While it has been suggested that the term social capital was in intermittent use from about 1890, before becoming widely used in the late 1990s, the earliest credited use is by See more

Compared to Bourdieu, Robert D. Putnam has used the concept in a much more positive light: though he was at first careful to argue that social … See more

Bonding, bridging, linking
In Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000), Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam writes:
Henry Ward Beecher's advice a century ago to 'multiply … See more

Beyond Putnam
While influential, some have identified areas of concern or improvement within the work of Robert D. Putnam. This includes:
• the lack of awareness of the structural socio-economic … See more

Social capital has multiple definitions, interpretations, and uses. David Halpern argues that the popularity of social capital for See more

Whereas some scholars, most prominently Robert D. Putnam, posit that social capital has positive ends, a sizable body of literature finds that social capital can have adverse effects. Research by Sheri Berman and Dylan Riley, as well as economists … See more

There is no widely held consensus on how to measure social capital, which has become a debate in itself. While usually one can intuitively sense the level/amount of social capital present in a given relationship (regardless of type or scale), quantitative measuring See more