The Limits to Social Capital: Social Capital in the City of Playford
Keri Chiveralls, Australian Institute for Social Research, University of Adelaide
In this paper I reflect on the results of an ARC project which forms the basis of my thesis ‘Exploring the missing links: A critical inquiry into the role of social capital theory in Australian regional development policy’. The project was designed to explore the relationship between social capital and economic development in one of the most socio-economically disadvantaged regions in Australia, the City of Playford. The results of this project challenge the idea of a link between social capital and economic development that widely accepted in the contemporary academic and political environment. In contrast with studies depicting the region as ‘lacking in social capital’, my research findings demonstrate that the City of Playford could easily be argued to be a region with high levels of ‘social capital’. My findings assert the historic and ongoing importance of practices of informal exchange, reciprocity and solidarity in the region. However, important differences emerged when looking at different patterns of social interaction for people in different socio-economic groups in the region. These results challenge simplistic arguments that inequality in regional economic development can be tackled through the development of policies and programs aiming to ‘build social capital’ in given locales. I argue instead for an anthropological political economy approach to the study of social capital in Australian regional development, which remains critical of the concept of social capital and its uses in the contemporary academic and political environment and restores a focus on issues of history, context, complexity, contingency, class and inequality to the study of social life.
