Social capital has been around since the nineteenth centuey, however it wasn’t until the work of Robert Putnam, 1995 that it was thrust into policy discussions. Putnam (1995) related social capital to the “social networks and the associated norms of trust and reciprocity that arise from these networks”. In this statement, reciprocity is deemed to be when you give to someone in the belief that similar will be returned to you at a later unspecified time. From reciprocity, relationships of trust can develop. Trust is seen to be at the heart of social capital.
Social capital is the wealth of a community, not necessarily monetary, and is reliant on foiur main principles: citizenship, communitarianism, civic society and the glue that holds communities together, social cohesion.
Citizenship is a given status, which brings with it rights and responsibilities. To be an active citizenship, individuals must uphold social order under the social contract theory. This enables common values and morals to be built. If persons do not uphold the law this can hinder social capital being built as it interferes with the norms of the society.
Communitarians are citizens who are passionate about their community, who feel strongly about bettering their community and are active in their goal to do this. Health visitors can be communitarians in their work when they promote betterment of the area in which they work by encouraging families to act on their goals and to help them gain the skills needed for this.
Communitarians are usually involved in civil society and are members of organised groups, or set up groups to tackle issues in the community, such as baby and toddler groups, teenage mums groups or coffee mornings for isolated elderly people. Civil society is when individuals come together with their common goals and shared values.
Deemed to be one of the most important factors when discussing social capital is social cohesion. (Lin 2001, Burt 2003). This is seen to be the glue or bond that holds communities together. There is known to be three different forms of cohesion; bonding, bridging and linking and all have there important features.
Bonding social cohesion is a network of individuals with strong ties to each other, through family ties, through faith communities, common interests or goals. This is seen to be necessary to get by in life, can also be part of social capital as it can be a resource. Bookman (2004) claimed that bonding networks can be used as caring for family members, whether that be an elderly relative or childcare, this can help people get back into employment, therefore helping people out of poverty and adding wealth to the community.
Bridging networks are across boundaries, such as people from different backgrounds and different beliefs. This can be a weaker bond but can be found following tragedies when people come together in common feelings; shock, grief. Another example of bridging social cohesion is social networking: facebook makes peoples relationships visible to others, people become acquaintances of people they don’t really know through a common acquaintance. This can be beneficial and is seen to be important for getting ahead in life.
Linking networks are formed when there is a difference in power status, eg. With a health visitor or teacher. In society it could be used to access services or resources and therefore better life chances.

Social cohesion has five factors:
Material conditions, social inclusion/integration, social equality, active and passive relationships.
Putnam (2000) discussed the lack of social capital in America and put this down to the decline in activity in civil society, this may be down to working patterns, lack of time and individualised leisure activities. However Lin (2001) and Burt (2003) didn’t feel this meant a decline in social capital and they credited more importance to bonding, bridging and linking relationships to social capital. Another criticism of this came from the office of national statsitics (2001) who claimed that even though this seemed to be the case in America, the situation was very different in the uk and didn’t feel there was a decline in social capital.
The topic of social capital is very difficult to measure as it is a qualitative issue. May, Alcock and Rawlingson (2008) discussed that measuring social capital could be related to amount of social contact someone has, the networking and the relationships of trust, however sometimes social contact is not always good, it would depend if it was good contact.
Areas of high social capital benefit from lower rates of crime, higher educational achievement, higher economic growth and better health (Halpern 2009). The level of social capital cannot only be indicated by the wealth of the area, as Putnam stated “a society of virtuous but isolated individuals is not necessarily high in social capital”. This could be due to people working long hours and being unable to attend organised groups.
In my area of practice there are areas with a high minority ethnic population, because of their common values and norms they do benefit from high social capital however it has been witnessed to marginalise others in the area from different religious groups. This is seen to prove that not all social capital is good social capital, this is also true when thinking about gang culture, or the british national poloitical party, they all have similar values, but aren’t seen to be good values (Halpern 1999).
Field (2003) claimed that “social networks are a valuable asset” and that they gave people a sense of belonging which made them feel loved, cared for and valued and therefore improved their health as it reduces negative feelings and levels of stress (Marmot, Wilkinson 2003).