Conferences

The concept Social Capital is very popular but the definitions and the measurement are rather unclear. With respect to the definition a distinction can be made between bonding and bridging social capital and between individual and community social capital.

With respect to operationalization essentially three sub-concepts are mentioned: social contacts, trust and the norm of reciprocity. However, it is rather unclear what to do with measures of these concepts in order to develop a index for social capital. This raises the question if these variables are reflective indicators of formative indicators of Social Capital. As a consequence one can ask of one should use a weighted average to create an index for social capital or should one assume that all these characteristics should be available in order to speak of social capital ? Also for the community social capital it is not clear how one should operationalize the concept. Should one just aggregate individual scores or use group characteristics directly?

Although we suggest many questions, there have also many answers give in research. It is the purpose of this session to speak about the different possibilities and their qualities.