The capital that counts

Commonweal, Nov 22, 1996 by Sidney Callahan

Affluence appears to deplete social capital because you don't need to be dependent on others. Reigning individualistic ideologies of liberation, self-sufficiency, and choice can add to the destruction. Even the social capital inherent in family obligations and bonds can end up squandered. By contrast, religious ideologies that impose demands for individual action directed to the good of others builds up social capital. Coleman felt that in Catholic schools a child's problems were less likely to be ignored because of the belief that each person is intrinsically valuable in the sight of God.

If we want to be dismissive, we can say that this focus on "social capital" simply provides a way for social scientists to recognize (at last) the nonmaterial, "spiritual" realities of life; that this analytic evaluation of human relationships and trust as a form of wealth counters materialistic and technocratic approaches to society. But it also helps us understand how and why things fall apart. Better yet, it gives us some direction for renewing and creating new forms of social capital.

If you believe that persons or groups can act purposefully to organize and reorganize themselves, then it is possible to begin to build up social capital. First, we can invest energy and resources in those relationships and associations (however fragile) that presently support people and work for the public good. Let's hear it for the family (all variants), the parish, the neighborhood, and voluntary associations. Then we can work to create new forms of interdependent relationships that build up trustworthiness, mutual support, and sustained attention to persons.

Cannot the phenomenal growth of the small-group movement in America be one attempt to develop substitutes for eroded forms of primordial social capital? Shared housing for the old, alumnae and big-brother mentoring, parish nurses, nursing-home ombudsmen, and parent-run daycare cooperatives may be other efforts to find the support once provided by extended families, clans, guilds, and hometowns. As ominous as the onset of the internet and computer networking might seem to many of us, could not special-interest cybercommunities be a new form of social capital?

When it comes right down to it, Coleman's insight can be expanded. The Catholic church should be a veritable engine for producing social capital. Common worship and rituals enacted as sacraments of charity create and renew the bonds of the human family. Surely the grace flooding the world from the Holy Trinity is the original font of social capital, the wellspring of interpersonal trust. Make that Trust, with a capital T.