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Market transition theory implies that increased market competition generates incentives for allocating job resources based on educational credentials and marketable skills, in contrast with traditional patronage systems that allocate employment opportunities through network membership. Yet despite the breakdown of patronage systems, further development of market institutions result in greater uncertainty, job precarity, and competition, which may promote referral hiring and diffusion of job information through social networks. This paper explores the relationship between marketization and access to employment opportunities through social networks (specifically the receipt of unsolicited job leads). Data from the Social Capital China Survey suggest that growing marketization across provinces is positively associated with receipt of unsolicited job leads. In particular, private sector development, factor market development, and legal intermediary proliferation are significantly and positively associated with an individual's chance of receiving unsolicited job leads. The findings help clarify the mechanisms through which marketization facilitates informal exchange of job information, advancing scholarship on how concrete institutional conditions shape the significance of social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social capital is a variable resource embedded in all social networks. Although the majority of work on social capital describes it as contributing to socially beneficial outcomes, it also contributes to deviant activities. In addition to laying a theoretical basis for understanding the deviant potentials of social capital, this paper argues that a change in social networks results in a change in social capital. Using data collected from adult drug courts in Wyoming, multivariate ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses and analyses of personal interviews were used to explore changes in the social capital of drug court participants. However, as a result of deficiencies in available data, questions remain as to the long-term social circumstances of participants after graduating from the programs and differences in social outcomes among minority groups. The results from this project have implications for future research conducted on drug courts and the theory of social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a meta-analysis that traces the contested meaning and use of social capital in sociological research over the last 18 years by focusing on journal article definitions. We identify six common definitions in use that closely correspond to the original—and in some cases, independent—formulations offered by Hanifan, Putnam, Coleman, Bourdieu, and Granovetter. Drawing from Kuhnian theory, we contend that these definitions illuminate deep divisions between those who understand social capital as a normative “cure-all” ( Portes 1998 )—in the tradition of Hanifan, Putnam, and Coleman —and those who view it as a resource—in the tradition of Bourdieu and Granovetter—that may be used to create or maintain social inequality. The transition of social capital from preparadigm to paradigm status may potentially involve an integration of these approaches, but this will require greater consideration of power and inequality on the part of normative theorists, who are currently dominating the debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ideas of community and social capital have received much attention in the last decade, but are plagued by a multitude of conceptualizations, definitions, and operationalizations. This confusion is problematic for both researchers and policymakers trying to use these concepts. While numerous efforts have been made to clarify “social capital” and “community,” too often the two are simply conflated. This paper attempts to distinguish between them by looking at the various ways they are related in concrete examples. Drawn largely from the literature, five examples are offered that together describe the complex interactions of place-based communities and social capital networks. These examples also demonstrate distinctions between community and social capital with regard to boundaries, the qualities of social relations and trust in each, instrumentality, the consequences of one for the other, and issues related to multiple communities in a single place. It is hoped that these distinctions will inform the ongoing efforts to develop unique and useful conceptualizations of these two terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

B Steve Derné b is the Professor of Sociology, State University of New York - Geneseo. B Jeroen van der Waal b is Full Professor of Sociology of Stratification in the Department of Public Administration and Sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam. B Amy Adamczyk b is the Professor of Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Programs of Doctoral Study in Sociology and Criminal Justice at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. [Extracted from the article]

Traditional food initiatives often aim to increase food access through market‐based, needs‐driven models, leaving basic food requirements unmet for many in the current U.S. food system. Employing qualitative community‐based participatory methods, we examine the asset‐based developmental stages of a local‐level Food and Resource Center (FRC) in rural Stillwater, OK. We consider the ways that social capital can be activated as a community asset for development, articulating how social networks are used to identify, mobilize, and galvanize community support. How has the community identified and mobilized a "stock" of social capital to employ an asset‐based approach to developing a food resource center? How can the FRC enhance social capital for the community as a whole? We provide insight into how individual, agency, and institutional actors act as pivotal resources for community development, delineating the ways in which community social capital and asset‐based development can influence an organization's operational goals. Additionally, we explore strategies used to enhance linking and bonding forms of social capital as well as obstacles to bridging social capital in the broader community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compares the effect of different types of previous and current memberships on college students' online political participation in contemporary China using survey method and in‐depth interviews. We find that it is previous instrumental involvement, not expressive participation in high school that is significantly and positively associated with online political participation. Meanwhile, college instrumental involvement exerts no effect on online political participation, and college expressive involvement is negatively associated with youth online expressive participation. Previous instrumental involvement stimulates subsequent political engagement by exposing members to subsequent political mobilization. Instrumental associations do not act as schools of democracy in which members foster political interest or boost generalized trust, but significantly increase members' chances to be asked to take part in politics years later. The results from the in‐depth interviews regarding the differences in participatory environments between high school and college can be used to explain why instrumental involvement in high school but not college stimulates subsequent political engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses various reports published within the issue, including "Feminism and Imperialism, 1890-1920," by Susan A. Mann, "Social Networks and Stratification in the Urban Chinese Labor Market," by Michael Francis Johnston and Rodolfo Álvarez, and "Drug Courts: A Social Capital Perspective," by Candace K. May.

Scholars argue that trust is fundamental to maintaining a healthy society, and consequently, recent evidence that trust may be declining in the United States has generated an interest in the determinants of trust. According to the social capital literature, particularly the work of Robert Putnam, involvement in voluntary associations influences the development of generalized trust. One way in which organizational participation is thought to foster trust is through creating more diverse, or bridging, social networks. However, scarcely any research has empirically examined this mechanism. Using data from the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, I test whether network diversity (ties to persons from different social backgrounds) accounts for some of the influence of organizational involvement on trust. The results suggest that the influence of involvement in multiple associations on trust is largely mediated by its influence on network diversity. In addition, while recent research observes that some predictors of trust vary by race and ethnicity, I find no differences in these relationships across non-Hispanic white, African American, and Latino respondents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the factors affecting the availability of health insurance, the accessibility of health care, and the dissemination of the relevant information among low-wage Chinese immigrants in Southern California by relying on the concepts of social and cultural capital. Using community-based research and in-depth interviews, our study suggests that a severe shortage in health care coverage among low-wage Chinese immigrants is influenced by the lack of employment with employer-provided health insurance within the Chinese 'ethnoburb' community. Although the valuable social capital generated by Chinese immigrant networks seems to be sufficient enough to provide them with certain practical resources, the lack of cultural capital renders the social network rather ineffective in providing critical health care information from mainstream American society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of social trust, examining its various aspects and components. Trust is best understood in a sociological sense by focusing on its important relational characteristic. Following this lead, the article discusses briefly how social trust relates to social capital and examines factors that shape the development of social trust, along with outcomes related to variations in trust, classifying them by analytical level (i.e., individual, community, group, organizational, and societal). The article concludes by assessing the strengths and weaknesses of existing research and by identifying some important questions that have not yet been adequately addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we suggest that the difficulty in defining, locating, and measuring social capital is at core a philosophical confusion of language, and not just a consequence of excessively wide application. The term "capital" refers to resources for investment. Financial capital consists of specific quantities of assets. Human capital, a metaphorical extension of financial capital, also consists of specific quantities of assets, in the form of skills or credentials. However, social capital, a third metaphorical construction, does not consist of resources that are held by individuals or by groups but of processes of social interaction leading to constructive outcomes. Therefore, we argue, social capital is not located at any one level of analysis: it emerges across levels of analysis. The confusion over the meaning of this term, then, is a consequence of a metaphorical confusion of a substantive quantity (capital) and a process that takes place through stages (embedded, goal-directed social relations). Locating and defining social capital is further complicated by the variability, contextuality, and conditionality of the process. Stages of social relations that lead to constructive outcomes for one group of people or in one situation may not lead to constructive outcomes for another group or in another situation. To illustrate empirically how social capital may be thought of as a process consisting of stages and to demonstrate why the concept is inherently problematic, we employ data from the 1995 interviews of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). These data enable us to examine connections among the stages of the social capital process found in the literature and to look at predictors of academic achievement, a central topic in research on this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author analyzes the role of caring in the teacher-student relationship for students at-risk of dropping out of high school using the National Longitudinal Study conducted in the U.S. in 1998. The author remarks that a century and a half following the founding of mass public education, the relationship between teachers and students has elicited generaI concern, accompanied by the recognition that students and classroom teachers may be poorly matched. Social capital in the teacher-student relationship may be unique in some respects because of its context and the roles of teacher and student. These roles entail the student's preparation for participation in the society by learning material taught in school. These objectives, which are commonly understood as progress toward learning and preparation for the future, imply that there will be an instrumental aspect of the teacher-student relationship. Both teacher and student are likely to calculate an expected pay-off from investing in the relationship.

The article explores social and human capital theory in application to status attainment research using a sample of low-income youth from rural Appalachian families. Important comparisons involve the relative influences of human capital and family of origin social capital variables on the educational and occupational attainment of youth from low-income, rural backgrounds. Data for this study were acquired from a subsample of White youths that was part of the Southern Regional Research Projects, a ten-year longitudinal investigation of the status attainment and family circumstances of low-income rural youth. Surveys of a purposive sample of youths were conducted during the fifth and sixth grades, eleventh and twelfth grades, and during young adulthood when the subjects were approximately twenty-one to twenty-two years of age. Path analysis was used to test the model because of its application to issues involving linear relationships, the presumed causal ordering of variables, and the need to determine the direct and indirect effects of predictor variables upon criterion variables. The results confirmed some of the social interaction hypotheses but demonstrated even greater support for individual human and family social capital variables in explaining young adult attainment outcomes. Support was provided for the inclusion of family-based social capital variables as a means of gaining a broader understanding of youth attainment.

This article is an examination of courageous behavior as manifested in the activities of American whistleblowers arid environmental activists in the United States. Israel, and the former Czechoslovakia. It examines how these dissenters against illegal or unethical behavior were able to sustain their demand for accountable behavior by government and industry, The article, which draws upon interviews with sixty-four whistle-blowers and one hundred and forty activists, union officials, business executives and journalists, focuses on the significance of social capital in generating protest; the whistleblowers' and activits' strong cultural commitment to the efficacy of action; their determination to accumulate the evidence and expertise, their ability to secure strategically placed allies; and their mechanisms for overcoming fear and intimidation. The authors conclude by indicating the significance of sociology in analyzing, legitimizing, and publicizing the contributions of courageous individuals to the creation and maintenance of a democratic society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]