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Securing Political Returns to Social Capital: Women's Associations In xxix Journal of Interdisciplinary History, :4 (Spring, 1999), 613–638. Elisabeth S. Clemens SECURING POLITICAL RETURNSELISABETH TO SOCIAL S. CLEMENS CAPITAL Securing Political Returns to Social Capital: Women’s Associations in the United States, 1880s–1920s Social capital has proven exceptionally fruitful as a metaphor. By invoking ªnancial imagery, this phrase points to the generative power of social ties, their capacity to produce social goods such as economic growth or effective governance. But metaphors are also dangerous, not least because they assert mul- tiple dimensions of similarity, some of which may be inappropriate or positively misleading. Prominent among these potential false parallels is the presumption that social capital is marked by the same portability or fungibility that makes ªnancial capital such a powerful motor of economic growth and transformation. In its purest form, economic capital is not tied to particular persons, places, or objects, but “presents itself as an independent substance, endowed with a motion of its own, passing through a life-process of its own, in which money and commodities are mere forms which it assumes and casts off in turn.” Social capital, by com- parison, is fundamentally embedded, rooted in “norms of reci- procity and networks of civic engagement.” The very term “social capital” embodies a seeming paradox—a deeply embedded capac- ity for social action that is transposable from one setting to another, from one domain to other diverse projects.1 Elisabeth S. Clemens is Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Arizona. She is the author of The People’s Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890–1925 (Chicago, 1997); “Organizational Repertoires and Institutional Change: Women’s Groups and the Transformation of U.S. Politics, 1890–1920,” American Journal of Sociology, XCVII (1993), 755–798; co-editor, with Walter W. Powell, of Private Action and the Public Good (New Haven, 1998). The author would like to thank the Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Institute at the University of Arizona and the Young Faculty Fellows Program of the Program on Nonproªt Governance, Center on Philanthropy, University of Indiana, Indianapolis, for ªnancial support. She is also grateful to Patrick Ledger and Kris McIlwaine for help in collecting the biographical data. © 1999 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 1 Karl Marx, “The General Formula for Capital,” in Robert C. Tucker (ed.), The Marx– Engels Reader (New York, 1978; 2d ed.), 335. James S. Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory (Cambridge, 1990), 300–321, is explicit about the limited fungibility of social capital. Robert D. Putnam, with Roberto Leonardi and Raffaella Y. Nanetti, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, 1993), 167. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219599551831 by guest on 29 September 2021 614 | ELISABETH S. CLEMENS In its operation, social capital involves a certain alchemy, transforming personal ties, trust in speciªc persons, and localized capacities for collective action into such macrosocial outcomes as economic performance and political efªcacy. This transmutation, however, is fraught with tension. A closer analysis of the ways that social capital is tied to individuals and organizations reveals dynamic processes and strategic opportunities rather than a steady conversion of interpersonal trust into social goods. This structure of social capital constitutes a terrain for politics and a landscape that is reconªgured through politics. In the course of political contests, social capital is generated and destroyed, enrolled in or disengaged from collective action. Indeed, the hallmark of successful organizers is their ability to harness informal networks and noninstitutional capacities to col- lective action in the pursuit of social change. Consequently, an analysis of how social capital is enrolled in politics must begin by exploring its distribution at different levels of analysis and mapping those levels onto one another. Individuals with ties to one another do not always belong to the same associations; nor do these associations necessarily take compatible positions across a range of issues or invoke similar positions within public debates. Hence, the relative location of the multiple forms of social capital—per- sonal skills, interpersonal ties and trust, formal organizations, and the cultural norms that legitimate collective action—presents dis- tinctive obstacles to, and opportunities for, their deployment. In United States political history, few efforts to enroll infor- mal networks and voluntary associations in political projects match the accomplishments of the “woman movement” of the late nine- teenth and early twentieth centuries. Without beneªt of the vote, women both gained the vote and helped to lay the foundations of a distinctively maternalist welfare state. To invoke the language of nineteenth-century philanthropy, the consolidation and ulti- mate fragmentation of the woman movement presents an “object lesson” in the political uses of social capital. locating social capital Social capital can be located in at least three ways or, more precisely, at three levels of civic society. First, trusting relationships, or social ties, may exist between in- dividuals; such ties may or may not be constituted within formal organizations or associations. At this level, social capital refers Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219599551831 by guest on 29 September 2021 SECURING POLITICAL RETURNS TO SOCIAL CAPITAL | 615 either to the skills and capacities of individuals for social action or to the web of ties among individuals. Two dimensions of variation should be noted: Skills acquired in one set of interactions may be more or less easily transposed to another; informal net- works of trust and friendship may or may not coincide with memberships in formal organizations. The genius of nineteenth- century voluntary associations lay in both their cultivation of transposable routines for acting collectively (for example, Roberts Rules of Order) and their elaboration of national federations grounded in the sociability of communities and friendship net- works.2 The formation of these associations created social capital at a second level, changing “the relations among persons . in ways that facilitate action.” Formal organization transforms a network of interpersonal ties into a system of roles and routines. New members are more easily integrated and expansive campaigns more easily coordinated. In addition, the establishment of formal organizations creates a new kind of social network—ties between organizations, constituted through either formal alliances or the joint memberships of individuals. When interorganizational and interpersonal networks diverge, recruitment and rupture are pos- sible.3 Finally, these interpersonal networks and formal associations were both embedded in cultural categories that structured dis- course about civic life. Although the care of the inªrm and the moral education of children might be the objects of either a woman’s club or a local Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the public identities of these organizations gave distinctive mean- ings to their efforts. Organizations anchor meaning; they “provide a visible interpretive frame upon which the otherwise slippery and ineffable character of institutional life can be ªrmed up.” Particu- larly before survey research promised direct access to individual opinions, organizations served as critical signals of positions within public debate.4 2 Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (Cambridge, 1995). 3 Coleman, Foundations, 304. 4 John W. Mohr and Francesca Guerra-Pearson, “The Differentiation of Institutional Space: Organizational Forms in the New York Social Welfare Sector, 1888–1917,” in Walter W. Powell and D.L. Jones (eds.), Bending the Bars of the Iron Cage: Institutional Dynamics and Processes (Chicago, forthcoming). Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219599551831 by guest on 29 September 2021 616 | ELISABETH S. CLEMENS Given its multiple locations, or forms—individual, organiza- tional, and cultural—social capital may not aggregate neatly from interpersonal ties into broader networks of collective action, nor be easily transposed to one new project as to another. Tensions are generated when levels do not map cleanly onto one another. An association identiªed with one goal might also be committed to another one that a member might ªnd deeply offensive. The resulting conºicts underscore a more general theoretical point: The ability to transpose social capital cultivated at the individual level to larger projects of collective action is limited by the available organizations, as well as the location of those organiza- tions within the cultural categories of public discourse. Exploring the intersection of individual participation, formal organization, and political culture sheds light on the dynamics of recruitment and training, on the mobilization of political coali- tions, and on the sources of rupture in the web of group afªlia- tions. Consider the following puzzle: Drawing on membership records, recent research has documented that membership in the Moose, Elks, Masons, and other fraternal organizations in the
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