Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology Author(s): Alejandro Portes Source: Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 24 (1998), pp. 1-24 Published by: Annual Reviews Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/223472 Accessed: 18/11/2010 07:30 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. 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SSi _ _ _ * | , _ _ _ * | , = __ _ . * l _ _ _ Me * l _ _ _ 111_ _ = | , _ | _g 5 * . , I _ _ _ * * | | I _ - - * I _. - |=w::- Annu. Rev. Sociol. 1998. 24:1-24 Copyright C)1998 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved SOCIAL CAPITAL: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology Alejandro Portes Departmentof Sociology, PrincetonUniversity, Princeton,New Jersey 08540 KEY WORDS: social control, family support,networks, sociability ABSTRACT This paper reviews the origins and definitions of social capital in the writings of Bourdieu, Loury, and Coleman, among other authors.It distinguishes four sources of social capital and examines their dynamics. Applications of the concept in the sociological literatureemphasize its role in social control, in family support,and in benefits mediated by extrafamilialnetworks. I provide examples of each of these positive functions. Negative consequences of the same processes also deserve attention for a balanced picture of the forces at play. I review four such consequences and illustrate them with relevant ex- amples. Recent writings on social capital have extended the concept from an individual asset to a feature of communities and even nations. The final sec- tions describe this conceptual stretch and examine its limitations. I argue that, as shorthandfor the positive consequences of sociability, social capital has a definite place in sociological theory. However, excessive extensions of the concept may jeopardize its heuristic value. Alejandro Portes: Biographical Sketch Alejandro Portes is professor of sociology at Princeton University and faculty associate of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs. He for- merly taught at Johns Hopkins where he held the John Dewey Chair in Arts and Sciences, Duke University, and the University of Texas-Austin. In 1997 he held the Emilio Bacardi distinguished professorship at the University of Miami. In the same year he was elected president of the American Sociologi- cal Association. Born in Havana, Cuba, he came to the United States in 1960. He was educated at the University of Havana, Catholic University of Argen- tina, and Creighton University. He received his MA and PhD from the Uni- versity of Wisconsin-Madison. 0360-0572/98/0815-0001 $08.00 2 PORTES Portes is the authorof some 200 articles and chapterson national devel- opment, internationalmigration, Latin American and Caribbeanurbaniza- tion, and economic sociology. His most recent books include City on the Edge, the Transformationof Miami (winner of the Robert Park award for best book in urbansociology and of the Anthony Leeds awardfor best book in urbananthropology in 1995); The New Second Generation (Russell Sage Foundation 1996); Caribbean Cities (Johns Hopkins University Press); and ImmigrantAmerica, a Portrait. The latterbook was designated as a centen- nial publicationby the University of CaliforniaPress. It was originally pub- lished in 1990; the second edition, updatedand containing new chapterson American immigrationpolicy and the new second generation,was published in 1996. Introduction During recent years, the concept of social capital has become one of the most popular exports from sociological theory into everyday language. Dissemi- nated by a number of policy-orientedjournals and general circulationmaga- zines, social capital has evolved into something of a cure-all for the maladies affecting society at home and abroad. Like other sociological concepts that have traveled a similar path, the original meaning of the term and its heuristic value are being put to severe tests by these increasingly diverse applications. As in the case of those earlier concepts, the point is approachingat which so- cial capital comes to be applied to so many events and in so many different contexts as to lose any distinct meaning. Despite its currentpopularity, the termdoes not embody any idea really new to sociologists. Thatinvolvement andparticipation in groupscan have positive consequences for the individual and the community is a staple notion, dating back to Durkheim's emphasis on group life as an antidoteto anomie and self- destructionand to Marx's distinctionbetween an atomizedclass-in-itself and a mobilized and effective class-for-itself. In this sense, the term social capital simply recapturesan insight present since the very beginnings of the disci- pline. Tracing the intellectual backgroundof the concept into classical times would be tantamountto revisitingsociology's majornineteenth century sources. That exercise would not reveal, however, why this idea has caughton in recent years or why an unusualbaggage of policy implicationshas been heapedon it. The novelty and heuristic power of social capital come from two sources. First, the concept focuses attentionon the positive consequences of sociability while putting aside its less attractivefeatures. Second, it places those positive consequencesin the frameworkof a broaderdiscussion of capitaland calls atten- tion to how such nonmonetaryforms can be importantsources of power and in- fluence,like the size of one's stockholdings or bankaccount. The potentialfungi- bility of diverse sources of capital reduces the distance between the sociologi- SOCIAL CAPITAL:ORIGINS AND APPLICATIONS 3 cal and economic perspectives and simultaneously engages the attention of policy-makersseeking less costly, non-economic solutions to social problems. In the course of this review, I limit discussion to the contemporaryreemer- gence of the idea to avoid a lengthy excursus into its classical predecessors.To an audience of sociologists, these sources andthe parallelsbetween presentso- cial capital discussions and passages in the classical literaturewill be obvious. I examine, first, the principalauthors associated with the contemporaryusage of the term and their different approaches to it. Then I review the various mechanisms leading to the emergence of social capital and its principalappli- cations in the research literature.Next, I examine those not-so-desirablecon- sequences of sociability that are commonly obscured in the contemporarylit- eratureon the topic. This discussion aims at providingsome balance to the fre- quently celebratorytone with which the concept is surrounded.That tone is es- pecially noticeable in those studies that have stretched the concept from a property of individuals and families to a feature of communities, cities, and even nations. The attention garneredby applications of social capital at this broaderlevel also requiressome discussion, particularlyin light of the poten- tial pitfalls of that conceptual stretch. Definitions The first systematic contemporaryanalysis of social capital was producedby PierreBourdieu, who defined the concept as "theaggregate of the actualor po- tential resources which are linked to possession of a durablenetwork of more or less institutionalizedrelationships of mutual acquaintanceor recognition" (Bourdieu 1985, p. 248; 1980). This initial treatmentof the concept appeared in some brief "ProvisionalNotes" published in the Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales in 1980. Because they were in French,the articledid not gar- ner widespread attention in the English-speakingworld; nor, for that matter, did the first English translation,concealed in the pages of a text on the sociol- ogy of education (Bourdieu 1985). This lack of visibility is lamentablebecause Bourdieu's analysis is arguably the most theoreticallyrefined among those that introducedthe term in contem- porarysociological discourse. His treatmentof the concept is instrumental,fo- cusing on the benefits accruing to individuals by virtue of participationin groups and on the deliberateconstruction of sociability for the purposeof cre- ating this resource. In the original version, he went as far as assertingthat "the profits which accrue from membershipin a group are the