Wexploration

Jacob has set up a wiki in addition to this blog. Even though the ideas of social capital will guide my work, I don’t know how explicit the notion will be as we proceed. How ever a recognition of the concept of value in relations; the idea that knowledge is not an object possessed by individuals, but is rather produced and reproduced in social relations, and that change and action are matters of social possibilities, constraints, and motivations will be at the forefront of my work.

Wikipedia already has a brilliant definition of the notion of social capital. So instead of indulging in knitty gritty definitions of the concept as I’m pretty sure I will end up doing anyway here, I would rather have the wiki function as a development platform of ideas on how to go about a research process, how to gather data, and analyze relations. In other words I hope the wiki will become an extensive toolbox and everybody’s hereby encouraged to take part in the writing.

Update: The plan was to enrich the bluming blog with a Shelfari widget, but now I don’t like Shelfari no more. Instead I’ll post book, article, and paper notes on the wiki until I find a better solution. - It’s notes, not reviews.

It all started in June when a post on social capital caught my attention. Hans Henrik, the author, raised the question of a possible quantification of social capital in organizations in relation to the figures on the bottom line. Outrageous! To an almost-fresh-out-of-grad-school anthropologist it was blasphemic. How could he even suggest that the work of glorious sociologist AND socialist Bourdieu should end up in the hands of neoliberal capitalism!? Hence I commented in the usual manner of academic border patrolling. And somehow my rather arrogant comments resulted in rather productive meetings and on the 1st of oct. this year the Connecta team welcomed me onboard.

The last couple of weeks has been all about preparing, and in great excitement too. I’ve been reading academic texts, online notes, and classic work from my first year at university. The coming months will be even more exciting as it is here in the bright and spacious loft-like office a journey into the field of qualitative assessment of social capital in organizations will take its beginning.

Speaking of…: Don’t miss Granovetter’s (1974) work on how networking, essentially social capital, helps people finding jobs.