Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. This Advanced Introduction to Social Capital provides an overview of cutting-edge research on social capital. Karen Cook highlights the networks, norms and trust involved in social capital that facilitate cooperation, strengthen civil society and contribute to social order, indicating how each contributes to the collective good and provides resources of value to individuals, organizations and institutions. Key Features: Cross-cultural comparisons of the role of social networks in a number of domains of activity A critical focus on the importance of tolerance and the reaffirmation of democratic principles and practices An understanding of current social and political challenges related to polarization, such as inequality and trust limitations This timely Advanced Introduction is crucial reading for students and researchers in sociology and political science who are looking for an overview of social capital. It will also be an inspiring read for scholars of public policy, particularly those concerned with public management and its impact on social capital.

This Advanced Introduction to Social Capital provides an overview of cutting-edge research on social capital. Karen S. Cook highlights the networks, norms and trust involved in social capital that facilitate cooperation, strengthen civil society and contribute to social order, indicating how each contributes to the collective good and provides resources of value to individuals, organizations and institutions.

The selected articles embed the concept in core theoretical work in economics, political science, sociology, development theory, and philosophy. Topics include: contemporary conceptual and philosophical foundations; forms of social capital; and the relation of social capital to both development and democracy.

Social Capital, the advantage created by location in social structure, is a critical element in business strategy. Who has it, how it works, and how to develop it have become key questions as markets, organizations, and careers become more and more dependent on informal, discretionary relationships. The formal organization deals with accountability; Everything else flows through the informal: advice, coordination, cooperation friendship, gossip, knowledge, trust. Informal relations have always been with us, they have always mattered. What is new is the range of activities in which they now matter, and the emerging clarity we have about how they create advantage for certain people at the expense of others. This is done by brokerage and closure. Ronald S. Burt builds upon his celebrated work in this area to explore the nature of brokerage and closure. Brokerage is the activity of people who live at the intersection of social worlds, who have a vision advantage of seeing and developing good ideas, an advantage which can be seen in their compensation, recognition, and the responsibility they're entrusted with in comparison to their peers. Closure is the tightening of coordination in a closed network of people, and people who do this do well as a complement to brokers because of the trust and alignment they create. Brokerage and Closure explores how these elements work together to define social capital, showing how in the business world reputation has come to replace authority, pursued opportunity assignment, and reward has come to be associated with achieving competitive advantage in a social order of continuous disequilibrium.

Social capital and trust matter in the real world, say Gunnar (U. of Southern Denmark) and Gert (economics, Aarhus School of Business), but discussion of them is missing from the literature on economic growth and welfare in economics. They investigate how social capital is created and destroyed through an interdisciplinary approach combining politi

What is ‘social capital’? The enormous positivity surrounding it conceals the instrumental economic rationality underpinning the notion as corporations silently sell consumer data for profit. Status chasing is just one aspect of a process of transforming qualitative aspects of social interactions into quantifiable metrics for easier processing, prediction, and behavioural shaping. A work of critical media studies, Social Capital Online examines the idea within the new ‘network spectacle’ of digital capitalism via the ideas of Marx, Veblen, Debord, Baudrillard and Deleuze. Explaining how such phenomena as online narcissism and aggression arise, Faucher offers a new theoretical understanding of how the spectacularisation of online activity perfectly aligns with the value system of neoliberalism and its data worship. Even so, at the centre of all, lie familiar ideas – alienation and accumulation – new conceptions of which he argues are vital for understanding today’s digital society.

With disasters increasing in both frequency and intensity, this timely Advanced Introduction provides a fresh perspective on how the concepts established in the Sendai Framework can be put into practice to reduce disaster risk, improve preparedness in cost-effective ways, and develop whole-of-society approaches to increasing resilience.