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| == '''[[The Social Capital Foundation]]''' ==
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| ''by [[User:Koen Demol|Koen Demol]]
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| | ==Footnotes== |
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| '''The Social Capital Foundation''' (TSCF) is a non-profit, [[non-governmental organization]] (NGO) that pursues the promotion of [[social capital]] and [[social cohesion]]. Created in late 2002 by Dr [[Patrick Hunout]], it is based in [[Brussels]]. TSCF is international and focuses particularly on the current developments in the industrial countries. The profiles of its members are extremely diverse. Funded with membership, conference and expertise fees, it is an independent [[operating foundation]]. It is a not a [[grant-making foundation]].
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| Social capital is a key concept in [[political science]], [[sociology]], [[social psychology]], [[economics]], and organizational behavior. It has been theorized about by a long list of scholars, from Emile Durkheim to Ferdinand Tönnies, Pierre Bourdieu, Robert Putnam, Robert Bellah, Francis Fukuyama, Patrick Hunout and others. (See the entry on [[social capital]] for more detailed discussion).
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| === The Foundation's approach to social capital === | |
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| TSCF's approach to "social capital" is distinct from other, more socio-economic approaches in which the term "capital" approaches some of its conventional economic meanings. TSCF promotes social capital defined as a set of mental dispositions and attitudes favoring cooperative behaviors within society.
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| The first assumption on which this definition is based is that social capital must not be mixed up with its manifestations.
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| Thus, social capital does not consist primarily in the possession of social networks, but in a disposition to generate, maintain and develop congenial relationships. It is not good neighborhood, but the openness to pacific coexistence and reciprocity based on a concept of belonging. It does not consist in running negotiations, but in the shared compromise-readiness and sense of the common good that make them succeed. It is not solely observable trust, but the predictability and the good faith necessary to produce it. It is not reductible to factual civic engagement, but resides in the sense of community that gives you lust to get involved in public life. All these downstream manifestations cannot be fully and consistently explained without reference to the upstream mental patterns that make them possible, or not.
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| The second assumption is that this disposition is collectivistic. It is not my individual capacity to build networks that is the most important for creating social capital but a collective, shared and reciprocal disposition to welcome, create and maintain social connections - without which my individual efforts to create such connections may well remain vain.
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| In that sense, The Social Capital Foundation's definition of social capital can be regarded as a semantic equivalent to the spirit of community. TSCF's approach is close to the one developed by [[Amitai Etzioni]] and the [[Communitarian Network]], although the concerns raised by the erosion of the community trace back to diverse figures in early modern sociology such as [[Ferdinand Tönnies]], [[Georg Simmel]], [[Emile Durkheim]] or the [[Chicago School of Sociology]], while [[European ethnology]], [[culturalism]] and [[jungism]] also insisted on the existence of a common soul.
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| TSCF promotes social capital through socio-economic research, publications, and events. The Foundation sets up international conferences on a regular basis. While research and knowledge add verified facts to the debate, social interaction contributes to further dissemination and awareness around the Foundation's approach.
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| === Hunout and the tripartite model of societal change ===
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| [[Patrick Hunout]], a Franco-Belgian researcher and policymaker, created in 1999 The International Scope Review and in 2002 The Social Capital Foundation. His theoretical filiation is both in the sociology of [[Emile Durkheim]] and [[Ferdinand Tönnies]] and in the more recent contribution of [[social psychology]] and [[cognitive psychology]] research. A former stage of his work had shown that judicial decisionmaking is only possible to the extent where judges use, beyond the formal legal provisions, impersonal and universal values as decision principles -to name these, he coined the term of "global axiological space" (1985, 1990).
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| ''[[The Social Capital Foundation|.... (read more)]]''
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| ! style="text-align: center;" | [[The Social Capital Foundation#Bibliography|notes]]
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The Mathare Valley slum near Nairobi, Kenya, in 2009.
Poverty is deprivation based on lack of material resources. The concept is value-based and political. Hence its definition, causes and remedies (and the possibility of remedies) are highly contentious.[1] The word poverty may also be used figuratively to indicate a lack, instead of material goods or money, of any kind of quality, as in a poverty of imagination.
Definitions
Primary and secondary poverty
The use of the terms primary and secondary poverty dates back to Seebohm Rowntree, who conducted the second British survey to calculate the extent of poverty. This was carried out in York and was published in 1899. He defined primary poverty as having insufficient income to “obtain the minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency”. In secondary poverty, the income “would be sufficient for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency were it not that some portion of it is absorbed by some other expenditure.” Even with these rigorous criteria he found that 9.9% of the population was in primary poverty and a further 17.9% in secondary.[2]
Absolute and comparative poverty
More recent definitions tend to use the terms absolute and comparative poverty. Absolute is in line with Rowntree's primary poverty, but comparative poverty is usually expressed in terms of ability to play a part in the society in which a person lives. Comparative poverty will thus vary from one country to another.[3] The difficulty of definition is illustrated by the fact that a recession can actually reduce "poverty".
Causes of poverty
The causes of poverty most often considered are:
- Character defects
- An established “culture of poverty”, with low expectations handed down from one generation to another
- Unemployment
- Irregular employment, and/or low pay
- Position in the life cycle (see below) and household size
- Disability
- Structural inequality, both within countries and between countries. (R H Tawney: “What thoughtful rich people call the problem of poverty, thoughtful poor people call with equal justice a problem of riches”)[4]
As noted above, most of these, or the extent to which they can be, or should be changed, are matters of heated controversy.
- ↑ Alcock, P. Understanding poverty. Macmillan. 1997. ch 1.
- ↑ Harris, B. The origins of the British welfare state. Palgrave Macmillan. 2004. Also, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
- ↑ Alcock, Pt II
- ↑ Alcock, Preface to 1st edition and pt III.
