Social capital

Social capital makes the world go round: 
Subverting financial capital with human connection

While in the process of writing this essay, a friend told me that when she was in university in Brazil, two of her friends would drive across the vast city of Rio de Janeiro every single day to pick her up after school and bring her home. Without them she wouldn’t have graduated, she said. She thanked them in the acknowledgement section of her thesis.

The largely materialistic world we live in is constantly pushing us towards individualism. In our efforts to survive as individuals, it’s easy to forget that together we can help make survival feel a little easier and a little less lonely for each one of us. Such relationships, whether between individuals or shared among groups, are often built and thrive on social capital.

According to American political scientist Robert David Putnam (1995), social capital refers to the “features of social organizations, such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit”. These features aren’t related to money, but are arguably the more human components of social organizations that make being part of a community so valuable — including the experience, knowledge, networks, values, trust, and energy that people put into a community, to name a few.

What forms does social capital take?
Humans are often called ‘social beings’. At its core, social capital is the value derived from being social, or from harboring relationships. If you believe in the validity of social capital, you’re essentially believing that the goodwill shared by people or groups of people amounts to some kind of productive benefit for those involved.

To me, social capital feels like the thread that ties me to the communities I choose to build or be a part of. It’s the safety I feel living in a foreign continent as an immigrant, miles away from my family, because I know that my friends and chosen family have my back in the middle of the night. And while this safety doesn’t cost money, it costs time, love, and effort that I put into nurturing these relationships and hopefully giving people the same sense of comfort and safety that I get from them.

For my friend, it meant she could make it through her rigorous education and get home safe at the end of the day without having to part with money that might’ve been scarce for a young student, or lose precious time in a lengthy commute. And all this, because of the kindness and care of the people she knew and had forged connections with.

Amsterdam Alternative is a collective association built on similar beliefs and values. With the underlying “not for profit” principle, the collective thrives on shared values among the volunteers that put in time, experience, and effort into creating something that benefits everyone involved, and take decisions as a community for shared good. 

Since 2006, OT301 on the Overtoom in Amsterdam — the building where the collective conducts its operations — has been owned by the EHBK Association, which is a diverse, international community made up of various organizations. Together, they run the space and make the decisions that govern it. It’s not financial capital that drives these shared activities, but the social capital they’ve cultivated together.

The same sentiment is echoed in Vrij Beton, Amsterdam Alternative’s campaign to promote collective ownership of real estate and use it for public betterment instead of individual gains. It seeks to create new free spaces in the city where people can hold social, political and cultural activities. These spaces will act as catalysts for experimentation and creativity that aren’t geared towards profit but instead towards making shared meaning. Such spaces will allow the luxury of creativity to everyone, not just those who already have the resources to do so.

What makes social capital important in today’s world?
Even as money becomes the major means of ‘getting things done’, the value of social capital in our world cannot be understated. By living as an active member of society, we all accrue some degree of social capital, which can then be useful in times of need. 

Three years ago, I moved to the Netherlands. I had only heard people mention in passing how difficult it is to find a place to live in the country, especially in the bigger cities like Amsterdam, owing to the increasingly worsening housing crisis. This housing crisis finds its roots in many factors, ranging from shortage of free space in a small country to the perils of over-tourism and use of residential properties as Airbnbs and hotels. However, the solutions, as I have found after years of living as a non-European immigrant here, are few. Perhaps there’s only one — knowing the right people.

In the past three years, I have been on the hunt for a place to live two or three times, and each time, the solution came through someone that I knew. The first time, a friend saw me comment on their friend’s social media post about looking for a flatmate, and sent them a note of reference for me, without me even asking. The second time, a friend of a friend was looking for someone to replace her in a room. Recently, one of my old flatmates asked if I’d like to move to a different place together, that he’d inherited from his friends.

Talk to anyone in Amsterdam and beyond, and stories of how knowing someone and having a ‘network’ in these cities, for lack of a better term, has helped them find everything from a house to a job to a bike. Especially when we live in a society that’s formed so largely of people from different countries, cultures and backgrounds, it’s only social capital that helps us navigate our way through often strange quests and new experiences. In these exchanges, social capital doesn’t necessarily replace money, but takes on its own form of currency that facilitates a transaction. 

This way, as many authors including Francis Fukuyama (1999) and Hans Prujit (2002) have described, social capital facilitates the survival and growth of our society and allows modern economies to function.

Social capital in the age of the internet
You can probably tell by now how social capital is built by knowing people, which is a core feature of being human and living in this world. We all know people. And yet, whether we live in a big city or a small town, whether we live with our families or by ourselves, and even how comfortable we are with social interactions in real life are all factors that affect how much social capital we might be able to build. 

But where real-world restrictions keep us isolated, the virtual world can connect us with other people and help us reap the benefits of social capital without even having met them in real life. One of the prime examples of this is the LGBTQIA+ community’s use of the internet to find representation, connect with other queer people, and even drive life-saving efforts online.

Queer and trans people often find themselves isolated from society or unable to reach out and build real-life connections. They also are often left out of the workforce or cut off by family, leaving them in need of money, a place to live, and other important resources essential to survive. This is where the internet comes in. Queer organizations and trans people increasingly use online fundraisers to crowdfund money for things such as rent or gender-affirming healthcare. These fundraisers are often shared by people they’ve met and connected with online, often with a message vouching for them, driving others to donate.

While money is, of course, essential to survive in the world, having social capital can put it within reach of those who often find it difficult to come by it.

Using social capital as an act of resistance
Social capital, when used correctly, serves as an act of resistance against the capitalist, individualistic world that drives us towards profit at the cost of the well-being of other people. Using the value of social capital, those who are actively pushed to the sidelines of this world can find ways to exist, and even thrive, in it. It helps individuals and communities show resilience in hard times and resist against unjust forces. 

In some ways, this is what Amsterdam Alternative also seeks to do. The collective is driven by a model that rejects the capitalist principles of individual gains and property

In some ways, this is what Amsterdam Alternative also seeks to do. The collective is driven by a model that rejects the capitalist principles of individual gains and property. Rather, it promotes collective models of existence and creation which bring people together to put in the work as a group and reap the benefits from it. The truth is, even in Western societies that tend to be more individualistic, we cannot survive alone. Valuing social capital as a resource and trying to share it with others can help us achieve things actively made impossible by the way the world is made to function by the profit-driven forces that dominate it.

Using social capital for collective good
Of course, nothing is ever without its downsides. Some academics, such as M.E. Warren (2001), correlate social capital with the possibility of corruption, in case someone tries to seek unfair advantage of the connections they’ve developed through trust and socializing. There are also theories that communities built on social capital, while benefiting those involved in them, also run the risk of harming society as a whole, or leaving others out by discrimination and marginalization. 

The most important, in my opinion, is not to lose sight of the end goal. When getting involved in a community, or interacting with those we know and trust, it always helps to make sure we’re not actively benefiting at the cost of another. Seeing our efforts as a means of greater societal good and community gains is another way of resisting against the individualistic nature of our world and deriving personal benefits such as freedom, happiness, and fulfillment from collectivity.