Social capital, children and young people is about the relationships and networks - social capital - that children and young people have in and out of school.Social capital has become of increasing interest to policy makers but there has been little evidence of how it operates in practice. In this unique collection, the social capital of children and young people, and in one case parents and teachers, is explored in a wide range of formal and informal settings.The contributors to the book, who include academic researchers and educational professionals, provide in-depth accounts of social capital being developed and used by children and young people. They offer critical reflections on the significance of social capital and on the experiences of researching the social capital of sometimes vulnerable people.This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with how children and young people get along, get by and get on.
Social capital and lifelong learning are central to current policy concerns both in the UK and internationally. This book confirms the significance of social capital as an analytical tool, while challenging the basis on which current policy is being developed. It:
· offers a wealth of evidence on a topic that has become central to contemporary government;
· provides a detailed empirical investigation of the relationship between social capital, knowledge creation and lifelong learning;
· relates the findings to wider policy debates;
· questions the dominant theoretical models of social capital; and
· confronts the assumption of many policy makers that the obvious solution to social problems is to ‘invest in social capital’.
Introduction James Coleman’s ( 1988 ) article ‘Social capital in the creation of human capital’ popularised the idea of social capital as a productive resource in the form of relationships between individual agents. Earlier theorists had used the term or similar ideas ( Loury, 1977 ; Bourdieu, 1986 ; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992 ; Tocqueville, 2012 ), but Coleman’s treatment of the topic is widely regarded as a path-breaking contribution. For Coleman, social capital’s significance is its role in information transmission and sustaining institutions. He noted
1 ONE Lifelong learning and the generation of human and social capital Sheila Riddell and Elisabet Weedon, Centre for Research in Education Inclusion and Diversity, University of Edinburgh introduction This book takes a retrospective and prospective look at the contribution of lifelong learning to economic growth and social cohesion across Europe. It draws on comparative data from the EU Sixth Framework Project ‘Towards a Lifelong Learning Society in Europe: The Contribution of the Education System’ (LLL2010), which ran from 2005 to 2011 and involved 12
Policy & Politics vol 31 no 1 321 © The Policy Press, 2003 • ISSN 0305 5736 Key words: social capital • trust • community Policy & Politics v 31 n 3 321–34 Final submission 16 May 2002 • Acceptance 22 July 2002 In search of social capital Gordon Johnston and Janie Percy-Smith English Social capital is increasingly regarded by politicians, policy makers and theoreticians as an antidote to a range of social ills and its absence as a cause of those same ills. Originating in Bourdieu and popularised by Putnam, much is claimed for social capital. However, there
21 2 Communities, networks and social capital Yvonne Rydin Introduction The last chapter explored the promise and challenges of community planning and made it clear that collective action to shape neighbourhoods cannot be taken for granted. There is a key issue involved: enabling the dynamics by which a group of people come together to develop and implement a vision for their locality. This chapter uses the concepts of networks and social capital to understand these dynamics more fully. It begins by building on the discussion of the previous chapter on
73 FOUR Social capital: the missing link? Among the many attempts to rescue the idea of welfare from the limitations and contradictions of the economic model (see Chapter One), social capital theory has been the most influential in recent years. In this chapter, I shall focus on the first of two parts of its attempt to explain the beneficial effects of certain social contexts – that ‘social networks have value’ to those who participate in them (Helliwell and Putnam, 2005, p 438). The second part – that they benefit non- participants also – will be examined
33 THREE ethnicity, community and social capital Alice Sullivan introduction This chapter focuses on indicators of social capital in the lives of the mothers of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) children. The mothers’ social networks, social support and experiences of their local areas will be relevant to their children as they grow up. The concept of social capital has been influential in policy circles, but is contested, and has been used for varying purposes by social theorists. For Coleman, social capital refers to ‘the set of resources that inhere in
