Social Capital and Information Science Research

Transcription

1 Social Capital and Information Science Research Catherine A. Johnson (moderator and presenter) University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Douglas Raber University of Missouri Paul T. Jaeger Assistant Professor, University of Maryland Kate Williams Dominican University The concept of social capital has become a popular area of research in many social science fields, including public policy, political science, economics, community development, sociology, anthropology, and education. Increasingly, it has been used as the conceptual framework for research in the area of information studies including such topics as knowledge integration (Bhandar, Pan & Tan, 2007), knowledge sharing (Huysman & Wulf, 2006), access to information by the homeless (Hersberger, 2003), community informatics (Williams and Durrance, in press), and information seeking behavior (Johnson, in press).the concept has an ideological foundation in the theories of Pierre Bourdieu (1980), with two divergent approaches to its study emerging during the last two decades: one focusing on social capital as a collective asset and the other regarding it as an individual asset. The main proponent of the first approach is political scientist Robert Putnam who defines social capital as inhering in the dense networks of social interaction which foster sturdy norms of generalized reciprocity and encourage the emergence of social trust (Putnam, 1995, p. 66). Social network analysts, on the other hand, view social capital as resources to which individuals have access through their social relationships. Nan Lin, who is the main proponent of

2 this approach, defines social capital as resources embedded in a social structure which are accessed and/or mobilized in purposive actions (Lin, 2001a, p. 12). While the concept of social capital may be operationalized differently depending on the point of view of the researcher, its value to information science research is in providing a framework within which to understand the relationship between social structure and information access. Participants in this panel will discuss social capital from various vantage points, including the role of social capital in solidifying power relationships, the effect of recent government policies on reducing social capital, and the relationship between social capital and the use of libraries and information technology. The intent of the panel is to clarify the meaning(s) of social capital and to demonstrate how the concept may be used in information science research. Ambiguities of social capital (Douglas Raber) Since the publication of Robert Putnam s Bowling Alone (1995) the discursive value of social capital as a descriptive and explanatory concept has increased considerably. There are reasons to believe, however, that the concept has been misunderstood and inappropriately applied. As scientific and popular signifier it is commonly associated with the enrichment of civic life. Putnam notes that social capital is closely related to what some have called civic virtue, but he is aware of the fact that it also possesses a dark side. Bourdieu (1980) reminds us that social capital is only one form of capital in general; the phenomenon whose differentiated distribution in society accounts for and is associated with unjust distributions of power and life possibilities in various social formations. This presentation will re-examine the concept of social capital as discussed by Putnam and Bourdieu as a manifestation and sign of power in society in order to reach a more subtle comprehension of the relationship between social capital and power as well as its exploitation in the service of dominant cultural hegemonies. In addition, it will address issues of its effective use as a scientific concept. Both

3 Putnam and Bourdieu realize that social capital is necessarily an individual and social attribute; a condition that makes it difficult to precisely operationalize. As a signifier, social capital may be more useful as an ideological than a scientific tool. Public policy, information access, and social capital (Paul T. Jaeger) Public policies that foster information poverty and reduce social capital seriously threaten the health of democracy within a society (Jaeger, 2005, in press; Jaeger & Thompson, 2004). The theories of Habermas and Chatman can help illuminate the impacts of public policy on information access and exchange among social groups in society (Jaeger, in press; Jaeger & Burnett, 2005). Habermas (1989) notion of the importance of the exchange of political information in the public sphere and Chatman s (2000) notion of the importance of small worlds in exchange of information within the context of their own social groups can both be revelatory in trying to understand the impacts of reductions of information access and exchange at the macro and micro levels of society (Burnett & Jaeger, under review). These theories also help to contextualize efforts by certain public sphere agencies, like public libraries, and certain small worlds, such as scientists, who have worked to overcome gaps in information access created by these laws and policies (Jaeger, in press; Jaeger & Burnett, 2005). In seeking to mitigate reductions in access to information and to protect public forums for the exchange of information, these agencies and small worlds are working to generate social capital related to important political and social issues that might otherwise be lost as a result of public policy. This presentation examines these relationships between public policy, social capital, social groups, and information entities in the public sphere. Social capital and use of information technologies in local communities (Kate Williams) This presentation will discuss six studies, three of them by this speaker, that have used the concept of social capital as a framework for their examination of technology use in local communities, or in other words, the information revolution from below. The settings of the studies include an Australian housing project; a

4 Swedish suburb; low-income Manchester, England; a medium sized US town; and one African American and one Latino neighborhood in a US city. This presentation will explain how social capital as defined by Lin (2001b) has facilitated measuring the social processes and social structures that make up community. These studies also used the paired concepts of bridging and bonding social capital (Coleman, 1988; Putnam, 1995) to bring into view just which community processes and structures impact or are impacted by technology. The question addressed in the presentation is, what role does social capital play in facilitating the use of computers and the Internet by local communities thereby enabling them to enter the digital age? Among other findings, social capital theory helped make visible these communities' high levels of activity and self-reliance with regard to information technology. Public libraries as creators of social capital? (Catherine Johnson) The public library serves not only as a source of information and reading material but, perhaps most significantly, as a public space where people of the community gather, meet one another, and have access to community resources (see e.g., Leckie & Hopkins, 2002). These characteristics have been found to be important ingredients in creating social capital, which is associated with less crime in communities, fewer children dropping out of school, and a generally healthier population (Putnam, 2000). Public libraries may serve as an alternative for people with low levels of individual social capital since it is a place where they can make use of information technology and the knowledge and help of librarians when they have no one in their personal networks who can provide the resources they need. This presentation reports on a study that investigated the relationship between use of public libraries and social capital. The concepts of social capital as a collective and an individual asset were both used in this study in order to understand how use of the library is related to generalized trust and community involvement and how the level of individual social capital is related to use of the library. It is hoped that findings from the study will influence policy makers to recognize the important social role of the public library by promoting services and activities that generate social capital.

5 References Bhandar, M. Pan, S-L. & Tan, B. C. Y. (2007). Towards understanding the roles of social capital in knowledge integration: A case study of a collaborative information systems project. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology 58 (2), Bourdieu, P. (1980). Le capital social: notes provisoires. Actes de la recherche en Sciences Sociales, 3, 2-3. Burnett, G. B., & Jaeger, P. T. (under review). Small worlds, lifeworlds, and information: The ramifications of the information behaviors of social groups in public policy and the public sphere. Chatman, E. A. (2000). Framing social life in theory and research. The New Review of Information Behaviour Research 1, Coleman, James S. (1980) "Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital." American Journal of Sociology 94, S95-S120. Habermas, J. (1989). The structural transformations of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA. Hersberger, J. (2003). A qualitative approach to examining information transfer via social networks among homeless populations. New Review of Information Behaviour Research 4 (1), Huysman, M. & Wulf, V. (2006). IT to support knowledge sharing in communities, towards a social capital analysis, Journal of Information Technology 21 (1), Jaeger, P. T. (2005). Deliberative democracy and the conceptual foundations of electronic government. Government Information Quarterly, 22(4), Jaeger, P. T. (in press). Information policy, information access, and democratic participation: The national and international implications of the Bush administration's information politics. Government Information Quarterly. Jaeger, P. T. & Burnett, G. (2005). Information access and exchange among small worlds in a democratic society: The role of policy in redefining information behavior in the post-9/11 United States. Library Quarterly 75(4),

6 Jaeger, P. T. & Thompson, K. M. (2004). Social information behavior and the democratic process: Information poverty, normative behavior, and electronic government in the United States. Library & Information Science Research 26(1), Johnson, C.A. (2007). Social capital and the search for information: Examining the role of social capital in information seeking behavior in Mongolia. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 58(6), Leckie, G. J. & Hopkins, J. (2002). The public space of central libraries: Findings from Toronto and Vancouver, Library Quarterly 72 (3), Lin, N. (2001a). Building a network theory of social capital. In N. Lin & K. Cook & R. S. Burt (Eds.), Social Capital: Theory and Research (pp. 3-29). New York: Aldine de Gruyter Lin, Nan (2001b) Social capital: a theory of social structure and action. New York: Cambridge University Press. Putnam, R. (1995). Bowling alone: America's declining social capital. Journal of Democracy 6(1), Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American Community. New York: Simon Schuster. Williams, K. and Durrance, J. (in press). Social Networks and social capital: Rethinking theory in community informatics, Journal of Community Informatics.