A different version of "Social Capital"

From: Impersonal Sociotechnical Capital, ICTs, and Collective Action Among Strangers
Paul Resnick, 2004

Economic Action and Social Structure: The problem of Embeddedness
Mark Granovetter, 1985

Resnick defines social capital differently to Kanazawa. His definition, taken from Coleman (1988), is that social capital is "productive resources that inhere in social relations". It's not exactly contradictory, but it places the emphasis on general social benefit rather than individual genetic benefit.

Aside from the usual tragedy of the commons that develops without such social capital, there's other examples of social mobilisation given, such as starting a labour strike or the dancing at a party - beneficial for all if everyone does it, but to the detriment of an individual if they're the only one. Further, social relationships can be vital in business and dramatically affect how businesses operate. This is the idea flowing throughout Granovetter's paper, that the situations predicted by classical economic theory don't occur in reality because of the relationships formed between businesses and individuals.

"It's not what you know, it's who you know."

The title of the Resnick paper mentions "sociotechnical capital". This refers to "productive resources that inhere in patterns of social relations that are maintained with the support of information and communication technologies". The suggestion is that these can support impersonal social capital, where closer ties are not needed. The benefits include such things as matching systems for geographically disparate users, or behaviour monitoring through reputation systems to weed out defectors.

Resnick mentions that people are increasingly turning to what he alarmingly calls "word of mouse" from strangers as well as recommendations from sources they know. What he doesn't mention is that there is an increasing danger of social manipulation by "shills" who surreptitiously advertise a product as if it was an impartial review. This is already reality, as guerrilla marketing firms employ people to do this - it's along the same lines as "googlebombing" to make your site appear first in a search for a particular type of product (by making a large number of fake websites linking to yours as if it's the best authority on a topic or producer of a product). It's hard to say if these kinds of tactics will erode social trust in social systems. My answer is probably not enough to drag them down entirely, but it deserves a mention. It may be worth a further mention that this kind of tactic has been used outside of the online world as well, although I'm not sure how successfully.

Likewise, news services can be filtered through what the most people read or what the most bloggers are talking about. Apparently in some cities in the US commuters have developed an informal system called "slugging" in which people wanting a lift wait at certain spots and get a lift with people so that they can take advantage of the special lanes for high occupancy vehicles. This benefits everyone except the bus system, even though the system is essentially anonymous. There is personal safety risks with this though, as well as the danger of avocados. Resnick suggests ways in which this system could develop given technology, and the ideas are very impressive - incorporating a review based system (for safety or hygiene reasons) and origin and destination data could lead to a truly efficient semi-public transport system. That still sounds like something that has inherent dangers and discomforts, but it gives an idea of the kinds of potential developments that could occur in the not too distant future with these kinds of technologies and with sufficient social capital. Other examples are given of collective action amongst strangers who share a common goal (such as political activities).

I haven't mentioned much of the paper by Granovetter, and I don't want to go into that one in depth, but I'll just finish this with a somewhat unrelated quote from that paper that may be worth remembering:

The notion that rational choice is derailed by social influences has long discouraged detailed sociological analysis of economic life and led revisionist economists to reform economic theory by focussing on its naive psychology. My claim here is that however naive that psychology may be, this is not where the main difficulty lies - it is rather in the neglect of social structure.

Coleman - Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital, American Journal of Sociology, 1988