What is social capital?

According to Lin, social capital is made up of resources that are embedded in a social structure and that are accessed and or mobilized in purposive actions.

But, what does that mean? To me, social capital is everything that you don’t own, know, or posses, but could easily get your hands on after a few minutes on your cell phone or a simple message on facebook.

Some people are great at using and accessing social capital, yet others feel to shy or too undeserving, or simply feel like they have nothing to exchange in return to the person who helped them out. Having something to exchange or being capable of reciprocating the use of capital are unspoken rules of using social capital. Sometimes this reciprocation can be in allowing the person who loaned you access to their capital to use some of your similar capital. For example, I borrow a friend’s marketing book, but I let them use my notes from management. Another and less obvious type of reciprocation comes in recommendations. Asking a former employer to use some of their social ties to put in a good word for a job, possibly gives me a job. But what does the former boss get in return? I do not have the same social capital to give him a recommendation. But, by doing a good job at the place he recommended me to repays him the favor because it increases the degree that his acquaintance trusts him, because he recommended a good employee.

What is Community?

What is a community?

I think to be a community, you have to have these things:

• two or more individuals
  
• some form of interaction (face-to-face, on-line, smoke signals, whatever)
• there has to be some commonality that brings the people together (family ties, location, proffesion, hobby)
• there has to be some form of sharing going on (goods, services, ideas)
• it has to be sustained (all of the above qualifications have to be fairly current)

So, if I had to write a definition, I would say that community...
Can be found anytime two or more individuals coem together in common interest to share and interact in a sustained manner

I think one thing that is often mistaken for community is commonality. Just because there are a lot of people doing the same things does not neccesarrily mean that they are in a community together. For example, my accounting class is not a community. While we do share time together in class and we do listen to the same lecture, there is no interaction or sharing between students. This could change. If the class meets to study together for the first test, then we will have the beginnings of a community, but until then we are just students enrolled in the same class.