In terms of capital, low-income families of color certainly do not lack either intellectual or cultural capital. They all have brains and they all have a rich history. Whether they use their brains or are interested in their rich history is not the focus of this discussion. What they lack is the social capital that is developed by trusting, interacting, and connecting with people who have similar worlds and interests. The realities facing urban neighborhoods, for instance, actually create isolation and distrust of neighbors.
So often I find myself attempting to accurately portray what low-income families lack in terms of their ability to control their own world. While am obvious first need is financial resources, another need is what we theorist call social capital. The following is a carefully written piece on my understanding of social capital and its use in urban areas and its affect on school performance
Social Capital. If educational capital is primarily focused on the individual community member, social capital is concerned with the way community members connect with each other in their collective relationship to the school. In terms of working definitions, Michael Woolcock and Deepa Narayan (2000) wrote that social capital was “the norms and networks that enable people to act collectively” (p. 226), while Warren, et al., (2010) believed social capital was a “resource that inheres in the relationships between people, allowing them to act collectively to achieve agreed-upon ends” (p. 2211-2212). Kevin Leyden (2003) wrote that social capital was the “social networks and interactions that inspire trust and reciprocity among citizens” (p. 1546). Daniel Brisson and Charles Usher (2005) defined social capital as the “network of trusting relationships that exist in a community for community members and creates benefits for community members” (p. 644).
Angela
Valenzuela (1999) wrote that social capital emphasizes “networks of trust and
solidarity among actors wishing to attain goals that cannot be individually
attained (p. 21) and this collective unity translates into power. She also notes that social capital is derived
from the “non-rationalistic, emotional commitments among individuals who are
embedded in supportive networks” (p. 27).
Indeed, the famous sociologist Amatai Etzioni wrote that faith in social
capital was based on a belief in the power of the “reinvention of the spirit of
community” (in Riley, 2008, p. 312) to be part of unified mobilization effort
for change.
Given
conditions in impoverished urban areas, the need to increase social capital is
essential. Janice Hiroata and Lauren
Jacobs (2003), for instance, have identified high levels of social capital as
an essential part of marginalized groups’ preparedness to become more active
and involved in challenging conditions in schools and the surrounding
communities. Saying that even in the
“poorest neighborhoods there exists strengths and capacities to be tapped,” (p.
255), Jean Anyon (2005) wrote that “the existence of active residents in
poverty neighborhoods belies the stereotype of a passive, unconcerned
population” (p. 120). The development of
social capital in neighborhoods considered “high risk, needy, or vulnerable”
(Cohen-Vogel, Goldring, and Smerkar, 2010, p. 53) represents a way for these
fragmented communities to rediscover the power that results from cohesion and
unity. Woolcock and Narayan (2000)
characterized social capital as an “asset, one that can be called on in a
crisis and leveraged for material gain” (p. 226).
In
her book Subtractive Schooling:
U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring, Angela Valenzuela (1999)
talked about the way school structures and cultures have created social
“decapitalization” (p. 29) in certain schools.
She talks about, for instance, the way tracking in schools have created
exclusionary behaviors among students.
The sense of cohesion and unity that is part of social capital has been
disrupted by school policies, as well as a school culture where these kinds of
programs overwhelm a caring environment.
In his work on the history of neighborhoods initiatives to address
poverty, Robert Halpern (1995) believes poverty, inequality, and segregation have
created what he calls the “difference dilemma” (p. 230), which is not only the
real difference in economic, political, social, and educational realities
between urban and suburban areas, but difference in behavior that have resulted
from exposure to these conditions.
Marginalized groups are also characterized by an attitude of exclusion
and this attitude is a real obstacle to the kind of collective mobilization
that is needed for real change.
These
theorists point out the value of collective, unified action as part of a
movement to change conditions in urban neighborhoods. What is needed, then, are learning programs
that target the sources of this exclusionary attitude. One of the important
intentions of social capital building programs is to create learning that
reconnects community members in ways that allow them to rediscover their
collective strength. Given that
inequality in resources and power have caused this fragmented state, Warren
(2005) argued that it was essential that urban communities participate in
programs that specifically address current levels of social capital. Warren
believed high levels of social capital gave rise to relational power parents
and the community needed to challenge the conditions that created and
perpetuated inequality. Relational power
translated to collective unity, and that unity allowed previously marginalized
groups to constructively confront conditions and realities that had produced
underperformance in schools. One of the
keys to tapping into the collective passions of groups appears to be the
ability to create learning processes and experiences that strengthened the
bonds between them.
When
the Coleman Study (1967) concluded that school underperformance in high poverty
neighborhoods could be explained by weak community norms and low levels of
trust, and not inadequate facilities and economic disparities, it put the focus
for change on the importance of human relationships found in these
communities. Concluding that “social
capital was absolutely essential to a strong community,” (p. S101), Coleman
wrote that reforms should focus on building relations that strengthened
collective behavior, arguing that groups within which there “is extensive
trustworthiness and extensive trust are able to accomplish much more than a
comparable group without trustworthiness and trust” (p. S101). High levels of social capital create energy
and unity that translates into collective action on behalf of school
improvement.
Social capital,
then, is a behavior that can be at least partially constructed—or
deconstructed—by addressing conditions and realities in neighborhoods because,
after all, it is these very conditions that have created behavior. Because the premise of social capital is
rooted in social relationships, the first step in building social capital is to
create opportunities for communities to reconnect. Keith (1996) emphasized the importance of
grass roots, informal, democratic activities that acted to connect and unify
the community. She talked about how community fairs, neighborhood walks, and
town hall-like public reports on the state of the neighborhood allowed the
community to “be nourished from its own base” (p. 257).
Kevin Leyden
(2003) studied the way neighborhoods created walkable areas to enable or encourage
social ties and community connections.
In a similar study, researchers Robert Sampson, Jeffrey Morenoff and
Thomas Gannon-Rowley (2002) synthesized data on 40 urban social
capital-building programs aimed at transforming neighborhoods. They found neighborhood community gardens,
play areas, and the creation of green space were having the desired effect of
reuniting urban communities and concluded these programs created the following
attitudes and corresponding behaviors:
The willingness of
residents to intervene on behalf of children may depend, in larger part, on
conditions of mutual trust and shared expectations among residents. One is
unlikely to intervene in a neighborhood context where the rules are unclear and
people mistrust or fear one another. (p. 457)
In
a later study, Coleman (1987) tied the building of social capital to a dominant
value system that bound groups together and was strengthened by what William
Cutler (2000) argued was open and honest communication between home and school. Coleman attributed the successful performance
of Catholic schools to the existence of a value system that unified
participants. The building of a
relationship between the two groups was based on the power of ideas to exert
control over actions and behaviors and agreement between two disparate groups
about the fundamental truth of these ideas to produce action.
However,
for both Coleman (1987) and Cutler (2000), the school remains primarily
responsible for creating high levels of social capital among the community—understood
here as parents who are suffering from the negative effects of social
isolation. As Cutler wrote, “Coleman
maintained that school could increase the social capital of their communities
by strengthening both parent-teacher and parent-parent relationships” (p.
197). The real challenge is for
educational theorists to transition away from thinking of the school as the
dominant (only) partner in creating social capital and move towards
community-based organizations as a source of social capital building. Neighborhood-based institutions are certainly
capable of organizing more formal community learning programs that build social
capital in neighborhoods.
In
response to the poor educational conditions faced by Blacks in the Mississippi
Delta areas, the Mississippi Educational Working Group (MEWG), for instance,
implemented a variety of programs which provided leadership training to its
local community members and then helped place them on neighborhood planning
boards that worked with schools (Lambright, 2001). These home grown leaders drafted legislation,
sat on educational boards, and built political relationships with key
politicians. They also implemented an
extensive communications network with the local community, which became an
important source of education and information about the state of Black
education in this area. Nsombi Lambright (2001) found MEWG was an important
part of a process that changed Black community behavior from one of “isolation
and powerlessness to one where there was common ground on which they could work
together and that unity enabled them to have “collective impact” (p. 11) in
challenging the combination of political and educational neglect in this
region.
The
Southeastern Taskforce (SET), a Baltimore based local CBO employed a
grass-roots approach to social capital building that included door-to-door
education of the neighborhood, as well as the mobilization of churches,
community groups, and neighborhood leaders in developing a neighborhood
revitalization agenda that included a great deal of community engagement (Gray and Wheeldreyer, 2001). According to Richard Gray and Laura
Wheeldreyer (2001), SET established a Church Outreach group that provided
easy-to-understand information that contributed to the development of common
understanding among the immigrant population.
Lastly, and perhaps most important for the collective dimension so
important to social capital, SET organized parent meetings that enabled parents
to gather and share their school-related concerns and because teachers and
administrators respected SET, attendance by these two groups was usually quite
high.
What
both SET and MEWG did was organize social capital building around issues that
were determined by the very community in which they lived and worked. They then built structures that would
provide the community with forums allowing them to constructively participate
with schools. The structure became part
of the process for not only building social capital, but for ensuring the plan
had brought input and buy-in from previously marginalized groups. It also increased the educational capital of
parents and community participants.
While
these are examples of local, grass roots, organized activities that can
increase levels of social capital, in his work on urban neighborhoods, theorist
William Julius Wilson (1997) discussed the way economic conditions affected
what he called the neighborhood’s social organization, which he defined as “the
extent to which residents of a neighborhood are able to maintain effective
social control and realize their common goals” (p. 20). In his study of Chicago urban neighborhoods, Wilson argued that high levels of joblessness led to low levels of social
organization, which affected “friendship ties, the degree of social cohesion,
the level of resident participation in formal and informal voluntary
association, the density and stability of formal organizations, and the nature
of informal social control” (p. 20).
What
we have is a contrast in the origins of collective behavior, then, with
Wilson’s (1997) social organization primarily determined by economic conditions
and Coleman’s social capital created through “relations (his italics) among people” (S100-101). Indeed, Wilson’s argument was that social organization
as a behavior could be explained by neighborhood economic conditions whereas
Coleman believed that social capital actually created human capital necessary
for economic activity. Coleman resisted
the economic determinism that characterized Wilson’s work. Jean Anyon (1995,
1997, and 2005) also realized that economic conditions influenced community
behavior, but she described in great detail the impact social, political,
cultural and educational policies had in creating neighborhood behavior. Health care, housing, political neglect and
fair wages were among a number of factors that influenced social behavior. All needed to be addresses as part of a broad
approach to creating conditions that would allow the community to behave
differently.
However,
Anyon (2005) also talked about the important role that churches, schools, and
non-profits could play in creating learning conditions that could reenergize
and reconnect the community. For Anyon,
the origins of social capital were found in the structures, policies, learning,
and institutions that worked in unison to create a mobilized community
well-prepared to mobilize on behalf of social, educational, economic, and
political justice. High levels of social
capital were created by programs held in these institutions and this led to
what she called “movement building,” which characterized the behavior of a
group that was unified and mobilized by a just cause. Movement building was the powerful action of
collective energy.
Warren’s
(2010) relational power had much in common with movement building because it
was the behavioral outcome of a community prepared to engage on behalf of
policies that affected education. Social
capital and relational power enable communities to reconnect on the basis of
common interests and the strength and confidence it needs to exert pressure on
schools and politicians. In this
context, social capital, like educational capital, is a source of energy that
enables the community to think and behave differently. Although an important contrast between the
two is that educational capital
building ties action to the individual and social capital aims to strengths the
collective will, both correctly identify the importance of new learning
processes that create a community capable of constructively engaging on behalf
of school improvement.
Ultimately,
though, the principle challenge, as pointed out by Julie White and Gary Wehlage
(1995) was simply that “social capital is difficult to build.” (p. 34). Echoing this thought, Robert Sampson, Jeffrey
Morenoff, and Thomas Gannon-Rowley (2002) said one of challenges facing social
capital as part of a reform strategy was developing a suitable set of criteria
to measure the effectiveness of these programs to actually change neighborhood
behavior. Warren recognized the
difficulty of assessing the impact of social capital when he wrote that signs
of improvement in Logan Square neighborhood schools were partially based on
anecdotal evidence. Spirit and will do
not necessarily lend themselves to quantifiable evaluation for their
effectiveness, but social capital theorists certainly believe the existence of
these qualities can impact school improvement.
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