‘Social capital’ figures in much development discourse as a mysterious substance, elusive yet vital, holding communities together, underpinning coping strategies, enabling entrepreneurship and thus forming one of the key conditions of possibility for poverty alleviation and poverty reduction strategies.
So central has this concept become that the definition of ‘social capital formation strategies’ has become a key requirement for government officials concerned with social development and poverty alleviation in South Africa (City of Cape Town, 2005). However, the phenomena usually lumped together under this ambiguous term are complex and multifaceted.
This paper considers some case studies from the Eastern Cape and uses these to interrogate this concept. In doing so, we pursue a number of interlinked agendas. In the first place, this paper tries to contribute empirically by identifying some of the key dynamics and processes that shape ‘social capital’ and how it impacts on livelihood opportunities and strategies. Secondly, it highlights why this matters for poverty reduction and amelioration processes. But thirdly, the paper is also an intervention into and a consideration of the concept itself, and the hidden discursive politics of theory production in the linked disciplinary fields of development studies and development practice.
The ‘political economy’ of ‘social capital’ thus names not only the power relations that shape ‘social capital’ as an ‘empirical’ and lived reality ‘on the ground’ (see Bourdieu, 1984; Gledhill, 2003; Scott, 1985), but also the larger politics of theory production the processes that inform the paths by which theoretical terms either stay marginalised or enter the mainstream of social and economic development discourse and are contested there (Grillo and Stirrat, 1997; Woolcock and Narayan, 2000).
We begin with a brief consideration of the genealogy of the term and some of the more significant scholarly considerations of social capital, both internationally and in a Southern African context. After a sketch of the depth and breadth of poverty in the Mount Frere region of rural Eastern Cape we describe some of the complexities encountered in two households one poor, one not so poor. We close with a discussion of what these reveal about social capital, what this means for understanding why poor people remain poor and with an identification of some salient theoretical implications.
