{"id":7248,"date":"2010-12-22T06:00:15","date_gmt":"2010-12-22T11:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geneveith.com\/?p=7248"},"modified":"2010-12-22T06:00:15","modified_gmt":"2010-12-22T11:00:15","slug":"social-capital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2010\/12\/social-capital\/","title":{"rendered":"Social capital"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

We\u2019re in Oklahoma for the Christmas holidays, traveling around visiting relatives and revisiting the places of our past.\u00a0 Part of it has me feeling melancholy, as I see beloved locations rich with memory falling into neglect, disrepair, and decay.<\/p>\n

My wife, who has been studying the social sciences, introduced me to a term that helps me understand what I am seeing:\u00a0 Social capital<\/a>.\u00a0 This refers to what builds up a sense of community, relationships with neighbors, and social networks.\u00a0\u00a0 The small towns whose residents have stopped painting their houses, with rusty junkyards on mainstreet, with empty storefronts with broken windows\u2013these have lost their social capital.\u00a0 Yes, it\u2019s a problem of economic capital too, the loss of jobs and the deprivations of poverty, but the loss of social capital too inhibits the rebuilding of economic capital.<\/p>\n

\nThis happens in big cities too.\u00a0 I notice a decline of social capital in Tulsa and Norman, with things looking and\u00a0 feeling run-down.\u00a0 (I could be wrong, since we weren\u2019t there for long.)\u00a0 And yet, Oklahoma City seems to be growing in social capital.\u00a0 The new NBA team, the Thunder, which is having lots of success, has created civic pride.\u00a0 Then there is Bricktown, a re-development of an old warehouse district that is now an entertainment hot spot, with music clubs, restaurants, night spots, and even a river walk.\u00a0 But what seemed most telling to me is that the overpasses and sound screens along the highways are being decorated with Native American-style buffalo and shields and abstract designs.\n

And even some of the small towns, equally poor as the others, are building social capital.\u00a0 For example, Vinita, where I grew up, has a remarkable number of houses and stores with Christmas decorations.\u00a0\u00a0 Even the most humble abodes and neighborhoods are adorned with lights and yard art and nativity scenes.\u00a0\u00a0 This is a sign, my wife observed, of social capital.<\/p>\n

How else might this concept be applied?\u00a0 For example, in churches?<\/p>\n

HT:\u00a0 Jackie<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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