Social capital and social networks – what are we talking about?
The Connected Communities programme is about understanding and using social capital and social networks for social and economic development. So we’ve probably already lost most people just in saying what the programme is trying to achieve. Social capital is a term academics and policy makers are always talking about, but it is often hard to be clear what they mean by it, how you would go about measuring it, and what can (and should) be done to influence it.
Social capital is the name given to describe the quantity and quality of people’s relationships. The premise is that these connections influence how well people get by – or the glue that holds communities together, (such as having someone to look after the kids for a day) and get ahead – bridges to new opportunities or ways of seeing things (for example, a contact who can tell you about a job opportunity). Studies have linked social capital to health, crime, happiness, almost every kind of development.
The most influential way of looking at social capital has been the one developed by Robert Putnam, looking at how much people trust and help their neighbours and how active they are in their local community, through volunteering in a local scouts group, for example. This approach lends itself well to surveys such as the General Household Survey, asking people how they feel about their area and their neighbours, and counting how much people do different things, such as volunteer, as a way of measuring social capital.
This approach has proved controversial, with critics arguing that you end up with a picture of social capital, based on numbers, but not an understanding of how social networks operate and what people get out of them. When researchers have applied Putnam’s way of seeing social capital to health in deprived areas, in studies in South-East England and Gospel Oak, they argued that we need to pay more attention to informal networks, connections that stretch outside of the local area, and how complex social networks can be. The differences between residents (age, gender, ethnicity) means that we can’t talk about social capital in an area as if people’s experiences were all the same. This means we need to look at who has most and least ability and willingness to make and use connections to improve their lives. We have to try and make sense of social networks.
Social network analysis is a way of creating a visual picture of social capital through drawing the connections between people and the characteristics of these connections. In trying to work out how to go about measuring social networks in a way that would be useful for orienting the work of local government and community organisations, we came across a number of different challenges:
· A lot of the research looks at the form of the networks more than their substance, you have an image of a network, but it is hard to know what to make of it
· Social relationships can be seen in isolation from the physical environment, economy and other factors – as if social relationships were the only influence on development
· The starting point of seeing social relationships as the basis for development can mean researchers underplay unsupportive or destructive social ties
· Relationships can be seen in an unrealistically rational way that we wouldn’t recognise in relation to our own relationships – as if people make and maintain connections purely for practical personal benefits, leaving out emotional reasons
So the direction we decided on was to look at social networks (what they are and how they work, including who benefits most and least) that provide access to resources and support, through a mix of methods, including surveys, interviews and workshops. This is to create a picture of social networks and try to understand what the networks mean for the social development of an area.
Comments
6 Comments on Social capital and social networks – what are we talking about?
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FutureGov » Useful links » links for 2009-06-23 on
Tue, 23rd Jun 2009 1:01 pm
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Max Hogg on
Tue, 23rd Jun 2009 5:06 pm
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Going beyond schmoozing? Social networks and community development : Connected Communities on
Thu, 25th Jun 2009 9:46 am
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kristin wolff on
Fri, 3rd Jul 2009 6:38 pm
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Damani G on
Wed, 15th Jul 2009 10:03 am
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Alison Gilchrist on
Mon, 24th Aug 2009 9:21 am
[...] Social capital and social networks – what are we talking about? : Connected Communities (tags: rsa blog socialcapital social networks connectedcommunities) [...]
Hi Damani,
My instinctive response in reading your bullet points is to suggest that the qualitative approach to social network analysis you mention (interviews and workshops) is going to be much more valuable than a quantitative one. As you suggest, its as much about understanding the substance of the network as its form.
But I wondered if you might go even further, and undertake some ethnographic research? By really understanding people’s lives through ethnographic approaches, the project may be able to get a much richer picture of the what makes informal networks so valuable in social capital.
Of course the challenge if you take an in-depth, ethnographic approach, is the question of how much of the rich understanding of a particular set of networks can be generalised and used to encourage informal networks in other areas, and how much of the information is useful only to the particular network in question. In other words by getting in-depth information do you then lose breadth and transferability in that information?
Lastly, I wondered if the description of the project could be presented as a story? As you say, the terms social capital and social network analysis are pretty dry to a non-expert. But a story about a resident of New Cross Gate or Gospel Oak which highlights how they benefit from family/group ties (bonding social capital) as well as links with other communities, friends elsewhere etc. (bridging social capital) and then shows how mapping those networks helps them to access employment/get the support they need/support others (social network analysis) could really bring the subject to life and show how inspiring it actually is!
Cheers,
Max
[...] the negatives as well as the positive aspects? Very interesting comment from Max Hogg on a previous post – could ethnographic approaches and storytelling be a more effective way of building a picture of [...]
Hello Damani: We’re doing similar work at the regional level (in the States). Just experimenting now – in partnership with network weaver June Holley, Valdis’s partner in developing the software and early methods they both use. Sounds like we’re on a similar trajectory in terms of figuring out the “toward what end?” question, as well as linking the analysis to a set of achievable real-world goals & strategies. I’d underscore the story theme – we’ve learned that you cannot sell the idea of social network analysis without them (they make the interesting visuals real), but we also suspect that the nature of our storytelling will change as we moving into the network weaving stage, and begin identifying metrics behind the change we seek to catalyze. Love to hear about your progress…What’s your twitter handle?
Hello Kristin,
Fascinating. Thank you for contacting me, would love to hear more about the work you’re doing. I’ll contact you (still not up to speed on twitter), and then let’s share back with everyone through the blog at a later stage, so they can hear about the stories and see how it looks in practice. Very useful to link up experiences from different places, and entirely in the spirit of the Connected Communities programme.
Best,
Damani
I am just about to start the next phase of research in New Cross Gate, building on Damani’s work so far. It will involve trying to understand the content and processes of people’s informal networks in (and beyond) the community. I will be using a modified snowball technique of observing a sample of interactions and then following up with interviews to see how people use the ‘content’ of the interaction or encounter through further networking. This approximates to an ethnographic approach but on a micro and short term level (due to limited time and resources).
Themethodology extends (and fleshes out) the ideas I have been developing through my research on community development and networking (cf. my book, The Well-connected community, the 2nd edition just published by The Policy Press).
Am in touch with June Holley and Valdis Krebs to explore parallels between their ‘networking weaving’ and my concept of ‘meta-networking’. Also in conversation with Lynn Varagona about modelsof community resilience. Hopefully we will find synergy and opportunities for synthesis in our work. Exciting times…..would welcome further comments and suggestions about the NXG research….and will keep you posted through the blog.
Alison G.
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