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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Social Capital for Africa
Author:Fine, Ben
Year:2003
Periodical:Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa
Issue:53
Pages:29-52
Language:English
Geographic term:Africa
Subjects:social sciences
social networks
Development and Technology
Economics and Trade
External link:https://muse.jhu.edu/article/52990
Abstract:The author assesses social capital: what is it, where has it come from, where is it going, and what light does or could it shed on Africa? The most immediate way to explain what is meant by social capital is through the nostrum 'it's not what you know, it's who you know that matters'. But there is such a collective definitional chaos surrounding the notion of social capital that the concept may become meaningless. Tracing the first use of the term to the 1970s, the author shows how, in the 1990s, the World Bank adopted the idea of social capital as the 'missing link' in explaining development, or not, not least because of its view of social capital as 'the glue that holds society together'. Now social capital has been catapulted into the position of the second-most important concept across the social sciences after 'globalization'. Using examples from Africa the author demonstrates both that social capital has been widely accepted uncritically as a discursive tool and that it is an umbrella term adding little or no content. Furthermore, social capital studies based on cases drawn from the developed world have been extrapolated to the developing world, especially Africa: the continent's economic malaise is due to its failure to emulate the idealized paths taken by the developed countries. Thus, social capital restores the patronizing nostrums which had withered away with the critique and decline of modernization theory. Now, Africa is not only to be blamed for failing to adopt the right economic policies, it has the wrong cultures as well, unless conforming to the dictates and potential derived from globalization. Elke K. Zuern comments on Fine's paper on p. 69-75. Bibliogr., notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]
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