Social capital, voluntary associations and collective action: which aspects of social capital have the greatest 'civic' payoff?
Publikation: Beiträge in Zeitschriften › Zeitschriftenaufsätze › Forschung
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in: Journal of Civil Society, Jahrgang 1, Nr. 2, 01.09.2005, S. 121-146.
Publikation: Beiträge in Zeitschriften › Zeitschriftenaufsätze › Forschung
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Social capital, voluntary associations and collective action
T2 - which aspects of social capital have the greatest 'civic' payoff?
AU - Welzel, Christian Peter
AU - Inglehart, Ronald
AU - Deutsch, Franziska
PY - 2005/9/1
Y1 - 2005/9/1
N2 - Despite a great variety of theoretical approaches, empirical analyses of social capital are surprisingly similar. Virtually all of them treat membership in voluntary associations as the chief indicator of community involvement while neglecting another form of community involvement: participation in elite-challenging actions. Likewise, authors readily attribute manifold civic benefits to associational life, while hesitating to attribute such benefits to elite-challenging activity. We question these views on two grounds. Firstly, we argue that elite-challenging action reflects social capital, even though this is a specific form of it: an emancipative form typical of self-assertive publics. Secondly, we use data from the Value Surveys to demonstrate that elite-challenging action is linked with greater civic benefits, at both the individual and societal level, than is membership in voluntary associations. This finding confirms the concept of human development, which suggests that emancipative forms of social capital are more civic in their consequences than others. Following this concept, we show that mass self-expression values nurture emancipative social capital, in motivating elite-challenging action. Finally, we locate self-expression values and elite-challenging actions in a theory of emancipative social capital.
AB - Despite a great variety of theoretical approaches, empirical analyses of social capital are surprisingly similar. Virtually all of them treat membership in voluntary associations as the chief indicator of community involvement while neglecting another form of community involvement: participation in elite-challenging actions. Likewise, authors readily attribute manifold civic benefits to associational life, while hesitating to attribute such benefits to elite-challenging activity. We question these views on two grounds. Firstly, we argue that elite-challenging action reflects social capital, even though this is a specific form of it: an emancipative form typical of self-assertive publics. Secondly, we use data from the Value Surveys to demonstrate that elite-challenging action is linked with greater civic benefits, at both the individual and societal level, than is membership in voluntary associations. This finding confirms the concept of human development, which suggests that emancipative forms of social capital are more civic in their consequences than others. Following this concept, we show that mass self-expression values nurture emancipative social capital, in motivating elite-challenging action. Finally, we locate self-expression values and elite-challenging actions in a theory of emancipative social capital.
KW - Politics
KW - Social capital
KW - voluntary associations
KW - collective action
KW - civil society
KW - civic values
KW - civic governance
KW - Gender and Diversity
U2 - 10.1080/17448680500337475
DO - 10.1080/17448680500337475
M3 - Journal articles
VL - 1
SP - 121
EP - 146
JO - Journal of Civil Society
JF - Journal of Civil Society
SN - 1744-8689
IS - 2
ER -