Women Creating Social Capital and Social Change

As Community Development Organizations (CDOs) are the primary vehicle for development in low-income neighborhoods, scholars have begun to examine them in terms of the degree to which they increase citizen participation, increase civic capacity, as well as stabilize and revitalize neighborhoods through the creation of social capital. According to Putnam, civic action requires the existence of social capital; he defines social capital as norms, trust, and networks. As Gittell and Vidal note, there has been a virtual industry of interest and action created around the implication of Putnam\u27s findings for the development of low-income communities. This article is an excerpt from a study published by the Howard Samuels State Management and Policy Center, The Graduate School and The University Center of the City University of New York entitled, Women Creating Social Capital and Social Change: A Study of Women-led Community Development Organizations

Assessing Communities of Practice in health policy : A conceptual framework as a first step towards empirical research

Peer reviewe

Building virtual bridges: how rural micro-enterprises develop social capital in online and face-to-face settings

In rural UK, businesses are often isolated and have much to gain from healthy networks, yet studies show that many rural business owners fail to network effectively. Information communications technologies offer new ways to network that might benefit rural businesses by expanding their reach. This study looked at online and face-to-face networking behaviour among rural micro-enterprises in Scotland in relation to the development of bonding and bridging social capital. Given the challenges of remoteness faced by many rural businesses, online networking is particularly useful in developing bridging capital, but is an unsuitable context for building the trust needed to gain tangible benefits. The article therefore highlights the importance of face-to-face interactions in developing trust and bonding social capital. Rural business owners face distinctive challenges with respect to online communications, which are explored in this article