Patterns of Social Capital: Stability and Change in Historical Perspective

Rothberg, Robert I. (ed.). Patterns of Social Capital: Stability and Change in Historical Perspective. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 394pp.

As the title suggests, this book surveys the utility of social capital as a theoretical construct. The distinguished contributors to this edited collection first published their chapters as articles in two special issues of The Journal of Interdisciplinary History. The editor of this book, Rotberg, provides a very useful overview and summary of the chapters included in this volume in his introductory chapter. This book, while built on the theoretical work of Putnam, attempts to identify long-term patterns of social capital that played important roles in the development of democracies in a wide variety of geographic and historic settings. The different contributors do not always believe that Putnam's conception of social capital existed in the formation of national groups in different historic periods and in different regions. Thus, this book thus attempts to extend earlier work that has been done by utilizing the theory in a much more historic context. The chapters in this collection cover Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia from a time frame that begins as early as premodern Italy. The book thus suggests that despite some limitations the concept of social capital is often helpful in explaining political developments in quite diverse contexts.

Rotberg's introductory chapter successfully defines and identifies the importance of social capital in developing the reciprocal trust that is necessary for a civil society to emerge in which government can be effective in solving national problems. This is especially true of democratic governments where social capital allows individuals and groups to engage open and freely. But one need not assume that all forms of associations that predate democracy helped yield the social capital necessary for the survival of democracy. The next three chapters explore the Putnam's theory regarding the Italian case. Brucker effectively demonstrates that the associations of pre-modern Italy were not simple precursors of the type of organizations that engendered the social capital necessary for the creation of civil society. Guir's chapter also finds less continuity in Italy's past as a precursor of civil society than civic religion, judicial practice, and the mores of refined manners. Guir finds that the means to eliminate violence in Italy had more to do with the effort to end family and factional fighting than to open society to public debate and contestation. Grew reconstructs Putnam's conception of social capital to include what he identifies as cultural capital in the form of public spaces and other ideas and practices borrowed from the French Revolution and brought to Italy in the Iatel8th century.

Much of the rest of the book focuses on the American experience and the relevance of social capital in the US context. Greene's contribution, like Grew, emphasizes the need to expand the idea of social capital to include more and general associations of people he entitles cultural capital. This allows the concept of social or cultural capital the necessary historical depth to explain the social relations of colonial America. Greene explores how settlers to America selectively adopted and modified the social structures of the European societies of their ancestors to create new and what became the necessary capital to create a new and different society. Gamm and Putnam's chapter is an empirical assessment of what they identify as the Tocqueville Thesis. They attempt to study the change in associational membership in the US between 1840 and 1940. Their survey of city directories clearly indicates that associational life peaked in the US around 1900 and thrives in small towns rather than big cities. While not comfortable with Putnam's conception of social capital, Ryan argues that associational life was critical in the creation of democratic politics in American cities in the 19th century, demons' chapter successfully operationalizes the concept of social capital to explain the empowerment of women politically and the role that Women's associations played in the accumulation of social capital from the 188Os to the 1920s. Ueda's chapter describes how institutions like public schools and settlement housing provided the necessary enculturation process so that second generation Americans were socialized into the value structure of civic America. Goldin and Katz emphasize the role of secondary schooling as an agent creating human and social capital for those generations of Americans raised form 1910 through 1940. Finally, Gutmann and Pullum found data that suggest communities with ethnic and religious cohesion are likelier to form civic organizations and provide political capital they identify at the national level by examining voter turnout in the Great Plains states.

The remaining chapters of the book attempt to explore the relevance of the theory of social capital to contexts outside of those that have been the basis for Putnam's research. Rosenband finds in his study of social capital in the early stages of the industrial revolution that the conflict between journeymen and masters and different groups within the guilds provides for more conflict that continuity to the modern era than is suggested by Putnam in his earlier work. Mclntosh's chapter finds more support for Putnam's thesis based on the existence of both formal and informal connections in English Communities between 1300 and 1640 and in southern Nigeria between 1900 and 1960. The final chapter of the book is an effort by Lucian Pye to apply the concepts of civility, social capital, and civil society to Asian contexts. Pye emphasizes the differences in the meanings of these terms and the differences in each for differing Asian states.