Communities for Change: Creating Social Capital in the Digital Age
|| For the Creative, Cultural and Changemaking Sectors
Hi there! This article is a part of our new series titled ‘Changemaking Culture’, which showcases best practices and learnings regarding growing networks, community building and the values of collaboration in the digital age.
To begin with, we explore what ‘Social Capital’ means to us, and why we believe you should care about it.
The What
Social Capital can be a tough concept to pin down. However, an interesting entry point into the idea might be how French Philosopher Pierre Bourdieu theorized it, as being as the value you or I generate based on the people we know (Richardson 1986, 16). While there’s plenty of debate around the specificities of the concept, here are three things that folks seem to agree upon:
- The people that we know.
- The resources and skill-sets that they bring to the table.
- The relationships that they share with us.
…are all critical elements of Social Capital. These define our ability to mobilize people and resources in order to enact the kind of change that benefits us collectively: greater opportunities for emerging professionals, greater talent for organizations to choose from, and a wider network of institutional and individual partners engaging in positive-sum collaborations with each other.
American political scientist Robert D. Putnam is another voice in the conversation around this topic. Putnam wrote the widely regarded ‘Bowling Alone’ (Putnam 1995, 3), in which he would spend some time trying to explore the dangers of losing Social Capital, among other things.
And that brings us to…
The Why
Bowling Alone looked at contemporary American culture, and outlined an alarming drop in the average rate of participation in family and social gatherings. However, despite it’s date and specificities, it’s easy to see how Putnam’s work can speak to folks everywhere today: the massive technological leaps in connectivity that we are currently experiencing exist in an ironic duology with greater social isolation and professional silofication.
Maybe it’s the off-putting amount of noise in social media or maybe it’s the post-pandemic paradigms we’re all adjusting to, but one thing is for certain: people are talking, attending and participating less. This can spell disaster for sectors that thrive with their community, and that makes it critical for us to be aware of the kind of Social Capital we generate and how we go about deploying it.
While some may feel like this amounts to little more than taking a step-back and reevaluating how we leverage social media, that might not be enough to fix dwindling Social Capital. In fact, social media might just be closer to the heart of the problem than to a solution: “Traditional” social media, if you’ll allow the term, is typically far too discursive and gamified to try and gauge the efficacy of one’s social network. Likes don’t always mean that they’ll actually attend, and follows don’t even necessarily mean that they’re real people. Add to this things like prominent verified badges or a cryptopunk profile pic, and it becomes nigh impossible to accurately assess the value you, I or we possess within our shared digital environment.
…and that’s where Community Building Platforms come in! At their best, these can provide a one-stop package for you or your organization to build thriving online communities that add to your Social Capital, and can be mobilized to enact the kind of change we talked about earlier.
Dara in particular was started with great faith in the idea that our environments go a long way in determining the success and value of our endeavors. And so, we’ve designed her to provide several highly focused features that make every facet of generating Social Capital easy, intuitive and non-intrusive. We’re committed to creating a digital environment that is welcoming and nurtures positive-sum outcomes, both on and off her platform.
If you’re on the fence about giving us a shot, go here to read more about what Dara can do for you. Or, if you’d like to dip your toes in our growing network of organizations, entrepreneurs, creators and changemakers, come right on over to https://www.dara.network/, and meet some of the best in the Creative, Cultural and Changemaking Sectors.
Don’t hesitate to reach out to support@dara.network if you have any questions or suggestions. Or, you can message Dara’s team directly on Dara here.
Written by Manu Sharma, Former Communications Lead at Dara
References
Putnam, Robert D. 1995. “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital.” Journal of Democracy 6, no. 1 (January): 65–78. https://www.tesd.net/cms/lib/PA01001259/Centricity/Domain/1114/BowlingAlone.pdf
Richardson, John G. 1986. Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. Edited by John G. Richardson. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. https://home.iitk.ac.in/~amman/soc748/bourdieu_forms_of_capital.pdf.
