A new perspective to integrate different social capital concepts

Abstract

The debate about ‘social capital’ is presented in brief. It is assumed that the discussion about it reissues the since the Enlightenment existing debate about the relation between individual and society. In this debate two lines of argumentation can be identified. On the one hand, a rather individualistic concept exists which sees social capital as an individual resource; and on the other hand, a rather collective understanding which sees social capital as pan-social phenomenon. The main goal of this article is to offer a new perspective that makes the integration of these two paradigms possible. Therefore new insights from the field of analytic philosophy are used to modify the concepts of social capital, focussing on the individualistic direction and in particular on Becker’s human capital theory. The resulting new perspective turns social capital into the core social category and is also calling for a new understanding of economics and management.