Sosyal Sermaye Kavramına Niçin İhtiyaç Duyduk?

WHY WE NEED THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL CAPITAL AND WHY NOW?

Social capital is a new concept but take firm steps forward to be a phenomenon. The question is why this concept come to light at this stage of capitalism and where we going to use it? Social scientists jump in with both feet the social capital, because social capital can be used for meeting all deficits between economy and social. And when the market fail and system have to continue, you can find the reasons why market failed not in the economic paradigm but in the social area. And then social capital is the best concept that explain market failures without investigate the market treatment.

This is why World Bank claims the social capital, as “the glue that holds society together”. Because individualism choke when market can not commit well. Then people think about for rolling up about handle headstalls the elements of the economic structure.

However concept has no certain description for all social sciences. Sociologists use social capital for interpret the relation between individuals and the group. And they try to understand what individuals can get from group as a capital enlargement. But there is a dilemma in this framework. Because Pierre Bourdie and Gary Becker can both use the social capital. One can be count as a socialist and the other one is the violent advocate of the market sovereignty.

Social capital and development concerned is very important also. Development does not only contain the economical issues. Social capital steps in exactly at this level. Because there are very big numbers of economies in the world that GDP is grower but at the same time you can gather 50 corpses every night from the dumping ground, like India. According to this framework social capital is the missing link between the social and the economy. And it helps integrate the economical and non – economical subject in the decomposition. So if you will come up the question like “Why India’s development process do not help the improvement of welfare” then you can easily speak about social capital. Then the economical issues and the non – economical subjects become analyze together. And this means the adoption of social things can affect the economical stuffs. This discussion is not new also. Polanyi was talking about embedding the social relations into the economic relations rather than reverse in the great transformation. So this can be interpreted this time when the neo – liberal paradigm has new crises and again they turn for the things that can commodificate. On the other hand it can be interpreted social capital is only academically satisfaction area and there is no response in the real life.

Otherwise social capital concept is also about the actors of social policy. During the two world war period in the world, state is the main actor of social policy. Even some of the identification of social policy begins with “the precautions that state take for increasing the welfare”. But after the Keynesian period, economic structure did not let the state for spend too much money for this kind of subject and also the biggest element of the economy. This affect the welfare state and now we were talking about transition process from welfare to workfare and in this time we are talking about the transition from workfare to without fare.

Social capital acts a part in the classification the countries welfare regime also. Social capital can help the explanation of “why some countries in the same welfare regime have different reaction about unemployment insurance and also why some countries have strict reaction to the women labor force participation. Two countries can have different social capital equipment while they are in the some welfare regime. And then we can talk about the relation between social capital – social policy and welfare regime.

For example there is unemployment insurance in Turkiye since 1999. But as before the strongest unemployment insurance is family in Turkiye. But this can be different in another country which can be analyzed in the same welfare regime with Turkiye. So social capital has very different functions for social policy and also for the other social sciences.