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Social Capital in Political Communitarianism and Academia

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Social Capital in Political Communitarianism and Academia Corrective Critiques and Measuring Social Life: Social Capital in Political Communitarianism and Academia By Joshua George Barton A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Victoria University of Wellington 2016 For my supervisors Kevin and Carol, thank you for all your patience and support Abstract Over the past quarter of a century social capital has grown from a relatively obscure concept to one routinely applied in a variety of literatures ranging from academic disciplines to international development programmes. Whilst the concept has been the subject of several critiques, these have largely been from a political economic perspective and have primarily discredited the concept by constructing it as having a basis and origins in economics. This thesis aims to offer an alternative analysis of social capital. By drawing on the work of French pragmatism, I treat social capital as a complex, heterogeneous object whose meaning and basis shifts as it has been employed in the enactment of different realities. Whilst retaining this sensibility, I argue that insight can be gained into political uses of social capital by conceptualising it as part of various corrective critiques of economic liberalism. From a communitarian perspective, liberal policy is deficient because of its individualistic, and economic, foci. The incorporation of these, and other critiques, has resulted in the recent emergence of a ‘holistic’ approach that identifies human ‘wellbeing’ as the goal of policy. Social capital, with its promise to make the benefits of social life measurable and calculable, has helped to incorporate the communitarian critique into policy and political discourse both in New Zealand and internationally. However, social capital’s relationship to critique within policy and politics has varied. Some authors have constructed it as existing in a reciprocal relationship with existing liberal economic policies, from this perspective both economic growth and social capital are required to improve human wellbeing. For others, however, social capital and wellbeing are damaged by economic growth, and so economic policy requires modification in order to prevent damage to social capital. When the former construction is used, social capital is part of an expansionary critique of policy. From the latter perspective, social capital forms part of a reformist critique of policy. These arguments are built on an analysis of social capital in texts from a variety of political and scholarly fields. My exploration of social capital in two academic fields, public health and management studies demonstrates that social capital often lacks an evident economic basis, and highlights the variability in the concept’s construction. I also explore the history of the concept in New Zealand political and policy texts, discussing its use in the New i Zealand Institute of Policy Studies and by Prime Minister Jim Bolger in the 1990s, and how this changed as the concept was more thoroughly incorporated into policy during the Fifth Labour Government in the early 2000s. Furthermore, I offer an explanation of social capital’s current and central role in national accounting frameworks published by international and national government organisations, which provide the most clearly articulated attempts to measure social life via social capital. As well as building on the existing critical and analytical literature around social capital, and offering an analysis of the concept within New Zealand, my approach demonstrates the advantages offered by adopting the sensibility of French pragmatic sociology. My analysis supports the argument that texts are a suitable topic of interest from a French pragmatic perspective, and shows the critical insight that can be gained from a more empirically-orientated and less dismissive approach to the concept of social capital. ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors Kevin Dew and Carol Harrington for all of their invaluable guidance, advice and encouragement over the past four years. My sincerest thanks to the staff and students of Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Social and Cultural Studies, particularly Chamsy El-Ojeili and Sarah Wright for all of your support and for creating a wonderful environment to work and learn in. Thank you to the politicians and policy makers who I interviewed either formally or informally as part of this thesis. Your insight and time was invaluable in understanding social capital. I would also like to thank Samantha Keene, Owen Hughes, Julie Howe, Fatimah Hussein, James Gluck, and Morgan Hamlin for their feedback, engagement and proofreading. Thank you to my parents and siblings for their understanding, patience, and for putting up with me not visiting as often as I would have liked. Finally, thank you to all of my friends and flatmates, especially Jonathan Douché, Sashi Perera, Misha Amour, and James Barber for their emotional support and encouragement, as well as helping me relax and maintain a life outside of the university, and to Christine Ridding and Derek Douché for helping me when I really needed it. iii Contents Abstract............................................................................................................................................i Acknowledgements......................................................................................................................iii Contents.........................................................................................................................................iv Table of Figures...........................................................................................................................vii Chapter 1: Introduction............................................................................................1 An Overview of Social Capital.....................................................................................................3 Thesis Structure............................................................................................................................. 9 Chapter 2: Critiques of Social Capital.....................................................................11 Conceptual Critiques of Social Capital.....................................................................................12 Political Critiques of Social Capital...........................................................................................18 Neoliberalism, the Third Way and Social Capital...................................................................23 Conclusion....................................................................................................................................29 Chapter 3: Sensibilities of French Pragmatism......................................................31 Post-Actor-Network Theory and Boltanski: Two Branches of French Pragmatic Sociology.......................................................................................................................................31 Textual and Discourse Analysis in Pragmatic Sociology.......................................................35 Translation, (Im)mutable Mobiles and Critiques.....................................................................39 Communitarianism as a Corrective Critique............................................................................45 Quantification, Knowledge and the Practice of Governance...............................................49 Summary.......................................................................................................................................54 Methods and Data.......................................................................................................................54 Conclusion....................................................................................................................................59 iv Chapter 4: Conflicting Histories of Social Capital..................................................61 The Construction of Histories...................................................................................................62 Proponent Histories: The Long(er) Past of Social Capital....................................................63 Proponent Histories: The Short(er) Past of Social Capital....................................................68 Proponent Histories: Founders of Social Capital....................................................................70 The Socio-political Context of Social Capital..........................................................................75 Critical Histories of Social Capital.............................................................................................77 Conclusion....................................................................................................................................82 Chapter 5: Social Capital in Public Health and Management Studies.................85 Social Capital in Public Health................................................................................................. 88 Social Capital in Management Studies....................................................................................102 Conclusion: Constructing Social Capital to Address Problems...........................................113 Chapter 6: Communitarian Liberalism and Critique: Social Capital in 1990s New Zealand.................................................................................................................117
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