Social capital
Social capital is the willingness of social network members or social contract parties to help each other. It very often replaces financial capital which would otherwise have to buy services to get the same help.When there is less social capital, there is social unrest. When there is none, there is social breakdown and a new society probably has to be formed - with a new idea of who is a member and who is not, and a new power structure. Regime change, coup and revolution are ways this can happen.
Power networks are probably more important when there is less social capital, because people who have no money and cannot get help from society may have to agree to do things they do not want to do, or force others to do things they do not want to. Organized crime grows in this way, and so do forced labour and slavery.
There are many ways to define and measure social capital in a functioning society. Most have to do with trust - people who trust that favours and help will be available when they need it will favour and help others more. Those who are seen as a free rider will get much less help. A social climber tries to get access to more social capital without earning it by actually helping. Some call this kind of person a social parasite - but they are very hard to detect, unlike cheating in other styles of capital. Too many of these people, doing fraud for instance, and people may start to mistrust power. Rather than work with a political party to change law, they may start to look for direct revenge for things.
It is hard to detect cheats, or see social capital when it is working. Thus, a very limited idea of social capital and how to measure it may be more useful than a very abstract one. For instance, some blogs use the idea of karma, unions have seniority, and some wikis try similar schemes.
There is no one right answer or method. Usually a few different things must be tried, and they must change, because any system of measuring trust can be exploited once the cheats figure out how it works, and learn to "play" it for their own benefit. Like most kinds of trust, if one has to ask about it or measure it, that is a sign that it is simply not there.
Full English definitions:
Some specialized definitions used in different contexts:
- Consumerium: social capital (for moral purchasing)
- Disinfopedia: social capital (for politics and propaganda)
- London Health Observatory methods in Social Capital (for health, social justice, healing and human development)
- "What is social capital"