Social Capital
A concept for understanding the value of relationships, trust, networks and norms that help people act together or access opportunity.
Robert Putnam and wider social capital field
This page is a plain-English practice summary. It attributes the source field and avoids presenting the framework as Positively Devious intellectual property.
What this framework helps with
- mapping bridging and bonding relationships
- understanding access to opportunity
- designing programmes that build networks, not just skills
Three questions it helps teams ask
- Who is connected to whom, and who is isolated?
- Which relationships bridge difference or open opportunity?
- Where do networks reinforce exclusion?
How to use it in youth and community work
Use Social Capital as a lens for better decisions, not as a script. Start with the local context, invite the people affected by the work into the interpretation, and turn the framework into practical questions, design choices and learning habits.
For Positively Devious, this framework matters because it helps explain one part of the wider conditions around positive deviance: the relationships, opportunities, skills, systems and power arrangements that make uncommon positive outcomes more likely to be noticed and learned from.
What to watch out for
- networks can exclude as well as include
- social capital should not replace material investment
- quality and power in relationships matter