Social Capital: Why We Need It and How We Can Create More of It

The state has an important but incomplete role to play in this process. The state can provide services, but it cannot easily provide care. That is to say, the state can redistribute money to the poor, can build homeless shelters and day care centers. It can create the material platforms on which relationships can be built. But the state can’t creat

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Three major explanations have emerged for the decline in local civic engagement in the US in recent decades: eroding social capital, the nationalization of American life, and the decline of local newspapers. Social capital—the relationships and trust that promote civic engagement—has decayed as modern life has become more individualized and less co... See more

Theorists commonly identify two forms. There is “bonding” social capital created within existing social groups and “bridging” social capital created by relationships between existing social groups or across conventional lines of social segregation.