Social Capital

Social capital is a theoretical perspective with origins in sociology. Simply defined, social capital refers to the degree and quality of support and connections within and between one's social networks. Although social capital has been used as a theoretical framework in the literature as early as the 1960s, current interest in social capital is largely based on work by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and the U.S. sociologist James Coleman in relation to an explanation of educational attainment. It has been increasingly used as an important perspective for explaining the significant differences in educational and occupational attainment based on race/ethnicity, gender, class, and even English language proficiency.

Scholars including Sandra Dika and Kusum Singh note that although both Bourdieu's and Coleman's work began with the attempt to explain differences in educational achievement and attainment, there are clear differences in the approaches. Bourdieu sought alternative explanations other than factors such as ability differences in his use of social capital theory. He focused on three sources of capital and their interactions related to individual outcomes: the economic, the cultural, and the social. Particularly important for Bourdieu was the size of the network of connections that one can mobilize and the amount of capital possessed by the connections in one's network. His work emphasized unequal access to institutional resources based on structural constraints and differences across class, gender, and race. Accordingly, he viewed social capital as a tool of reproduction for the dominant class and as a means for maintaining and reproducing the powerful group's dominant position.

Coleman, in contrast, focused his research on the role of social capital and the ways that it is used to enable human capital. Coleman's approach [Page 1967]favored an assimilationist perspective in the sense that it is the family's responsibility to adopt certain norms to advance children's life chances. Coleman's perspective on social capital emphasizes family structural factors (such as the presence of two parents in the home, lower number of siblings, higher parental educational expectations), and parent–child interaction variables that then are seen as leading to increased tendencies to remain in school and succeed academically. Typically, research that is influenced by Coleman's work draws on large national data sets to examine the relationships among these variables.

Work by Ricardo Stanton-Salazar and Annette Lareau has focused on differences in the construction of interpersonal networks across social class and social status groups to explain differential stratifying experiences in schools. These researchers emphasize the role of school as a social resource for families in poverty. Stanton-Salazar and Lareau both consider resources found at school and similar entities as a means for securing maximal opportunities later in life.

Figure 1 Relational Elements of Social Capital Structures

Source: Author.

Researchers Glen Israel and Lionel Beaulieu use social capital as a framework for explaining student success, college access, and college choice. These researchers expand the traditions of social capital founded in Bourdieu's work to include specificity in type of social capital and explore the relationship between social capital and school and family relationships and interactions. Accordingly, Israel and Beaulieu approach social capital in their research from the standpoint of family interactive social capital, school interactive social capital, and [Page 1968]community interactive social capital and include research that connects social capital to the roles that students and families play in interaction with these three structures. As such, their research has revealed that sustained interaction between families, community, and school entities enable school achievement and long-term attainment.

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