The Feasibility of Constructing Social Capital

Settling the terms of the nature of social capital is essential in order to address the challenge of its constructability, and consequently of the feasibility of what is at the core of this study, that is, the devising and implementation of territorially-specific and social capital-supported development strategies. As we have discussed in the chapter 2, the ample literature on social capital recognizes that it has become an influential concept in the social sciences in terms of the theoretical and policy contributions it makes to the improvement of the economic and political conditions of people and places. Also, a broad consensus has been reached on the fact that, as three authors have written, the concept of social capital has “an immediate intuitive appeal” (Baron, Field, and Schuller, 2000), and there is a degree of convergence of views on the principal elements that now define the concept and inform the characteristics of the interactions that social capital embodies. This is because, by and large, the basic aspects of the scholarly writing on the concept of social capital consistently incorporate the definitional elements of trust, norms of reciprocity, and social networks.