The Social Capital Foundation

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 completely independent. It is a not a grant-making Foundation.

Social capital is a key concept in political science, sociology, social psychology, economics, and organizational behaviour. 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. Some trace the modern usage of the term to L.J. (Lyda Judson) Hanifan in the 1920s, in her discussions of rural school community centres (Hanifan 1916, 1920). Hanifan was particularly concerned with the cultivation of good will, fellowship, sympathy and social intercourse among those that "make up a social unit". Jane Jacobs's book on "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" (1961) suggested the importance of the unseen fiber that holds successful communities together, consisting in networks of trust and norms of reciprocity that have emerged over time, which promote the process of voluntary exchange, and that large-scale development projects run the risk of wiping out (Jacobs called this fiber "social capital", making her perhaps the first to coin the term - ibid., p. 138). The illustrious sociologist Pierre Bourdieu showed in 1972 and 1984 that “social” capital has to be distinguished from other sorts of capital, such as “economic” and “cultural” capital. James Coleman developed and popularized the concept. In the late 1990s, the concept became respectable, with the World Bank devoting a research program to it and with its currency in Robert Putnam's 2000 book,"Bowling Alone, The Decline and Revival of the American Community".

TSCF's purpose

TSCF's approach to "social capital" is quite 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.

The first assumption on which this definition is based is that social capital must not be mixed up with its manifestations. Thus, social capital does not consist in social networks, but in a disposition to generate and maintain congenial relationships. It does not consist in good neighborhood, but in 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 does not consist in trust, but in the predictability and good faith necessary to produce it.

The second assumption is that this disposition is collectivistic. It is not an individual capacity to build networks that is the most important for creating social capital but a collective and reciprocal disposition to welcome, create and maintain social connections - without which my individual efforts to create such connections may well remain vain.

In that sense, The Social Capital Foundation's definition of social capital can be regarded as a semantic equivalent to community spirit as theorized and developed by Amitai Etzioni and the Communitarian Network, although the concerns raised by the erosion of 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 insisted on the existence of a common soul.

TSCF promotes social capital through socio-economic research, publications, and events. The Foundation sets up international conferences on a regular basis.

Patrick Hunout and the Tripartite Model of Societal Change

Patrick Hunout, a Franco-Belgian researcher and policymaker, created in 1999 The International Scope Review and in 2002 The Social Capital Foundation. His inspiration is both in the sociology of Emile Durkheim and Ferdinand Tönnies and in the more recent contribution of social 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 this, he coined the term of "global axiological space" (1985, 1990).

His later work explored the formation of what he called a "New Leviathan", around the hypothesis that the upper class of society seeks to build a new order based on less equality and less democracy. His approach suggests that, contrary to a common view, the strategies carried forward by the New Leviathan link intimately the economic, ethnic, and interpersonal fields. These strategies consist in developing economic flexibility and precariousness, promoting migrations and a multiethnic society, and pushing forward individualist,hedonist and consumerist values. In a last resort, they design a weak society, enslaved to market values and governmental controls rendered necessary by the increasing incapacity of an atomized social body to manage itself. The strategies carried forward by the ruling class explain most contemporary difficulties; if they would be inverted, a huge improvement would follow.

His collectivistic, communitarian inspiration reemerges when he suggests, to counter the strategies of New Leviathan, policies consolidating the community spirit, developing a democratic middle-class centered society, promoting an equitable share of wealth, protecting cultural identity against mass migrations, and strengthening shared values within the social body. These orientations are at the heart of the action of The Social Capital Foundation.