Promoting Social Capital - Martin Stewart-Weeks

The resurgent interest in social capital, civil society and the social dimension of sustainable prosperity is capturing a significant vantage point on the public policy landscape and in broader, popular debate.

Note

This paper draws on an edited version of an address to the ACROD CEO meeting in May 1998, extracts from a forthcoming publication, Social Capital Stories, from the Centre for Independent Studies and issues that are being explored in a chapter for a forthcoming publication on social capital from the Australian Institute of Family Studies.

The resurgent interest in social capital, civil society and the social dimension of sustainable prosperity is capturing a significant vantage point on the public policy landscape and in broader, popular debate. Where once the veritable petshop galah was obsessed with the platitudes of microeconomic reform these days it is more likely to be shrilling a warning about declining stocks of social capital and the unraveling of the social fabric.

Three interesting questions emerge:

• Why has the interest suddenly boomed over the past 5 years or so?
  
• What is driving what seems to be a widely shared concern with social capital, civil society, community and the values and practices of a decent society?
  
• What should the public policy process do with these new concerns? How should it be responding? Indeed, what can it practically do to respond?

To view the entire document, please download. Contents include:

• Some Opening Propositions
• Social Capital ? An Overview
• Globalisation and The New Economy
• The Limits of Government and the New Skills of Boundary Crossing
• Democracy, Innovation and Individual Liberty
• Place and Context
• Social Capital: Where Do We Go From Here?
• Factions and the Common Good
• The Measurement of Social Capital
• Social Capital, Solidarity and Networks
• The Romantics Versus the Structuralists
• Social Capital and Trust
• Practical Applications
• Some Concluding Propositions
• The Emerging New Public Policy