Article Review 

The Myth of Social Capital
in Community Development

James DeFilippis
King’s College, London

Abstract

This article argues that contemporary interest in social capital by community develop-
ment theorists, funders, and practitioners is misguided and needs to be thoroughly re-
thought. It argues that social capital, as understood by Robert Putnam and people in-
fluenced by his work, is a fundamentally flawed concept because it fails to understand
issues of power in the production of communities and because it is divorced from eco-
nomic capital. Therefore, community development practice based on this understanding
of social capital is, and will continue to be, similarly flawed.

The article further argues that instead of Putnam’s understanding of social capital,
community development practice would be better served by returning to the way the
concept was used by Glenn Loury and Pierre Bourdieu and concludes with a discussion
of how these alternative theories of social capital can be realized in community devel-
opment practice.

Keywords: Development/revitalization; Urban environment

Introduction

The extremely rapid rise of social capital is one of the dominant trends
in American social science and public policy over the past decade, and
this is particularly true of work in housing and community development.
This was obvious at the spring 1999 meeting of the Urban Affairs Asso-
ciation in Louisville, KY. Social capital was the organizing theme of the
conference, and emphasis was placed on how social capital can be gener-
ated in low-income communities in the United States. If the meeting
was any indication, social capital had, in only about half a decade, be-
come one of the principal concerns of community development practi-
tioners and researchers. Shortly thereafter, two students walked into
their high school in the affluent suburb of Littleton, CO, and began
shooting their classmates. This tragic event sparked debates in Ameri-
can public life, among them the issue of the isolation and alienation of
much of suburban life (Hamilton 1999; Schiff 1999).

Of course, this was not a new criticism to be lodged against the suburbs;
people have been making it for quite some time (Friedan 1963; Jackson
1985; Langdon 1994; Wood 1958). But, the feeling of isolation in afflu-
ent suburbs (which are now only a segment of the much more race- and
class-diverse suburban world) took on new strength in the 1990s and

Housing Policy Debate · Volume 12, Issue 4 781
© Fannie Mae Foundation 2001. All Rights Reserved. 781

resulted in, among other things, the rapid growth of both the cohousing
and New Urbanist movements (Hanson 1996; Katz 1994; Knack 1996;
McCamant and Durrett 1988; Muschamp 1996; Talen 1999).

But, this sense of isolation presents a problem. If people who are afflu-
ent in the United States are struggling with social disconnectedness
and isolation, why are people who are concerned with economic develop-
ment in low-income areas emphasizing the importance of social connec-
tions and networks as a way of moving low-income people and commu-
nities out of poverty? There seems, in short, to be disjuncture between,
on the one hand, the experiences of the affluent and, on the other, the
prescriptions for the poor in American life. This disjuncture, in and of
itself, should lead people to question the utility of the social capital
framework in community economic development.

This article will discuss the meanings and uses of social capital and
argue that its recently acquired privileged position in community eco-
nomic development is misguided. To be specific, however, this article is
not an argument that social capital does not matter or that it is not an
important component in the production and reproduction of individual
success and class status. Instead, the argument is that we need to be
very careful about how we define and use the term social capital. Social
capital is an “elastic term” (Moore Lappe and Du Bois 1997, 119), with
a variety of meanings. But the understanding of social capital that has
become incorporated into community development theory and practice
is the social capital of Robert Putnam (1993a, 1993b, 1995, 1996, 1998,
2000), in which the term is both combined with notions of civil society
and assumed to be a principal engine of economic growth and democra-
tic government. Putnam’s arguments, however, are deeply flawed and
have little empirical or theoretical support, so community development
work informed by his framework will be similarly flawed and misguid-
ed. Before making these arguments, however, this article will briefly
discuss the concept of social capital and how it has evolved through its
use by Loury (1977), Bourdieu (1985), Coleman (1988) and then, ulti-
mately, Putnam (1993a, 1993b, 1995, 1996, 2000) and his followers.

What is social capital?1

While time and space constraints do not permit a thorough description
of the enormous literature on social capital that has emerged in the past
seven or so years (Chupp 1999; Fine 2001; Foley and Edwards 1997,
1998; Portes 1998; Wills 2000), it is important to briefly describe the dif-
ferent meanings given to the term. It is unclear who first used the term,
but an important early use came from Loury (1977) in a book chapter

782 James DeFilippis

1 This section borrows heavily from Portes’s presidential address to the American Soci-
ological Association (1998).

that criticized the narrowly individualistic and atomistic understanding
of human capital in neoclassical economic theory. He wrote:

The social context within which individual maturation occurs
strongly conditions what otherwise equally competent individuals
can achieve. This implies that absolute equality of opportunity, where
an individual’s chance to succeed depends only on his or her innate
capabilities, is an ideal that cannot be achieved.…An individual’s
social origin has an obvious and important effect on the amount of
resources that is ultimately invested in his or her development. It
may thus be useful to employ a concept of “social capital” to repre-
sent the consequences of social position in facilitating acquisition of
the standard human capital characteristics. (Loury 1977, 176)

Loury was unquestionably right in this assessment, and certainly some-
one growing up in East New York, Brooklyn, or the South Side of Chica-
go is not starting from the same position as someone growing up in
Greenwich, CT, or Glencoe, IL. This is stating the obvious. But Loury
needed to make the argument because this apparently self-evident state-
ment of reality was clearly not self-evident to human capital theorists
who, following Becker (1957, 1964), had come to dominate labor theo-
ries in American economics. Human capital formation, instead of being
understood as the inherently social process that it is—for example, no
one goes to school in isolation from the context in which that school is
located, administered, or funded—had come to be almost completely
about individual achievement or lack of it.

A concurrently developed theory of social capital came from French
sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1985),2 who is relatively underused in the
current literature on social capital in community development. This is
unfortunate because his is probably the most theoretically useful and
sophisticated attempt to deal with the issue. Bourdieu’s (1985) use of
the term social capital is an explicit attempt to understand the produc-
tion of classes and class divisions. Social capital, while being constituted
by social networks and relationships, is never disconnected from capital.
Capital, for Bourdieu (1985), is simultaneously both economic and a set
of power relations that constitute a variety of realms and social inter-
actions normally thought of as noneconomic. Two key components of his
work have been lost in current discussions of social capital. First, the
production, and reproduction, of capital is a process that is inherently
about power. In fact, Bourdieu’s (1985) conception of capital is such that
he almost conceives of capital and power as synonymous. Second, since
his interest is in the social production of classes, he distinguishes be-
tween the social networks that an individual is embedded in, and out of
which social capital precipitates (or emerges), and the outcomes of those
social relationships. That is, social networks should not simply be equat-
ed to the products of those social relationships, for doing so would ren-

The Myth of Social Capital in Community Development 783

2 Similarly, this section draws heavily on the work of Fine (1998, 1999, 2001).

der invisible social networks that might be very dense but nonetheless
unable to generate resources because of lack of access.

Despite these earlier efforts, the person who brought social capital into
the mainstream in the American social sciences was clearly James
Coleman (1988), who argued:

Social capital is defined by its function. It is not a single entity but
a variety of different entities, with two elements in common: they
all consist of some aspect of social structures, and they facilitate cer-
tain actions of actors…within the structure. Like other forms of cap-
ital, social capital is productive, making possible the achievement of
certain ends that in its absence would not be possible. Like physical
and human capital, social capital is not completely fungible but may
be specific to certain activities. A given form of social capital that is
valuable in facilitating certain actions may be useless or even harm-
ful for others. Unlike other forms of capital, social capital inheres in
the structure of relations between actors and among actors. (S98)

With this rather “fuzzy” definition (Markusen 1999; Portes 1998), Cole-
man (1988) then defines different sets of actions, outcomes, and rela-
tionships as social capital. Social capital for him is inherently functional,
and social capital is whatever allows people or institutions to act. Social
capital is therefore not a mechanism, a thing, or an outcome, but simul-
taneously any or all of them. Portes (1998) sees this as a vital step in
the evolution and proliferation of the idea of social capital and states:
“Coleman himself started that proliferation by including under the term
some of the mechanisms that generated social capital; the consequences
of its possession; and the ‘appropriable’ social organization that provided
the context for both sources and effects to materialize” (5). Finally, social
capital, for Coleman (1988), is normatively and morally neutral. That is,
it is neither desirable nor undesirable; it simply allows actions to take
place by providing the needed resources.

Putnam and the proliferation of social capital theory

Although Coleman’s 1988 work brought social capital into use in the
social sciences, the principal source of the idea for community develop-
ment practitioners and researchers is Robert Putnam (1993a, 1993b,
1995, 1996, 2000). With his work, social capital is thoroughly redefined
and becomes extremely influential in development studies, both in the
United States (Gittell and Vidal 1998; Lang and Hornburg 1998; Miller
1997; Moore Lappe and Du Bois 1997; Schulgasser 1999; Servon 1999;
Temkin and Rohe 1998; Wallis 1998; Wallis, Crocker, and Schechter
1998; Wilson 1997) and internationally. In fact, to many people in the
World Bank, social capital has become “the missing link” in global eco-
nomic development (Harriss and de Renzio 1997). Describing the impact
of Putnam’s social capital on community development, Chupp bluntly

784 James DeFilippis

states, “In the debate over poor neighborhoods and the ills of society as
a whole, social capital has become something of a wonder drug” (1999,
2). Further, Putnam’s redefinition of social capital is almost as dramatic
as the widespread impact of his argument, and it therefore requires
considerable discussion here. This article argues that with Putnam’s re-
definition, social capital ceases to be a useful framework for local or
community economic development.

There are several key transitions that occur when Putnam first uses
the term social capital in Making Democracy Work (1993a), his book
on Italian politics. And while he has expanded and developed his views
since then, he has not fundamentally altered them. First, social capital
is transformed from something realized by individuals to something
possessed (or not possessed) by either individuals or groups of people
in regions, communities, cities, countries, or continents. Second, it is
conflated with civil society, or more accurately, with a particular neo-
Tocquevillean view of civil society. Thus, voluntary, nongovernment asso-
ciations, based on trust, become the institutions through which social
capital is generated. Third, it becomes primarily a normatively good
thing and is given credit for (a) promoting good, democratic government
and (b) generating and sustaining economic growth and development.
Finally, when Putnam brings this framework to the American context,
he does so by making the argument that social capital and civil society
are declining in the United States and have been since the mid-1960s
(1993b, 1995, 1996, 2000) and that this trend portends long-term eco-
nomic and political trouble. These issues will be addressed in turn,
before turning to the problems with them and their applications in
community development efforts.

Loury (1977), Bourdieu (1985), and Coleman (1988) all argued that social
capital is not embodied in any particular person, but rather is embedded
in people’s social relationships. At the same time, however, they also
stated that social capital was realized by individuals. Putnam, converse-
ly, has argued that social capital is a resource that individuals or groups
of people possess or fail to possess (Portes 1998; Portes and Landolt
1996). At the outset of his first article on the issue, he states, “Working
together is easier in a community blessed with a substantial stock of
social capital” (Putnam 1993b, 36). Communities, not people, possess
“stocks” of social capital. He has since made this transition from the in-
dividual to the larger group more explicit and states, “Social capital can
thus be simultaneously a ‘private good’ and a ‘public good’ ” (Putnam
2000, 20). What is important to note is that despite his emphasis on
social networks and his moving social capital from the scale of the in-
dividual to the scale of the group, Putnam measures social capital with
a form of methodological individualism (Skocpol 1996). In his research
on social capital in the United States, Putnam (1995, 1996, 2000) uses
social survey data to observe the level of social involvement of individ-
uals and then simply aggregates up from there to whatever scale is

The Myth of Social Capital in Community Development 785

being observed. While this might seem a trivial observation, it is, as
will be demonstrated later, key to his, and his followers’, understanding
of “community.”

Coleman’s (1988) definition, by its lack of clarity, left the door open for
a variety of sources of social capital, and Putnam uses that vagueness
to seize on trust-based voluntary associations (one of the several exam-
ples Coleman offers), and his understanding of them as the constituents
of civil society, as the key source of social capital for communities, re-
gions, and so on. Putnam argues that “social capital refers to the norms
and networks of civil society that lubricate cooperative action among
both citizens and their institutions” (1998, v; emphasis in the original).
Social capital and civil society therefore become conflated, and the two
are almost synonymous. This transition has dramatic implications for
the political and theoretical understandings of social capital.

This view of social capital and civil society, unlike Coleman’s (1988),
Loury’s (1977), and Bourdieu’s (1985), is one in which they are largely
assumed to be a normatively good thing. While Putnam certainly rec-
ognizes that there are potentially “negative” forms of social capital, the
overwhelming balance of his work is about its benefits. And he argues
that they are, in fact, necessary for the functioning of both a responsive
democratic government and the economic growth and well-being of
places. He states:

An impressive and growing body of research suggests that civic con-
nections help make us healthy, wealthy and wise. Living without
social capital is not easy, whether one is a villager in southern Italy
or a poor person in the American inner city or a well-heeled entre-
preneur in a high-tech industrial district. (Putnam 2000, 287)

This understanding of civil society and social capital has its roots in
Putnam’s reading of Alexis de Tocqueville’s (1835) view of civil society
and democracy, and it is therefore necessary to take a moment to dis-
cuss this perspective. De Tocqueville visited the United States in the
1830s and believed that one of the defining components of Democracy
in America (1835) was the propensity of Americans to create and join
voluntary associations that were in the domains of neither the state
nor the market. Putnam acknowledges his debt to de Tocqueville and
states, “Recently, American social scientists of a neo-Tocquevillean bent
have unearthed a wide range of empirical evidence that the quality of
public life and the performance of social institutions are indeed power-
fully influenced by norms and networks of civic engagement” (1995, 66).
His reading of de Tocqueville strongly suggests that networks of trust
and voluntary associations are “win-win” sets of relationships in which
everyone involved benefits. This is evident in his basic definition of the
idea. He states, “Social capital refers to connections among individuals—
social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that
arise from them. In that sense social capital is closely related to what

786 James DeFilippis

some have called ‘civic virtue’ ” (Putnam 2000, 19). Voluntary associa-
tions, therefore, are not confrontational encounters based on vested in-
terests, but rather “features of social life—networks, norms, and trust—
that enable participants to come together to pursue shared objectives”
(Putnam 1996, 34; emphasis added). Bowling leagues, PTAs, Elks Clubs,
church groups, and trade unions (Putnam 1995) are therefore theoreti-
cally, politically, and morally comparable. Even though he examines
them individually in his recent book (Putnam 2000), they all perform
very similar functions.

But, the benefits of social capital and civil society extend beyond simply
promoting and supporting democratic institutions of government to
generating and sustaining economic growth. Putnam argues, “Studies
of the rapidly growing economies of East Asia almost always emphasize
the importance of dense social networks, so that these economies are
sometimes said to represent a new brand of ‘network capitalism’ ” (1993a,
38). At his boldest (referring to the Italian case), he states, “These com-
munities did not become civic simply because they were rich. The his-
torical record suggests precisely the opposite: They have become rich
because they were civic.…Development economists take note: civics
matters” (1993a, 37). And most recently he states, “Where trust and
social networks flourish, individuals, firms, neighborhoods and even
nations prosper” (Putnam 2000, 319). It is this understanding of social
capital—that it is central to the economic development of communities
and regions and nations—which has inspired its rapid incorporation
into the community economic development literature in the United
States and the underdeveloped world.

Putnam became famous, however, not simply as a neo-Tocquevillean,
but as someone who documented the decline in civil society and social
capital in the United States. His thesis has been much discussed, so it
need not be dealt with in any detail here. Briefly, he has argued (Putnam
1995, 1996, 2000) that the United States has witnessed a withdrawal
from civil society and a decline in social capital. He argues that the de-
cline of social capital is a generational process in which people who were
born in the 1910s and 1920s were (and are) more civicly engaged than
their counterparts who were born from the 1930s on. He accordingly
dates this withdrawal as having begun in the early to mid-1960s.

Putnam’s followers in community development3

Putnam and his arguments have rapidly become central to the research
and practice of community development in the United States. One of
the striking things about this explosion of research and practice around
his view of social capital and civil society is how it has largely ignored

The Myth of Social Capital in Community Development 787

3 The phrase “Putnam’s followers” is borrowed from Gittell and Vidal (1998).

an enormous volume of research and literature by academics (Edwards
and Foley 1997, 1998; Fine 1998, 1999, 2000; Foley and Edwards 1997,
1998; Galston 1996; Portes 1998; Portes and Landolt 1996; Schudson
1996; Skocpol 1996), people in the popular press (Lemann 1996; Pollitt
1996), and activists (Bowles 1999; Durlauf 1999) who have criticized
almost every component of these arguments. Instead, much work in
community development is broadly accepting of Putnam’s arguments
about the importance of social capital, understood as voluntary associ-
ations and civic trust, in the promotion of economic growth and prosper-
ity. In fact, to some researchers, Putnam’s views have become almost
axiomatic, and in the first sentence in her article on social capital Wil-
son unambiguously states: “Social capital creates local economic pros-
perity” (1997, 745). In their introduction to a special issue of Housing
Policy Debate devoted solely to social capital, Lang and Hornburg (1998)
reiterate Putnam’s arguments and state:

Political scientist Robert Putnam expanded and ultimately popular-
ized the concept of social capital. Putnam originally applied the idea
to a study of Italian regional governments. He showed that the key
element underlying the difference between Tuscany’s successful re-
gional government and Sicily’s failed one was the degree of “civic en-
gagement.”…Putnam also argued that social capital is connected to
economic development. Tuscany’s high level of social capital elevates
its standard of living. It provides the region a social environment in
which productive cooperation in all spheres of civic life is possible.
Thus, social capital promotes economic growth. (3; emphasis added)

Similarly, when the Urban Affairs Association held its annual conference
in 1999, it was titled “The Social Reconstruction of the City: Social Cap-
ital and Community Building.” This is certainly not to suggest that
everyone at the meetings accepted Putnam’s arguments, but rather to
observe that his work provided the very framework and context for dis-
cussions. Foundations have similarly incorporated Putnam’s arguments
into their work, and both the Local Initiatives Support Corporation
(LISC) and the Mott Foundation have made the construction of social
capital a central component of their antipoverty and community devel-
opment frameworks. (See Gittell and Vidal [1998] and Wallis, Crocker,
and Schechter [1998] respectively, for thorough discussions of these two
funding initiatives.) In the case of LISC, this has yielded a perspective
on community development organizing that stresses “nonconfrontation-
al” methods, and an incorporation of Michael Eichler’s framework of
“consensus organizing” (Gittell and Vidal 1998, 2). Given that social cap-
ital is being understood as both a set of win-win relationships based on
mutual interest and a promoter of economic prosperity and development,
this is a logical way for community organizers and community develop-
ment practitioners to operate. Thus, Putnam’s view of social capital and
voluntary civic associations is being played out in the streets of Ameri-
can cities. The problem with all of this is that social capital, as Putnam

788 James DeFilippis

has defined and operationalized it, does not necessarily promote com-
munity economic development (or, for that matter, democratic govern-
ment).

The problems with Putnam and his followers

Returning to the way Putnam transformed the idea of social capital, I
will now present the theoretical and empirical flaws in his analysis and
argue that if we are to use the notion of social capital in community
development we would be much better served by returning to how it
was understood by Loury (1977) or Bourdieu (1985). I will go through
Putnam’s transformations of social capital in the same order that they
were presented.

Individuals, communities, and power

First, Putnam defines social capital as something that is possessed, or
not possessed, by individuals, communities, cities, nations, etc. He and
his followers then measure its existence by simply taking individual
attributes and aggregating up to the scale being measured. There are
two problems with this argument and its associated methodology. First,
places are not things. A community cannot possess anything. An institu-
tion or an individual can possess something, but a community cannot.
Instead, communities are products of complicated sets of social, politi-
cal, cultural, and economic relationships (DeFilippis 1999; Massey 1994).
Communities are outcomes, not actors. They are, however, outcomes
that affect and constrain future possibilities. Communities unquestion-
ably matter, but they are not actors that exhibit any form of agency. This
might seem like a semantic argument, but this first problem leads to
the second one. That is, no place (a community, a region, or whatever) is
solely a function of the internal attributes of the people living and work-
ing there. If communities are outcomes, they are not simply outcomes
of the characteristics of those within them, they are also outcomes of a
complex set of power-laden relationships—both internally, within the
communities, and externally, between actors in the communities and the
rest of the world. Citibank (for instance) and its lending practices, state
governments and their education financing policies, and communities
in other countries with soon-to-be emigrants are all very real examples
of how America’s urban communities are products of a whole host of
relations that extend geographically well beyond the place of the com-
munity. These relations are often contentious (school funding issues is a
classic example) and are always imbued with issues of power. Only by
ignoring these vitally important, power-laden connections can we as-
sume that communities are the products of the attributes of the individ-
uals who live and work in them. Similarly, only by ignoring these con-

The Myth of Social Capital in Community Development 789

nections can we assume that we can move from the level of the individ-
ual to the level of community (or city, or region) or that individual gains
and profits are the same as group, or community, gains and profits.

Putnam does try to get at this reality with his concept of “bridging
capital” (1995, 1996, 2000), which has been generally accepted within
the community development work that has followed him. But once we
accept the complexity of the internal and external relationships that
produce a community, we clearly need something more than bridging
capital as the means to economic development. For instance, individuals
in exurban gated communities of Orange County, CA, and indeed in
much of the rest of the country are largely devoid of bridging capital (at
the community level). As Putnam himself states in his brief discussion
of gated communities, “Not only are canvassing politicians and Girl
Scouts selling cookies excluded from exclusive communities, but the af-
fluent residents themselves also appear to have a surprisingly low rate
of civic engagement and neighborliness even within their boundaries”
(2000, 210). The importance of this example is that not only are these
communities disconnected, but they are also usually exceedingly
wealthy. The relationships that produce gated communities are based
on the protection of their affluence through their class- and race-based
social and geographic isolation from much, if not most, of the metropol-
itan areas around them. It is not connections that partially produce and
reproduce their wealth, but exactly the opposite: isolation. Connections,
or “bridges” do not, of themselves, make the people in any place rich or
poor. The important question is, Who controls the terms of any relation-
ships or connections (or lack of connections)? “Bridging capital” is really
needed only if a community’s residents are poor and therefore on the
losing end of a set of power relations. What needs to change are those
power relations, not the level of connections.

Social capital and civil society

The second transition that Putnam makes is to confuse social capital
with a particular neo-Tocquevillean reading of civil society. This transi-
tion has two important implications for community development prac-
tice. First, this reading of civil society assumes that social capital and
civil society are almost always good things that enable people to act to-
ward their shared interests and goals, based on the trust, norms, and
values that develop through their associations. But this is, at best, a
highly selective reading of civil society. Putnam bases his understand-
ing of civil society on the popular simplification of the views de Tocque-
ville expressed in 1835 in Democracy in America. But de Tocqueville’s
view of civil society is both much more complex than Putnam and his
followers acknowledge, and further, it is but one in a very long, and high-
ly contested, history of debate about civil society in Western thought. As
Foley and Edwards correctly observe:

790 James DeFilippis

Tocqueville argues that America’s associational life springs from
the twin social and political conditions of the new nation—and
those conditions are, in his eyes and those of his intended audi-
ence, inherently problematic. The social condition, the relatively
egalitarian character of American society, plays an explicit role in
Tocqueville’s account of the genesis of American associationism. The
political freedoms Americans enjoy play a generally supporting role,
but an essential one. American egalitarianism poses serious prob-
lems for public life to de Tocqueville’s mind…a general leveling
promotes mediocrity and conformism.…Associations arise to fill
these deficiencies. (1997, 554)

De Tocqueville’s voluntary associations arose as win-win situations pre-
cisely because the interests of the people involved were shared. De Toc-
queville visited the United States before the emergence of industrial
capitalism and the classes it created. Also, there is little doubt that if
slaves had been allowed to participate in such associations (which they
clearly were not), then the image of voluntary associations would be a
very different one indeed. Putnam’s view is possible only if you erase
the very real material interests that divide us (and even then, it is still
questionable) and create a vision of civil society as solely constituted by
people and groups with mutual interests. That is why Putnam lumps
trade unions together with PTAs and church groups and views them as
comparable (1993b, 1995, 1996). If he had included local Chambers of
Commerce with local unions, the implausibility of his argument would
have been even clearer. This understanding of voluntary associations
as win-win relationships also allows him to ignore the power relations
that play such an important role in intergroup relations. Simply put,
certain social networks are in greater positions of power than others,
and they can therefore yield much more substantial returns to their
members when those networks are engaged in social or political conflict.
Given that people in low-income areas are marginalized in the Ameri-
can political economy, this is a substantial omission—and limiting fac-
tor—in the potential uses of Putnam’s social capital framework in com-
munity organizing and development.

The second important aspect of conflating social capital with civil society
is that it divorces social capital from capital itself. But for social capital
to have any meaning, it must remain connected to the production and
reproduction of capital in society. This is striking because it is the role
of social capital in community economic development that should be of
the greatest importance to community development practitioners. Com-
munity development is about many things, but central to them must be
the economic security and progress of people in low-income communities
and the economic development of the communities themselves. But given
Putnam’s separation of social capital from economics, it is not surpris-
ing that the economic impact of Putnam’s social capital is so difficult to
observe and measure. This is because it might not even exist.

The Myth of Social Capital in Community Development 791

Social capital and economic growth

Putnam argues that social capital and civil society (comprised of volun-
tary associations) promote economic growth (1993a, 1993b, 1995, 1996,
1998, 2000). But there is little theoretical or empirical support for this
assertion. His own examples, aside from Italy, which is beyond the scope
of this article (his interpretation of Italian politics and economics has
been called into question by other specialists on Italy; see Goldberg
[1996], Harriss and de Renzio [1997], Sabetti [1996], and Tarrow [1996]
for summaries of these criticisms), betray the problems in his own argu-
ment. Putnam uses the examples of immigrant enclaves in American
cities, the “network capitalism” of East and Southeast Asia, and the “ero-
sion of social capital” (Putnam 1993b, 39) in our inner cities as examples
that social capital generates economic growth (or, inversely, that the
lack of social capital arrests economic growth). The first two of these
will be addressed now, and the third shortly.

First, Putnam is certainly right that social ties based on trust and
networks among immigrants have helped them prosper in the United
States. That has been a feature of the immigrant experience for quite
some time. But again, because he views communities as coherent
wholes, internally defined and detached from other sets of communities,
he fails to see the impact of these networks in any larger context. Cole-
man’s (1988) often cited example, which Putnam and his followers draw
on, is that of the diamond industry in New York and how market trans-
actions involving large quantities of jewels are facilitated by the social
networks of trust within the Jewish community that controls the indus-
try. Aside from the complete denial of the exploitation that takes place
within ethnic enclave economies (Waldinger 1986), the problem with
this, and every other enclave like it, is that it completely closes off the
market, and access to the market, to anyone who is not part of the
ethnic group creating the enclave. A brilliant, hard-working, innovative
Irish Catholic immigrant (for instance) who wanted to enter the dia-
mond trade in New York City would have an exceptionally difficult time
doing so. Or to move from the hypothetical to the real, as a result of
large flows of capital into the real estate market in New York, Harlem
has been experiencing substantial development in recent years. This
should be a good thing and beneficial to black contractors and workers
in the community. The reality, however, is that the construction industry
in New York is controlled by an immigrant enclave (in this case Italians),
and so the contracting firms and their employees in Harlem have been
largely excluded from the dollars and jobs that this investment has
brought (Siegal 2000).

The response to this example could be that Harlem contractors simply
need to be better connected or have more substantial stocks of “bridging
capital,” but that would miss the point, which is this: If social capital
as sets of networks means anything, it means that some people will be

792 James DeFilippis

connected and others will not. Simply put, if there is one job, and every-
one is connected to the same networks and realizes the same benefits
of social capital, then you cease to have the kinds of networks that Put-
nam and Coleman are talking about. Instead you have the pure market
of Adam Smith’s theorizations. If everyone is connected, then everyone
by definition would lose the benefits of those connections because they
would no longer gain capital from them (in this case, the job). Putnam
observes, “It is no accident that one of the pervasive strategems of ambi-
tious yuppies is ‘networking’ ” (1993b, 38). But what he fails to realize
is that yuppies network precisely to get ahead of everyone else. If they
shared the fruits of their networking with others, they would cease to
be ambitious and become charitable instead. They would, in fact, not
only be acting charitably, but acting against their own self-interest. This
is one of the primary reasons why it is simply untenable to move from
the level of the individual to the level of community in issues of econom-
ics. For social capital to make sense as a concept in a market economy,
then networks, formal or informal, must operate in the competitive
realm of market relations. And while the individuals in such a network
might share common interests that allow them to act as a network,
these networks, because of the competitive nature of capitalism, cannot
be extended to everyone in society. Max Weber, the influential sociologist
and political economist, wrote at length in 1925 on the role of social
networks in economics in The Theory of Social and Economic Organi-
zation and is instructive on this point. He stated:

[A relationship] is especially likely to be closed, for rational reasons,
in the following type of situation: a social relationship may provide
the parties to it with opportunities for satisfaction of various inter-
ests, whether the satisfactions be spiritual or material.…If the par-
ticipants expect the admission of others will lead to an improvement
of their situation…their interest will be in keeping the relationship
open. If, on the other hand, their expectations are of improving their
position by monopolistic tactics, their interest is in a closed relation-
ship. (Weber 1993 edition, 139–40)

If the social capital in question is a network that helps people find
employment (or get into the right prep school, or whatever), it would
clearly be in the interest of those realizing and appropriating the social
capital (the job or place in the school) to keep the network as closed as
possible. This is precisely what the ethnic enclave economies have dem-
onstrated. To have any value as a term, social capital must retain a
connection to economic capital, and it must therefore be premised on
the ability of certain people to realize it at the expense of others. While
economics is not a zero-sum game, it is also not simply a set of win-win
relationships.

But the economic shortcomings of social capital extend beyond its nec-
essary exclusions and into the realm of economic unsustainability.
Putnam consistently celebrates in his articles the emergence of “network

The Myth of Social Capital in Community Development 793

capitalism” in East and Southeast Asia and argues that these countries
demonstrate the validity of his point that networks of trust and mutual
interest generate economic growth (1993b, 1995, 1996, 1998). The prob-
lem with this example is that by the middle of 1997, the East Asian and
Southeast Asian economies had collapsed, and by the end of 1997, much
of the economic world had decided that the cause of the collapse was
“crony capitalism” (“How Far Is Down?” 1997; “A Lorry-Load of Trouble
in Asia” 1997; “Asia and the Abyss” 1997).

In short, the networks of trust and mutual cooperation in Asia that Put-
nam is so supportive of were taken to their logical conclusion of irra-
tional economic actions inspired by economic decisions that were made
with a logic other than economics at heart. This is probably why in his
recent book Putnam (2000) no longer points to this example. And this
is precisely why Adam Smith in his 1776 Wealth of Nations argued so
strongly against the kinds of social networks among economic actors
that Putnam and his followers now celebrate. Smith argued that such
relationships were akin to monopolization and would necessarily gen-
erate a group whose “interest is, in this respect, directly opposite to that
of the great body of the people” (1993 edition, 307). In fact, he argued
that too much trust between economic actors was a recipe for economy-
stifling cartels and monopolizations—a prediction that seems to have
been borne out by the experience in Asia. Similar concerns were again
voiced by Weber in 1925, but his criticisms went beyond simple exclu-
sions and monopolizations to stress that such trust-based networks
further distort and hamper growth within the economy by inviting free-
riders from within the relationships not to work as hard as they might,
or have to, if they were not connected.

But, the biggest flaw in Putnam’s argument comes not from East Asia
or the theories of political economists, but from the empirical realities
of American life. Three components of Putnam’s arguments with regard
to social capital and economic prosperity are important here: first, that
social capital promotes economic growth; second, that social capital is
declining in the United States and has been since the early to mid-
1960s; third, that inner-city areas lack social capital, which is one of the
principal reasons they are poor. I will address these arguments in turn.

In perhaps the most thorough cross-country empirical examination of
the relationship between social capital and national economic wealth—
one that Putnam cites as supporting his argument—Knack and Keefer
(1997) find a statistically significant positive relationship between lev-
els of trust in a society and rates of economic growth. This is not sur-
prising, since trust at the level of the society should limit the costs of
economic transactions within any given society. Important for this dis-
cussion, however, they also found that “associational activity is not cor-
related with economic performance” (Knack and Keefer 1997, 1252)

794 James DeFilippis

and that “promoting horizontal associations through encouraging the
formation of and participation in groups may be counterproductive,
according to our findings” (Knack and Keefer 1997, 1284).

Within the United States, the evidence is not any more convincing. In
his recent book, Putnam (2000) constructs a “Comprehensive Social
Capital Index” in which each state is ranked along a spectrum of very
high to very low in terms of social capital. Of the 10 states he ranks as
having the highest social capital in the country, only 3 have a per capita
income higher than the per capita income for the entire country (U.S.
Bureau of the Census 2000). Also, the mean per capita income of those
10 states is only 93.9 percent of the country’s per capita income. Clearly,
there are many explanations for why these states are significantly poor-
er than the nation as a whole, and it is definitely not the argument here
that social capital hinders economic prosperity. But if social capital is
important in promoting economic prosperity, then surely the data would
look different from this.

The decline of social capital?

Moving on to the second argument, that social capital is declining in the
United States, the question asked here is, What segments of the popu-
lation is this most true for? After sifting the evidence, Putnam unam-
biguously states, “The central fact is that by virtually all measures of
civic disengagement and all measures of socioeconomic status, the trends
are very similar at all levels” (2000, 194). But if this is true, the question
becomes, Why are the American elites, who have gone through 35 years
of civic disengagement, doing so incredibly well financially? Where is
the economic impact of their disengagement? Affluent and professional
Americans have enjoyed a virtually unprecedented period of prolonged
prosperity, and the current gap in wealth between rich and poor is
greater than it has been since before the Great Depression. Putnam’s
theory just does not make sense in, let alone explain, this reality.

Aside from the incredible growth in the wealth of rich people and the
stagnation in the wealth of poor people—even though both groups have
had their social capital decline by comparable amounts—Putnam’s argu-
ments still run afoul of basic empirical realities in the United States.
That is, social capital is supposed to have declined for 35 years. Where
is the economic impact? It has been 35 years. Given how rapidly invest-
ment decisions are made and economic transformations take place (35
years ago almost nobody had heard of deindustrialization or Silicon
Valley), that is certainly more than enough time for us to have seen an
impact of this declining stock of social capital. Can any evidence of a
relative economic decline of the United States be found? Can people
convincingly argue that the past 20 years have been poor ones for the

The Myth of Social Capital in Community Development 795

American economy overall? Ultimately, if Putnam is right about the
decline in social capital, then he is wrong about the role of social capital
in economic development.

But moving from American society in general to community develop-
ment in particular, Putnam’s second assertion is as follows:

Although most poor Americans do not reside in the inner city, there
is something qualitatively different about the social and economic
isolation experienced by the chronically poor blacks and Latinos who
do. Joblessness, inadequate education, and poor health clearly trun-
cate the opportunities of ghetto residents. Yet so do profound defi-
ciencies in social capital. (1993b, 39)

But do inner cities lack social capital in the sense that Putnam means?
The answer to this question is somewhat mixed and is not as easily
answered as is often assumed. There seems to be a perception in Amer-
ican policy circles and white popular culture that inner-city, nonwhite
neighborhoods are bereft of values, norms, morals, trust, and relation-
ships. This perception is usually justified with a passing reference to
the work of Wilson (1987), but it is a very particular segment of his work
that is being referenced and a very narrow reading of him and his much
more substantial project. This has been as true in the debate about
social capital as in many other debates about public policy, despite the
fact that there is only limited justification for this view. As Portney and
Berry put it:

The debate about social capital and civic engagement largely con-
centrates on White, middle-class America. Virtually none of the de-
bate and, as far as we can find, no empirical analysis considers
whether poor people, people of minority racial or ethnic status, and
people in inner cities have also experienced the trends in civic
engagement. (1997, 633)

When it comes to trust-based relations, ethnographic research (Ander-
son 1999; Stack 1974; Sullivan 1997; Wood 1997) strongly suggests that
these are present in inner cities. Anderson describes some of these trust-
based relations in his most recent book and terms them “the irregular
economy.” He observes:

The irregular economy may be characterized as a barter system,
which works by an exchange of favors. For example, an individual
will repair a neighbor’s car on the weekend, or help paint someone’s
steps, or perform a plumbing job, or style someone’s hair, but take
no money for it; rather, the person will wait to be paid back with a
favor in the future. (Anderson 1999, 318)

It is interesting to note that for Anderson, these trust-based “irregular
economy” activities exist because of the failure of the people and the com-
munity to function properly economically. It is unclear, at best, whether

796 James DeFilippis

such informal trust-based bartering would coexist with economic devel-
opment or that comparable relationships exist in already wealthy com-
munities. In this sense, there is even the possibility that economic
growth and development might promote the destruction of trust-based
noncommodified relationships, as the communities become more im-
mersed in the commodity relations central to the capitalist economy. But
Anderson’s (1999) ethnographic observations are not isolated, and in
making this point more generally, Portes states, “Sociologists know that
everyday survival in poor urban communities frequently depends on
close interactions with kin and friends in similar situations. The problem
is that such ties seldom reach beyond the inner city” (1998, 13–14). The
problem in inner cities, therefore, is not that there is a lack of trust-
based social networks and mutual support, but rather that these net-
works and support are unable to generate capital. At the same time,
however, aggregate data suggest that residents in inner-city areas do
tend to lack trust in either society at large or in people they do not know
(Putnam does a good job of compiling these data [2000]). But these ag-
gregate data do not contradict the ethnographic data indicating that
trust in already existing social networks is present in inner cities.

Regarding the existence of community-level organizations, inner-city
areas contain large numbers of these as well. Specifically with regard to
community development, the number of community development corpo-
rations (CDCs) in American inner cities has actually exploded in the
past 30 years, beginning, ironically, shortly after the time when Putnam
marks the start of the decline of civic engagement. While the number
of CDCs in the late 1960s and early 1970s (most created by the Office
of Economic Opportunity) was measured in the dozens, by 1999 there
were over 3,600 of them nationwide (National Congress for Community
Economic Development 1999). Although it can be argued that many of
these CDCs were not the product of grassroots action at the community
level and were instead created from without, this does not diminish
their existence as nongovernment, not-for-profit organizations located
within low-income communities. The more important problem is that
the ability of most of these community-based organizations to generate
long-term economic growth for their communities has been rather lim-
ited (Lenz 1988; Stoecker 1997). And while the reasons are complex
and require a much more thorough discussion than is possible here, it is
also clear from this experience that simply creating community-based
organizations in inner-city neighborhoods does not, by itself, generate
economic prosperity or even economic security for the residents.

In perhaps the most comprehensive quantitative effort to measure the
impact of Putnam’s social capital on the long-term stability of urban
neighborhoods, Temkin and Rohe (1998) found that “the extent to
which neighborhood residents volunteer in neighborhood organizations
or other groups did not have a significant effect on neighborhood stabil-
ity” (85). This is a striking conclusion, but it does not prevent them from

The Myth of Social Capital in Community Development 797

observing that “neighborhoods with higher levels of social capital…are
more likely to remain stable over time” (Temkin and Rohe 1998, 84).
But if one reads closely, it becomes clear that the dependent variables
and independent variables are measuring the same thing, so it is no
wonder that Temkin and Rohe have found a statistical correlation. They
state, “Both loyalty and attachment to neighborhood are higher in neigh-
borhoods that remain stable over time. Similarly, neighborhoods where
a higher proportion of residents believe they live in a good place tend to
remain stable” (Temkin and Rohe 1998, 84). This is a fair conclusion,
but it seems to say very little.

Even more striking is that the demonstration project for LISC’s non-
confrontational consensus organizing in the Monangahela Valley in
Pittsburgh was viewed a success by LISC and by Gittell and Vidal (1998)
because within 10 years it had (1) created 17 new CDCs, (2) sustained
resident volunteer commitment, and (3) garnered increased support from
the metropolitan area’s larger community. Gittell and Vidal then state,
“These commitments are particularly impressive given the limited
physical and economic improvement in the valley to date” (1998, 3–4).
But if there has been little economic improvement over the course of a
decade, then why is the demonstration considered a success that LISC
and other foundations should replicate? Surely social capital is meant
to be a means to the end of economic security and development, not an
end in and of itself.

Inner cities, therefore, do lack social capital, but not the social capital
that Putnam is talking about—which does exist, albeit rather uneven-
ly—but social capital as Bourdieu (1985) and Loury (1977) used the
term. Part of the problem is that because of Coleman’s (1988) definition,
we have confused the level of social networks with their ability to gen-
erate capital. We therefore render invisible social networks unable to
generate capital. But the question remains, How can we rectify the cur-
rently inequitable distribution of social capital (in Bourdieu’s [1985]
and Loury’s [1977] sense) in American society? In attempting to answer
this question, I will now turn to the policy implications of the discussion
thus far.

Toward a new understanding of social capital
and community development

Social capital must be reconnected to economic capital for the term to
have any meaning. Otherwise, we are not talking about capital at all.
Loury’s original use of the concept (1977) was part of his effort to dem-
onstrate that the idea of equal opportunity was an impossibility. He was
right. When his definition is combined with Bourdieu’s (1985) under-
standing of capital as essentially about power, we can begin to approach

798 James DeFilippis

policy and organizing efforts designed to rectify, or at least, mitigate, the
inequities in access to this form of capital. We need to create social net-
works that allow individuals to realize capital, while simultaneously
allowing these networks to realize the power needed to attract and con-
trol that capital (for the benefit of those in the networks). That is, while
we need to create social networks to allow individuals to realize capital,
those networks must ensure that the groups of people involved retain
some control over the capital. Only in doing this can individual gains
and interests be assumed to be synonymous with group gains and in-
terests. Fortunately, such networks, and the organizations that are their
focal points, already exist within the community development move-
ment and need not be created from scratch. They are, however, rather
limited in number and are small, often peripheral components of the
much broader and more diverse movement. The utility of social capital
is that it provides a framework for supporting and prioritizing these
efforts over other parts of the community development field.

Community land trusts (CLTs) are a particularly useful way to use a
community organization both to have the power to control investment
capital and to allow individuals to realize capital (in the form of home
equity) (Davis 1991; Krinsky and Hovde 1996; Soifer 1990). In a CLT,
the community group owns and controls the land in trust, and all land
use decisions are made by the organization. Residents in a CLT own
their own housing units (unless they are in a mutual housing associa-
tion [MHA] or cooperative, which is not normally the case) and there-
fore obtain the equity they build up in their units through their invest-
ments and improvements. If residents choose to leave, the land trust
has the right of first refusal, and the resale of their unit is limited, so
that it remains affordable (to the benefit of the community), but the
individual is able to realize his or her own investments (to the individ-
ual’s benefit).

In an MHA, the association owns the land and the units, but individual
residents are able to realize some equity because of the interest gained
on the initial deposit required for residency (which is usually between
$1,000 and $2,500 and is often borrowed from the association and paid
back slowly over time) (Krinsky and Hovde 1996; Neighborhood Rein-
vestment Corporation 1995; Peterman and Young 1991). Residents in an
MHA are also much more interconnected than residents in a CLT, most
CDCs, or public housing because of the substantial number of involun-
tary social interactions that come from the work and governance com-
ponents of residency. MHAs are also a bit more mixed income than many
other kinds of affordable housing, and thus the networks through which
employment might be found (for instance) cut across class lines. Simi-
larly, in a limited-equity housing cooperative, residents buy shares and
are thus able to accumulate equity. At the same time, however, the coop-
erative has the right of first refusal when a resident chooses to move,

The Myth of Social Capital in Community Development 799

and the resale price is strictly limited, so as to maintain the units’
affordability for the community as a whole (Leavitt and Saegert 1990;
Stone 1993).

Beyond the realm of housing, microenterprise lending circles are an ex-
cellent example of how organizations can act as focal points for social
networks to come together and have the power to make lending deci-
sions, and to allow individual members to realize capital from those net-
works (McLenighan and Pogge 1991; Servon 1999). In a microenterprise
lending program, borrowers tend to operate in borrowing circles that re-
place the more mainstream evaluations of creditworthiness with both
peer pressure and character-based lending. Loan decisions are made by
members of the borrowing circles, and the loans are used by individual
members to create and expand forms of self-employment and microbusi-
nesses. Individuals are thus able to realize capital through social net-
works, but the power to control capital is realized by the networks
themselves.

Finally, in community development credit unions (CDCUs), individuals
are able to use their membership to gain access to capital they would
likely otherwise not be able to get (DeFilippis 2000; Tholin and Pogge
1991; Williams 1997), while enabling the CDCU, and often its sponsor-
ing organization, to have more control and power over the flow of invest-
ment capital into the community. In the context of social capital, how-
ever, CDCUs do have a drawback in that the level of social interaction
between members, and therefore the social networking that exists be-
tween them, is somewhat limited. This is particularly true for the larger,
often more established CDCUs. Thus the CDCU, as the focal point for
the social networks, often subsumes those networks, and interactions
are between individual members and the CDCU.

Conclusion: Social capital, power, and the
implications for policy and organizing

Despite the provocative title of this article, I am not arguing here that
social capital does not matter in community development. Rather, I argue
that with the privileging of Putnam’s interpretations of social capital,
the term has lost its potential utility for the community development
movement. In Putnam’s understanding of the term, social capital
becomes divorced from capital (in the literal, economic sense), stripped
of power relations, and imbued with the assumption that social net-
works are win-win relationships and that individual gains, interests,
and profits are synonymous with group gains, interests, and profits.

Putnam’s framework is fundamentally economically flawed—which is
not surprising given that he separates social capital from economic
capital—and it enjoys limited support from either theories of political

800 James DeFilippis

economy or the empirical realities of the United States. Also, Putnam’s
understanding, with its lack of power and conflict, has led to a misguided
embrace of Eichler’s consensus organizing and nonconfrontational orga-
nizing (Gittell and Vidal 1998). But this begs the following question:
Why would those who benefit from the current structures that produce
and distribute social capital willingly turn over their privileged access
to it? We would not expect rich people to willingly turn over their mutual
fund portfolios or, less hypothetically, embrace poor and nonwhite stu-
dents in their schools without a confrontation. Why should we expect
that this form of capital would somehow be different from the others?
People who realize capital through their networks of social capital do
so precisely because others are excluded.

Rather than assuming that social networks and relationships are win-
win endeavors and that low-income people and areas are socially dis-
connected, we need to construct social networks that are truly win-win
relationships for people in low-income areas, while building on already
existing social networks and relationships. And we need to do so in ways
that allow those networks to realize greater control and power over the
flows of capital that play such an important role in shaping and pro-
ducing American cities. Inner-city neighborhoods have social networks
and trust between members of those networks, and they possess many
nongovernment, community-based organizations. What they lack is
power and the capital that partially constitutes that power. They are
not likely to realize either without confrontation or within a Putnam-
inspired framework of community development.

Author

James DeFilippis is Lecturer in the Department of Geography at King’s College, London.

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804 James DeFilippis

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806 James DeFilippis

Article Review — PAD 530

Criteria

Levels of Achievement

Content

(70%)

Advanced

92-100%

Proficient

84-91%

Developing

1-83%

Not Present

Total

Summary Content

25 to 27 points
· Each paragraph is written using clear and concise language.
· Student thoroughly discusses the important details from the article, demonstrating comprehension.

22.5 to 24.5 points
· Student’s review cogently interacts with the article provided.
· A few details and/or examples are given.

1 to 22 points
The student’s review omits one of the key elements in the article.

0 points

Not present

Key Elements

24 to 26 points
· Student demonstrates understanding of the intent of the article
· Student presents biblical/ethical issues associated with the article.
· Discusses key elements in the review which are related back to the concepts within the course.

21.5 to 23.5 points
Student addresses all elements of the assignment.

1 to 21 points
Student’s summary contains superfluous information that does not reflect the ability to critically “weed-out” trivial content.

0 points
Not present

Structure (30%)

Advanced

92-100%

Proficient

84-91%

Developing

1-83%

Not present

Total

APA

Formatting

9.25 to 10 points
The review meets the length and formatting requirements.
Complete citation is formatted correctly.
Grammar and spelling are correct.
Formatting writing standards are implemented throughout the essay.

8.5 to 9 points
Review does follow length requirements.
Essay meets the majority of formatting guidelines.
.

1 to 8.25 points
Review fall short of meeting length requirements and formatting guidelines.
.

0 points
Not present

10

Grammar and Spelling

11 to 12 points
No grammatical, spelling or punctuation errors.

10 to 10.75 points
Minimal grammatical, spelling or punctuation errors.

1 to 9.75 points
A few grammatical, spelling, or punctuation errors

0 points
Not present

12

Instructions:

You will write two article reviews based on a designated article located in the Reading & Study folder of the corresponding module/week. Each review will summarize and critique the author’s position/conclusion in at least 500 words in APA format. Each Article Review is due by 11:59 p.m. (ET) on Saturday of the assigned module/week.