Months ago my boss asked the simple question, whether social capital can be measured or not? I’m pretty sure my initial thought was ‘no’ and then ‘maybe, it depends on what you mean by measuring?’
My thought was that you would never be able to measure social capital exactly the same way as you would measure for instance physical capital; by numbers or by size of amount. Let’s talk about trust. If social capital consists of the amount of trust (and reciprocity etc.) we have to ask how trust is measured? By numbers? If that’s so I would have to ask what is behind those numbers? The number of times somebody has expressed or acted an act of trust? But then I’ve to ask again, how do the researcher know what constitutes trust for the actors?
My suggestion would be to ‘measure’ how trust is experienced by the actors? Which means that if we are to measure social capital we have to put up an alternative to the way mesurement is done at the moment. And that’s probably not done very easily as it would be the same as questioning western epistomology, the basis on which modern science, western culture create knowledge; by way of numbers. Numbers make a strong argument. We believe in quantity!
A few weeks ago I came across (or my boss did. Thanks) Dean Spitzer’s presentation. In it he argues for a new way of perceiving measurement (of performance). It’s a great inspiration as my work continues. *
* More Spitzer
As I’m writing a whitepaper on social capital, social software, and methods (more to come later) I would like to point to Dmitri Williams, a scholar of Internet studies, especially game studies.
In his article from 2006 he calls for a rethinking of methods when it comes to the study of social capital in online settings as opposed to studies in off-line situations. He argues that the only question Internet studies (aimed at studying impact on relationships) have adressed so far is the question of how the Internet may affect off-line relationships instead of asking about the nature of relationships online.
He’s got a good point there, and I’m eager to investigate his suggested method, Internet Social Capital Scales, which he thinks will encompass the study of both bridging and bonding social capital online as well as off-line.
Christmas is dawning upon us. For social scientists, marketeers, designers, and alike it is almost christmas every day these days. Social network sites (SNS) provide an overwhelming overload of data. It seems that Santa has never been more generous.
Nicole B. Ellison (et.al) has studied “The benefits of Facebook” extensively, and she finds that SNS has a positive effect on the accumulation of social capital, especially when it comes to the kind of social capital referred to as bridging. Furthermore Ellison concludes that SNS help people maintain relationships in opposition to earlier studies of the Internet which usually ended up concluding that the Internet isolates people. At the same time SNS provide possibilities for the future for instance in terms of job opportunities, knowledge and information sharing.
For those of us who already know that SNS (and social software in general) can have a positive effect on the accumulation of social capital Ellison’s conclusion does not come as a surprise. However one thing is what we know another is providing substantial evidence.
It is a gloomy wednesday afternoon in mid December. I’m trying to orient myself in the concrete jungle of suburbia Copenhagen. My two o’clock interview appointment is probably already waiting for me. I imagine what he looks like, and I see before me a middle aged man, professional to the bone, but tired and with the disillusioned look of one who has taken on too many battles with the system and with the kids he is trying to create a reasonable everyday life for amidst the highrises of horribilis.
Just as the heavy grey sky is on the verge of falling I am entering one of those small barrack like buildings which J.G. Ballard would not even have dreamt about. I am talking about the prime institutional architecture of Denmark in the 1970s. Usually those buildings are all pretty run down by now. Years of uniformity, conformity, and concrete ideology have left an undismissible aura of disarray. But this particular building beats them all. It has to be one of the most dilapidated buildings I have ever entered, and as I step in my already dark mood drops below zero.
I guess when the building had its heyday in the 1970s it stood out as the image of modernity and civilization born and bred in new suburbia Copenhagen, but the stench of decaying liver paste on rye has marked the hall, and today that stench is trying to blend in with the smell of old curry, kebab, and finally dissolve up into the asbest like ceiling which demarcates the excact boundary between the concrete institution and the high up sky. I am expecting the worst.
A few minutes later I am warmly greeted by my interview appointment. He nonchalantly puts his arms out as to convince me of all the valuables in his world in one arm movement, and then he asks: “Did you know we have children here from more than 30 countries? It’s a challenge indeed. We keep them off the streets at night”. I instantly sense a person whose vigour and heart have saved at least one or two of those children and my motivation start to rise as he keeps on talking about the neighbourhood’s many challenged kids with both love and pride in his voice.
An hour later I find myself at the parking lot looking at the highrises which provide the clientele for the children’s and youth center. It has been a long day of pendling from one interview to the other. I’m hungry, and my coat is damp from the weather, but all of a sudden I feel the strong presence of the sun behind the skies, and I remember why I wanted to be an anthropologist in the first place. As my informant said “It’s all about relations. Relations will carry them through. I work to improve them everyday”. “Let’s help him do it”, I will say to our designer when my bus hits the big city lights.
Assertions:
- I assert that social capital is a productive force, meaning that trust, norms of behaviour, obligations, and reciprocity will influence effectiveness, abilitity to innovate, develop, and thrive, as well as loyalty amongst co-workers
- I assert a social perspective on the notion of social capital. Thus I believe that the production of social capital depends on context. This means that a. some people in a network are better at generating trust and reciprocity, and thereby better at playing the game*. b. Content, meaning, and lived praxis of factors such as trust, norms of behaviour, obligations, and reciprocity will vary according to context
- I assert that social capital is accumulative
- I assert that social capital is embedded in the structure of relations in a network, and not the possession of individuals
- I assert that the accumulation of social capital is for the benefit of the collective
- I assert that social capital has to be studied empirically
- I assert the proliferation of a methodology that seeks to understand the quality of relations and put focus on the dynamics of everyday practice in an organization
* Bourdieu (1979) would say that how well you play the game depend on the volume of both economic, cultural, symbolic, and social capital available to you.
… and then all of a sudden it comes back to you. Finally you can say goodbye to that numbing feeling of being lost which has been haunting you for the last couple of months or actually it just vanishes as the words of Mary Douglas sieves through your brain:
“Though giving [solidarity and trust, my addition] is the basis for huge industries, we cannot know whether it is the foundation of a circulating fund of stable esteem and trust, or of individualist competion […] We cannot know because the knowledge is not collected in such a way as to relate to the issue” (Douglas, foreword in The Gift [1990] 1950: xv-xvi)
I’m reading Marcel Mauss’ The Gift for the first time since my first year of grad school. The book, even though it’s more than fifty years old and based on a fieldwork far away from the industrial society Mary Douglas talks about or the knowledge society of today it still present itself as the mother of all theories of relations. And I promise, you’re in for a treat if you’re open minded. I suggest replacing “… circulating fund of stable esteem and trust” with the notion of social capital. Then read the book with our present society or (as in my case) with organizations in mind. And extend the meaning of a gift to include all acts of reciprocity.
The literature on social capital I have been reading so far have had a tendency to be oriented mainly towards individuals. It is usually about individuals who either bring forward or stop the production of social capital, and about who and how many the individuals are related to.
The Gift focuses on the actual act of reciprocity in place of the people. From the perspective of organizational studies this means that instead of pinpointing who’s connected to whom Marcel Mauss prompts you to focus on how people are connected, and on the nature of the actions which connect people. Thus if you are interested in changing behaviour or encouraging certain behaviours you have to put your focus on the actual action and deeds. That was exactly what Mary Douglas foreword reminded me about and thereby replacing the growing feeling of despair with a warm and fuzzy, tinkling feeling of returning to my roots and at the same time moving forward.
I’m facing a challenge. Luckily wiser men and women have trotted the path before. She has. So has he. And they discuss it.
I’m talking about the struggle for legitimation, the struggle of how to convince managers and executives that humans and relations make up a bigger sum than the sum of single parts put together. And that it is that surplus that can translate into social capital depending on how it is managed. And that in the end social capital has an effect on competition and innovation strategies. And thereby effecting the bottom line as well. Not to mention the hardship in convincing anybody that they ought to have their organization investigated, the social relations analyzed, and the social capital measured.
I’m guessing that I have already lost readers by now. And those readers are not even potentiel buyers. Imagine that I stood in front of an audience of potential clients and I outlined the argument as above. I wouldn’t even make it to explaining what a relation is before being accused of living in an ivory tower.
I’m adressing the problem of language and presentation when you refuse to resort to simplified, reductionist models that I expect is valued by corporate culture. How to be convincing on complex topics such as networks? How to be taken seriously on complex topics such as relations? How to transform complexity into an argument of dynamacy? These are questions that make up my challenge #1.
Some years ago as a student I stumbled upon the work of renowned corporate anthropologist Dr. Karen Stephenson. It was one of the first times I was exposed to applied business anthropology. Amongst my peers words such as business, private enterprise, and capital as accumulated stock were concepts more exotic than (yet strangely related to) Zande’s believe in witchcraft. As we eagerly took to disapproval of the ethics of an anthropologist working for imperialist capitalism I thought that the business path was sealed off properly.
History happened and a while ago I came across Karen Stephenson once again. This time around I’m actually well inspired by her thoughts on knowledge capital. I would like the idea:
“… that things actually work much differently, and sometimes at complete odds with the formal apparatus, leads us to a discovery of a second world, burried beneath the first” (Stephenson 2005: 263)
to be the one of the backdrops of the next months, as that second world which consists of informal networks will be the centre point of my work. Dr. Stephenson’s method of data collection is something I need to study closer. However I’m not sure the inspiration will go that far. Furthermore I’m way more radical than she is when it comes to the believe that knowledge doesn’t reside as an object in neither individuals nor networks, but is created as it is performed in relations between humans, objects, and phenomena. Thereby rendering relations even more important as it is “what goes on in the relations” that create knowledge. More on that later. For now Karen Stephenson and her work on knowledge capital, the importance of networks, and relation stimulating technology is a great source of inspiration
Further reading: Karen Stephenson’s publications
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.
