Explorations of social capital, social cohesion, and community capacity

Some reflections regarding this topic are the following.

  1. Research regarding social capital has been limited in several ways.
    • Authors have shown a preoccupation with its role as capital, the exploration of rather indirectly associated indicators, or a tendency to vagueness (Tiepoh & Reimer, 2004).
    • Putnam: focused on limited range of activities (i.e. Associative)
    • Those who focus on trust: mistake consequence or important condition for social capital
  2. We followed Coleman and subsequent researchers who defined social capital as assets that can be accessed and drawn upon to achieve particular objectives. They are assets rooted in social networks embedded in institutions and communities (Reimer et al., 2008; Tiepoh & Reimer, 2004).
  3. Our primary considerations included an interest in how people get things done—as new initiatives or as finding ways to solve problems (i.e. their capacity). When assessing capacity they can use social capital as important assets. Our focus turned to examine which of the assets were available in various communities and which ones were used. There was not always a strong relationship between the two (Reimer & Tachikawa, 2008).
  4. A major problem with the existing data and analysis of social capital is that it relies too heavily on the characteristics of individuals. Instead, the focus should be on relationships and networks. Thus, we constructed instruments to measure the availability of social capital and its use by individuals (Reimer & Tachikawa, 2008)
    • Availability: the ease of access to individuals, organizations (formal and informal), and networks that enable a person or persons to achieve their desired objectives
    • Use: the social resources that people use to achieve their objectives
  5. We found that the use of social capital (networks) depended on the individual’s ability to operate within a variety of normative frameworks appropriate for the relationships involved. We identified four major types of norms: market, bureaucratic, associative, and communal (Reimer et al., 2008).
  6. Our measurement of available social capital focused on these four types (Reimer, 2002; see tables 1 and 2 in Reimer & Tachikawa, 2008). Note that availability can be measured by units of analysis which are geographically defined so long as they reflect ease of access.
  7. Measurement of used social capital focused on major changes within the household and the types of social capital sought to deal with them (Reimer, 2011b). The measurement of used social capital relies on individual-level (or households) as units of analysis.
  8. The most frequent major changes as reflected in the NRE and GSS data were health or death-related. The most frequent social capital used was a combination of bureaucratic and communal (see Figure 5 in Reimer, 2011b). These results caution us to look for interaction effects in our analysis.
  9. Our approach and measures for used social capital were replicated (for a telephone survey) in the GSS22 national sample (2008). This allowed us to compare our NRE field site data with a national sample using similar indicators (Reimer, 2011b).
  10. We explored the validity of our indicators by considering their relationship with social cohesion as measured by Wilkinson (Wilkinson, 2007).
  11. We began an analysis and critique of the measurement of social capital in USA counties by Rupasingha et al. (Rupasingha et al., 2006).
  12. We also made use of a BC health survey to explore the validity of our approach and measurement (Bache et al., 2009).
  13. We began an exploration of proxy indicators for the availability of social capital using census variables. We began with the 2001 census data since it was the closest to the year in which we collected the NRE household data. We identified the regression coefficients then used these same coefficients to estimate the social capital types for the other census years in the NRE Data Consortium: 1986 to 2016 (https://www.concordia.ca/artsci/sociology-anthropology/research/nre/resources/NREData.html) (Bache et al., 2009; Reimer, 2011a; Reimer & Tiepoh, 2007).
  14. We have produced and integrated several indexes in the Census data of the Data Consortium (https://crrf.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/CensusVariables_1986-2016_CD22-20230718Copy.xlsx). They include indexes for the four types of social capital, GINI coefficients for males and females, and an index of ethnic concentration.

References

Bache, T., Reimer, B., & Ostry, A. (2009). The Availability of Social Capital in Urban and Rural Communities in British Columbia (pp. 1–40) [Working document]. Concordia University.

Lyons, Tara and Bill Reimer (2009) “A Literature Review of Capacity Frameworks: Six Features of Comparison” In Godfrey Baldacchino, Rob Greenwood, Lawrence Felt (eds.) Remote Control: Lessons in Governance for/from Small and Remote Regions, St John’s NL, ISER Press: 63-76. \bookchapter \sshrcbkchapter “C:\Users\Bill\Documents\Personal\BillHistory\BillProducts\REMOTE CONTROL-Lyons + Reimer.pdf”

Reimer, B. (2002). Understanding and Measuring Social Capital and Social Cohesion (pp. 1–23). NRE Concordia University.

Reimer, B. (2011a). Estimating Available Social Capital from Census Data (NRE Working Documents, pp. 1–5). Concordia University.

Reimer, B. (2011b). Social Exclusion through Lack of Access to Social Support in Rural Areas. In G. Fréchet, D. Gauvreau, & J. Poirer (Eds.), Social Statistics, Poverty and Social Exclusion: Perspectives Québecoises, Canadiennes et internationals (pp. 152–160). Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal.

Reimer, B., Lyons, T., Ferguson, N., & Polanco, G. (2008). Social capital as social relations: The contribution of normative structures. The Sociological Review, 56(2), 256–274.

Reimer, B., & Tachikawa, M. (2008). Capacity and social capital in rural communities. In P. Apedaile & N. Tsuboi (Eds.), Revitalization: Fate and Choice (p. 15). Rural Development Institute.

Reimer, B., & Tiepoh, M. G. G. N. (2007). Measuring the Production and Use of Social Capital: Theory and Evidence from Canada (NRE Reports, pp. 1–39). Concordia University.

Rupasingha, A., Goetz, S. J., & Freshwater, D. (2006). The production of social capital in US counties. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 35, 83–101.

Tiepoh, M. G. G. N., & Reimer, B. (2004). Social capital, information flows, and income creation in rural Canada: A cross-community analysis. Journal of Socio-Economics, 33(4), 427–448.

Wilkinson, D. (2007). The Multidimensional Nature of Social Cohesion: Psychological Sense of Community, Attraction, and Neighboring. American Journal of Community Psychology, 40(3–4), 214–229.