Networked Urbanism

Social Capital in the City

Talja Blokland, Mike Savage

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317088929
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Despite considerable interest in social capital amongst urban policy makers and academics alike, there is currently little direct focus on its urban dimensions. In this volume leading urban researchers from the Netherlands, the UK, the USA, Australia, Italy and France explore the nature of social networks and the significance of voluntary associations for contemporary urban life. Networked Urbanism recognizes that there is currently a sense of crisis in the cohesion of the city which has led to public attempts to encourage networking and the fostering of 'social capital'. However, the contributors collectively demonstrate how new kinds of 'networked urbanism' associated with ghettoization, suburbanization and segregation have broken from the kind of textured urban communities that existed in the past. This has generated new forms of exclusionary social capital, which fail to significantly resolve the problems of poor residents, whilst strengthening the position of the advantaged. Grounded in theoretical reflection and empirical research, Networked Urbanism will be of interest to scholars and students of sociology, geography and urban studies, as well as to policy makers.

Chapter 1
Social Capital and Networked Urbanism

Talja Blokland and Mike Savage

Introduction

The concept of social capital has passed from being an interesting idea at the turn of the 21st century to being a policy ‘doxa’ a decade later. Any supposed ‘lack’ of social capital is now a matter for concern, requiring research and appropriate policy intervention. This book argues that the city, in all its complexity and grandeur, poses a major challenge to this agenda. Urban researchers have been studying social capital, though not under that name, for a long time, and have developed powerful understandings of the processes that both divide and unify urban dwellers. Contemporary urban changes associated with the decentralization of residential space, employment, and service provision has led to a new kind of urban life, where the nature of the social order is once again under discussion. Our book shows how subjecting social capital to urban critique may advance our understanding of contemporary spatial processes and inequalities.

In this introduction, we begin by arguing that the social capital debate rehearses long-standing themes in community studies, yet in a way which is ‘urgent’ and which cannot be shrugged off. This leads us to two specific analytical themes that frame this collection. In the second section, we explore how social network analysis can be used in urban contexts to inform our understanding of the exclusive and inclusive aspects of social capital. In the third section we examine how social capital itself needs to be seen as a spatial process. Finally, we introduce the chapters of this book, that each take on the challenges that a perspective of ‘networked urbanism’ poses to us.

Social Capital: In Need of Networks, in Need of Space

The concept of social capital has been the most remarkable success story of the social sciences since the 1990s. From being a relatively specialized, not widely used, concept in the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1985) and James Coleman (1990), it has been popularized, especially by the political scientist Robert Putnam, so that it came to be seen as of fundamental importance for explaining a range of individual and collective benefits, ranging from good health, personal income, democratic cultures and low crime rates.1 Much academic and policy interest was generated by Putnam’s (2000) book, Bowling Alone. Here Putnam argued that declining electoral turnout, falling organizational membership, increased public cynicism and falling levels of inter-personal trust are related to a wide-ranging collapse in social capital. Putnam’s work has aroused interest in the role of voluntary association membership both as a key indicator of the stock of social capital, and as an important vehicle through which individuals learn to relate to each other so that the beneficial effects of social capital are realized (Anheir and Kendall 2002; Putnam 1993; Paxton 1999; 2002; Li et al. 2003; Stolle and Hooghe 2003).

More recent work has seen the theoretical remit of social capital extended to include the significance of social networks, notably in Putnam’s definition of social capital as ‘features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit’ (Putnam 1996, 67). Social capital has also been defined in more instrumental forms, where it equips people to either get by or get ahead through mobilizing resources by virtue of their memberships of groups and networks (Portes 1998; Briggs 2005; Lin, Cook and Burt 2001). Both meanings can be invoked simultaneously, apparently allowing individual and collective interests to be reconciled. Through this extension, social capital comes to be identified as part of the social fabric itself.

Some critics argue that the popularity of social capital to the wider social science and policy community is due to the way it provides a ‘neo-liberal’ account of the social, which packages the social as a beneficial, bounded, form of capital which can then be evaluated alongside other kinds of capital in measuring and accounting processes (see most stridently Fine 2001). Yet the story is a little more complex than this. Looking at this process of popularization metaphorically, we might see that social capital acts as a kind of Greek Horse which has entered the city of Troy – the stronghold of economists, policy makers, and political scientists who have excluded sociological concerns from their thinking. From the outside, the horse itself seems to offer the attractive possibility of bringing the social, in the form of ‘social capital’, into the economists’ city: yet inside the belly of the horse, all kinds of diverse, nefarious, and unruly ‘social processes’ hide, ready to spring out.

And certainly, in keeping with this metaphor, as the concept of social capital has become popular, so its meaning has been broadened, and become more diffuse, permitting the prospects of a more fully sociological account which cannot so easily be bundled and reified as ‘capital’. Bourdieu’s (1985) conception of social capital as the exclusive networks of the elite had the advantage of defining the term in a clear and focused, even if reductive, way. Robert Putnam’s early work (Putnam 1993), with its neo-Tocquevillian concern with the benefits of voluntary associations, had the even greater advantage of allowing measures of social capital to be readily derived from standard survey questions. However, increasingly, social capital has lost this clear specificity. Putnam’s definition, which referred to social capital as networks and norms, always hinted towards a much broader, diffuse, understanding of the social ties that might produce co-operation and trust. At the time of our writing, there has been a minor research industry concerned with unpacking the different ‘dimensions’, or ‘aspects’ of social capital (see for instance Li et al. 2005; Halpern 2005). A particular growth of interest here is in the way that informal social networks of friendship, neighbouring, and more generally what Putnam calls ‘schmoozing’ might be important for generating trust and involvement (see further, Warde et al. 2005). Increasingly, a wider range of methodological approaches have been used, including an interest in qualitative research (Stolle and Hooghe 2003). With this broadening, the idea of social capital has begun to merge into the broader, and all too familiar, ideas of ‘social cohesion’ or ‘community’.

Those concerned about social capital, then, seem to have returned to similar concerns to the classical sociologists like Weber and Durkheim, rephrasing old question of how social norms, bonds and reciprocities can be enhanced (Nisbet 1980, 46; Mazlish 1989). The same problems of definition which undermined community studies in the 1970s, rear their heads again (cf. Bell and Newby 1974, xlii).

We might, following Boltanski and Chapello (2005) see the appeal of social capital within policy domains as linked to the rise of the ‘projective city’ which they see as part of the ‘new spirit of capitalism’. Drawing on a longitudinal study of management texts, Boltanski and Chapello show how between the 1960s and 1990s there was a remarkable growth of reference to networks as intrinsically valued aspects of organization. They argue that this indicates the rise of new principles of justification. ‘This city is founded on the mediating activity in the creation of networks, making it valuable in its own right, independently of the goals pursued or the substantive properties of the entities between which the meditation is conducted’ (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005, 107). So it is that policy makers of all kinds have found social capital a seductive concept, not only through the benefits it is supposed to convey, but also as a good in itself (see more generally Riles 2000; Knox et al. 2005). It has thus become subsumed with other terms such as ‘sustainable communities’, ‘integration’ or ‘cohesion.’ Survey analyses and policy research on public space and public safety (Oppelaar and Wittebrood 2006; Bellair 1997; Body-Gendrot 2001; Holland et al. 2007), on interethnic relations (Blokland 2003a; RMO 2006; SCP 2007) and on support for democracy (RMO 2007) show that worries about community or cohesion are not simply laments that we can dismiss as nostalgic, but are invocations to act. It may indeed be a selective reading of the past that cities used to be better places in previous times, but social scientists have long accepted the idea that reflecting on the past and comparing it with contemporary times is an active reconstructive process that serves to tell us just as much, if not more, about understandings of the social today as it teaches us about a past (see Halbwachs 1994; Vansina 1985; Leijdesdorff 1987; Passerini 1987; Fentress and Wickham 1992; Blokland 2001) So, however difficult it may be to hammer this down empirically, urban residents have a real sense that something about the social deserves attention and needs to be ‘fixed’. Urban policy seems to have found that ‘fix’ in social capital. So inner city neighbourhoods that are not doing well on a number of statistical indicators need ‘social capital’, and new immigrants, that are not upwardly mobile, need ‘weak ties’ to get ahead. Youth problems in urban areas are being seen as a problem of having bonds that are too strong. Social capital hence serves as an urban policy ‘fix’, one that seeks to abstract a ‘magic bullet’ from the complex nature of the lived urban relations.2

This perspective takes little notice of the long history of urban research (on which, see, for example, Abu-Lughod 1991; Hubbard, Kitchin and Valentine 2004; Savage, Warde and Ward 2003; Parker 2003) which has shown how the city has always been a vortex of contestation and dispute as much as a site of solidarity and cohesion. We need to bring this tradition of scholarship to bear.

The thesis of declining social capital articulates, as did earlier social science theories of disintegration and mass society, with ‘folk wisdom and political rhetoric alike’ (Tilly 1984, 50–3). We argue for a perspective which respects and acknowledges people’s everyday concerns, but avoids romanticism. This recognizes the contested and fraught nature of social relations, and links the idea of social capital to a wider ranging analysis of social ties. One way of rendering this point, albeit tongue-in-cheek, is that the social capital literature has caught up with Durkheim and Weber, but not with Marx or Simmel. More Marxist analyses demand more attention to power and structural inequalities. Attention to Simmel’s ideas would raise more awareness of the countless minor ‘sociations’ and the interactions that determine society as we play it (Simmel 1950, 48–51).

The chapters in this book are inspired by both the need to relate social capital to matrices of power and inequality, and by the need to explore more fully, how the actual ties and relationships which bring social capital about are spatially and socially organized. Situated case studies show how social capital is bound up with the relationality of social life (see Tilly 1998). We explore how trust, bonds, and connections are relationally constructed in ways which problematize the idea that any specific parts can be ‘bounded’ as a discrete ‘social capital’ variable (for a powerful account along these lines, see Latour 2006). We seek to elaborate these relational dimensions through focusing specifically on the network dimensions of social capital. Here, we deliberately invoke, and seek to deepen, two kinds of network thinking. One of these, originating from concerns of social network analysis, explores the specific kinds of inter-personal ties which facilitate mobilization, and hence allows more specific understanding of the dynamics of communication and socialization underlying social action. The other, for which we deploy the term ‘networked urbanism’, emphasizes the need to understand contemporary ‘sociation’ not in terms of bounded, small-scale, communities with an intense public realm, but in terms of their decentralized, diffuse, and sprawling character which depend on multiple and myriad technological, informational, personal and organizational networks that link locations in complex ways (Castells 1996/97; Amin and Thrift 2002; Graham and Marvin 2001; Savage et al. 2005). Pursuing these network concerns in tandem, both through deploying aspects of social network analysis, and through reflecting on the character of ‘network urbanism’, allows us to develop insights into how new forms of inequality are created. In itself, this may help advance the research agenda of social capital. A more attuned understanding of the spatiality of social capital helps us to avoid simplistic and reductive notions. We elaborate on these points below.

Social Networks, Social Capital, and Exclusionary Mechanisms

There is a tension between the way networks are understood by researchers on social capital, and within the longer tradition of social network analysis. For Putnam, networks are means of securing ties and hence forging connections, whether of a ‘bonding’, or ‘bridging’ type. Within social network analysis, by contrast, the analytical focus is on distinguishing cliques and factions (for instance Scott 1990; Wasserman and Faust 1988), and on charting gaps, or what Burt famously calls ‘structural holes’ within networks (Burt, 1992). When we bring together the simultaneous capacities of networks to link and separate, we can fully address how social capital is embedded in webs of power and inequality. This also requires us to look at networks without abstracting them from their context.

Coming to social capital from a formal network approach, we may measure the existence of ties of certain types and then assume that these ties qualitatively produce social capital in consistent matters for everyone, independent of class, race, ethnicity and gender as categorical inequalities. To establish that certain networks exist and that there is a statistical likelihood that such networks produce social capital is useful, but does not reveal how this likelihood comes about. If we are to at least explore the potentials of social capital for making cities better places for those who live in them, we will need to know exactly how such workings come about, in their contexts. This is one of the arguments of Savage, Tampubolon’s and Warde’s chapter which shows how two different voluntary associations in Manchester have very different potentials for encouraging activism, and trust, and that this is in part related to their urban context. Attention to power (as Haynes and Hernandez will ague in their contribution to this book), a detailed understanding of people’s structurally embedded agency in their social ties (as Blokland and Noordhoff show in their chapter), a focus on the normativity as part of all interactions including weak ties (as demonstrated in Blokland’s chapter) and an eye for alternative uses of social ties as shown in Butler’s, Curley’s and Devine and Halfpenny’s chapters, all contribute to our understandings of the actual workings of social capital.

Most of our work is critical of Putnam’s often quoted distinction between bonding and bridging social capital, which is adopted from the network theorist Granovetter’s distinction between strong and weak ties (Granovetter 1973). This allows Putnam to claim weak, bridging social capital as beneficial in allowing connections to be forged between different kinds of people, and to reserve the exclusionary aspects of social ties only to some aspects of bonding social capital, where ties cement internal solidarities. He develops this distinction using metaphors such as ‘machers’ and ‘schmoozers’, rather than through elaborations of social ties in particular contexts. Others have applied network theory more concisely (Lin, Cook and Burt 2001; Flap and Völker 2003), although they have often focussed on ego-centred networks rather than on the study of whole networks (see Freeman 2005; Scott 1991; Wasserman and Fasut 1994 for more discussion). In this volume Andreotti and Le Galès use such ego centred analysis to show how bonding social capital can be amongst middle class residents of Paris and Milan. However, the analysis of whole networks would theoretically fit better with the overall concern of social capital as how to access resources not existing in one’s own circuit (such as developed by Burt’s notion of structural holes) and would permit it to be related systematically to neighbourhoods, cities or even states, but is only occasionally used in studies of social capital. Here, the tradition of network analysis which studies community relations using ‘whole neighbourhoods’ (following in the long tradition of Wellman 1979, and Fischer 1982) offers a powerful corrective. As a method, these analyses allow empirical assessment of how far people’s ties are locally organized, rather than assuming a priori that they would be forged in local settings and that if they are not, community has ceased to exist. This, in turn, enables us to study people’s access to resources, rather than assuming that their places – and for example the extent to which such places are segregated – will reveal th...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Social Capital and Networked Urbanism
• PART 1 Social Capital and the End of Urbanism
• PART 2 Networks and Urban Social Capital
• PART 3 Urban Associations and Social Capital
• Index