. I will address this question in chapters three, four and five, explaining why John Dewey theorized that this behavior occurs. For now let it suffice to say that operationally social capital is defined herein as the provision of personal resources for social good in a way which is patently selfless. Individuals may usually derive some personal pleasure from their prosocial activity. However it is clear that the predominant economic effect of this behavior is frequently to benefit the social system at the expense of the providers.
Many people are willing to make contributions, at times very large contributions, in order to try and make the world a better place. And they clearly are not doing so with the expectation of receiving any earthly compensation. For example, soon after I got to La Herencia we received word that an anonymous donor had made a gift of a large sum of money for the computer learning center. This was enough money to finish remodeling the center, buy the needed computers, and to hire some local staff for the learning center. With this gift we were able to purchase a network of ten new computers and a network server and also a high-speed connection to connect the network to the Internet. Someone else donated lights for the center. Another person donated the floor tile. Other people donated furniture for the center.
Over the next few months a number of different individuals and groups came to help get the center ready for use. They painted, installed the electrical wiring, moved furniture, cleaned, washed windows, and helped with uncounted small tasks which were necessary to get the center remodeled and ready.
I got to know a lot of good people during this process. For example it was during the remodeling that I learned about the Christian Family Movement. The Christian Family Movement is an organization of married couples who meet each week and participate in classes intended to improve their marriages and help them grow in their faith. Part of their philosophy is a commitment to doing service work within the community. Prior to coming to La Herencia I had never heard of the Christian Family Movement, but since then I've learned that it is an international organization which is particularly active in Latin America. In La Herencia when I began my study there was a neighborhood chapter of the Christian Family Movement consisting of four couples who met each week and were very active in the community. When they heard about the remodeling being done to prepare the computer center they volunteered to help. They came as a group several times and painted the center. They were a wonderful help and did a great job with the painting.
Another group that helped us was Young Neighbors in Action. Young Neighbors in Action is a service program in which teenagers and adult group leaders travel to different places to do service projects during the summers. While I was in La Herencia several Young Neighbors groups helped out at our community center. The adult volunteers who lead the Young Neighbors groups hope to accomplish a dual social purpose. First of all, they want to help out in places of need such as at our community center in La Herencia. Secondly, they hope to instill within the young volunteers they travel with a deeper appreciation for the value of community service work.
Besides groups like the Christian Family Movement and Young Neighbors in action, a number of other groups and individuals came and helped us at different times with the work involved in preparing the community computer center for use. Groups came from different churches on various days to help out, and individuals sometimes came to work or to bring donations of materials or supplies. One retired accountant came twice a week to work as a construction volunteer either at the community center or at some other projects around the area. Several dedicated women from the neighborhood made the curtains for the center. Men from a local drug rehabilitation center came and helped with the construction. It would be impossible for me to provide a complete list of all the people who helped out. In fact undoubtedly many of the people who did the most were unknown to me, since the whole community center building was already nearly complete before I even arrived in the Colonia. All of these people who contributed in ways big and small helped to make the computer learning center possible which is functioning today and serving the community of Colonia La Herencia. They all gave of their time, their expertise and their material resources expecting no compensation for their generosity. And this was only the beginning. After the computer learning center open many more wonderful volunteers came forward and helped to make it possible, as I will describe later on.
So to me, this is the true definition of social capital. It is the value of the labor, the materials and the financial support which individuals are willing to give for the good of a social cause. This is not the definition that scholars conventionally use to describe social capital however. There has been a huge amount of discussion concerning social capital in recent years. As one might expect there have been a number of different definitions offered for social capital, but Robert Putnam's definition seems generally representative of the typical way of defining social capital. According to Putnam social capital is:
"...features of social life - networks, norms, and trust - that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared objectives... Social capital, in short, refers to social connections and the attendant norms and trust".
In essence then what basically constitutes social capital according to the commonly accepted definition are things like norms and relationships.
Defining social capital as norms and relationships, as Putnam and most others have done, may be very useful for some purposes. However for the educator or development professional interested in promoting social capital in a particular context, this high-level definition leaves something to be desired. It deals mainly in generalities, and therefore may not necessarily pertain to what is likely to happen in any one particular context. The basic problem is that while norms and associations may increase the probability of prosocial behavior, its obvious that norms and associations frequently don't directly result in any particular behaviors. First of all individuals may have very different ideas about what behavior is expected in a given social context or social relationship. Secondly, people often behave much better than or worse than the behavior which is expected within a given social context or social relationship. So the usefulness of defining social capital as based on norms or social relationships as capital is problematic.
Consistent with Dewey's pragmatic philosophy, this study uses instead the action-based definition described above. Social capital is defined herein as the labor, the materials and the financial support which individuals give for the good of a social cause. At first this action-based definition might appear quite a bit different than the conventional definition of social capital which is based on norms and relationships. However a moment's reflection will show that the action-based definition used herein is really not so different than the conventional definition. Actually, the action-based definition is only a subset or temporal qualification of the conventional definition. Clearly this must be so because presumably those who conventionally define social capital as norms or relationships do so with the tacit assumption that these norms and relationships will eventually lead to concrete positive action of some sort. The only distinction or qualification between this conventional definition and the action-based definition is that the pragmatic definition insists upon waiting for the action before recognizing the social capital.
The action-based definition is actually a subset of the conventional definition which seeks to exclude cases where norms and relationships are thought to exist, but in which these norms and relationships lack practical effect. This is simply a pragmatic way of looking at social capital. In fact, one could append the action-based qualification to the conventional definition and arrive at the same pragmatic result. In other words one could say that social capital is "… features of social life - networks, norms, and trust … which are manifested in observed prosocial behaviors in a given setting". The difference is that the expectation of action is implicit and assumed in the conventional definition, whereas it is an explicit criteria within the Dewian definition.
This action-based definition is consistent with Dewey's pragmatic philosophy. In developing his pragmatic ethical philosophy John Dewey often placed great stress upon the difficulty of isolating intention from action. Dewey challenged moral systems which attributed good to intention or motive. For example in his "Ethics" of 1908, Dewey stated:
" Overt Action Proves Will.--Again, under what circumstances do we actually "take the will for the deed"? When do we assume that so far as the will was concerned it did aim at the result and aimed at it thoroughly, without evasion and without reservation? Only when there is some action which testifies to the real presence of the motive and aim."
Dewey felt that any analysis of social good ought to be grounded in an understanding of good as manifested in action, rather than good intentions or supposed duty as inferred from relationships or norms. In keeping with the general pragmatic philosophy, we are only concerned with things which have some practical import. A norm or a relationship only have import in a given situation if acted upon. Pragmatically speaking, norms or relationships not efficacious enough to result in action are of no particular concern to us. As Dewey said, overt action is needed to prove the real presence of an aim. For this reason the model of social capital presented here relies on an action-based definition of social capital.
Several other points may be worth noting about social capital. First of all if one uses this action-based definition of social capital, it may be more correct to think of social capital as a class of goods rather than as a type of goods. If someone does work for someone else without expecting anything in return, like the people who helped us remodel the community center at Colonia La Herencia, that is really just "labor". It isn't a new kind of capital. What really distinguishes this labor from other labor is the property rights which pertain to it. Under this definition social goods would be the assets and resources voluntarily made available to a social environment without the expectation of recompense.
Another point is that, as Dewey frequently stressed that there are many occasions where "charitable giving" is potentially harmful even to the supposed beneficiary. For this reason Dewey stressed the importance of being "wisely generous". He stressed that charity per se is not to be viewed as a universal and absolute good, although perhaps a charitable disposition or a constant willingness to be charitable under the appropriate circumstances might be seen as an unqualified virtue.
Still though, social systems have a profound need for social capital. As John Dewey, (in commenting on Mills' utilitarianism), stated:
" Our social affections are direct interests in the well-being of others; their cultivation and expression is at one and the same time a source of good to ourselves, and, intelligently guided, to others. Taken in this light, it is sympathetic emotion and imagination which make the standard of general happiness not merely the "desirable end," but the desired end, the effectively working object of endeavor."
Much more will be said about the utilitarian dimension of social capital formation in the next chapter.
Very preliminary draft: Please do not quote without permission.
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© Copyright by Kenneth Stanley Daniszewski 2004