IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/cambje/v37y2013i4p719-736.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the identity of social capital and the social capital of identity

Author

Listed:
  • Asimina Christoforou

Abstract

In contemporary economics, social capital is identified by some with norms and networks that enhance trust, reciprocity and cooperation for the production of public goods. But critics claim that social capital is principally of individualist origin and provides solid ground for the subordination of labour by capital. We argue that, despite neoclassical (mis)treatments, more socialised conceptions of social capital address individuals' capacities to share a sense of social obligation and common identity and pursue joint strategies for public welfare. We attempt to reinstate the 'social' in social capital via the concept of social embeddedness, where individuals freely engage in processes of reflection, social mobilisation and political debate to assess different and often conflicting values and objectives across multiple collective agencies. Choices thus depend not only on personal utility, but also on personal identity, i.e. what kind of person one wants to be and what kind of society one wishes to have. Copyright , Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Asimina Christoforou, 2013. "On the identity of social capital and the social capital of identity," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 37(4), pages 719-736.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:cambje:v:37:y:2013:i:4:p:719-736
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cje/bes059
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Muhammad Javed SHEIKH & Ma'rof REDZUAN & Asnarulkhadi Abu SAMAH & Nobaya AHMAD, 2015. "Identifying sources of social capital among the farmers of the rural Sindh province of Pakistan," Agricultural Economics, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 61(4), pages 189-195.
    2. Castriota, Stefano & Rondinella, Sandro & Tonin, Mirco, 2023. "Does social capital matter? A study of hit-and-run in US counties," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 329(C).
    3. Fabio Zagonari, 2020. "Comparing Religious Environmental Ethics to Support Efforts to Achieve Local and Global Sustainability: Empirical Insights Based on a Theoretical Framework," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-36, March.
    4. Maria Rosa Trovato & Vittoria Ventura & Monia Lanzafame & Salvatore Giuffrida & Ludovica Nasca, 2024. "Seismic–Energy Retrofit as Information-Value: Axiological Programming for the Ecological Transition," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(6), pages 1-37, March.
    5. Yu-Shan Chen & Cui Wang & Ying-Rong Chen & Wei-Yuan Lo & Kuan-Ling Chen, 2019. "Influence of Network Embeddedness and Network Diversity on Green Innovation: The Mediation Effect of Green Social Capital," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(20), pages 1-17, October.
    6. Brenda Gannon & Jennifer Roberts, 2020. "Social capital: exploring the theory and empirical divide," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 58(3), pages 899-919, March.
    7. Maria Rosa Trovato & Salvatore Giuffrida & Giuseppe Collesano & Ludovica Nasca & Filippo Gagliano, 2023. "People, Property and Territory: Valuation Perspectives and Economic Prospects for the Trazzera Regional Property Reuse in Sicily," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-38, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:cambje:v:37:y:2013:i:4:p:719-736. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/cje .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.