NOV. 2014 North American Regional Science Conference Version A COMPARISON OF A HABERMAS-INSPIRED APPROACH AND ECONOMISTS’ APPROACHES TO SOCIAL CAPITAL Roger E. Bolton Department of Economics and Center for Environmental Studies Williams College
[email protected] Paper read at North American meeting of Regional Science Association International, Bethesda, Maryland, November 2014, corrected and slightly revised in June 2016. Another version that is much shorter but also has expanded treatment of a few topics is forthcoming in a volume of original essays on social capital and regional development edited by Hans Westlund and Johan Larsson for Edward Elgar. **************** ABSTRACT I seek to shed light on social capital by comparing two approaches to it that seem, at first, to be sharply opposed. The comparison reveals the two approaches are complementary in some ways, and it suggests regional planning principles that draw on both of them. One approach is inspired by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas’s concepts of communicative action, normative action, and the lifeworld. Many scholars, including planning theorists, find those ideas attractive but do not develop the possible connections with social capital. The other cluster is economists’ typical modeling of social capital as something created and maintained by clearly defined investment behavior by individuals. I explain how I think Habermas’s concepts are related to social capital, then describe a sample of economists' theories of social capital, and finally describe how regional planning can draw on both Habermas and economists. INTRODUCTION* I explore a relationship between two clusters of theoretical ideas, a connection that I think is important for regional development and regional planning, but has not been discussed adequately.