This chapter focuses on the entanglement between people within sites. Analysing evidence for specialized crafts in emporia, it asks why craftspeople went there, and how they contributed to make these places into hubs of particular social networks. It issues from the key observation that crafting activities in emporia were not only dependent on far-flung networks with other locations, but also on entangled webs of people and processes within the immediate community. The need for access to raw materials, opportunities for learning, markets and, perhaps more than anything, the need for collaboration between specialized artisans, was a decisive incentive for strangers to congregate at specific sites. Craft workers in emporia were dependent on these different elements to practise their trade. As a by-product, their work was able to bridge social relationships, which contributed to the social capital of an otherwise inconsistent community. Such interactions thus gave an unprecedented prominence to weak social ties in the intersections of roles and personhood in individuals, and, more broadly, at the level of the assemblage.

Chapter 1 provides a conceptual overview of innovative entrepreneurship and its role in contemporary advanced economies. Largely AI-free by design, the chapter serves as a micro-founded point of departure for the analysis developed in the rest of the book. It first revisits the role of the entrepreneur in introducing innovation, contrasting entrepreneurial activity with innovation carried out by large firms, and situates this discussion within the Schumpeterian Mark I and Mark II frameworks. The chapter then examines how institutions shape the direction and quality of entrepreneurial effort, drawing on the classic contributions of North and Baumol. The chapter subsequently outlines the main stages of the entrepreneurial process – idea identification or creation, evaluation, and exploitation – adopting the term ‘entrepreneurial idea’ rather than ‘opportunity’. Then, it focuses on the three core pillars of innovative entrepreneurial success: founders’ human capital, social capital, and access to financial capital, with particular emphasis on venture capital. While explicitly rejecting deterministic interpretations of entrepreneurial outcomes, the chapter distances itself from views that reduce entrepreneurial success to purely random processes. It argues instead that these three pillars systematically increase, on average, the likelihood that innovative start-ups survive, grow, and succeed in the market.

As co-management often involves resource-using community participation, understanding of what is meant and understood by the concept of community is critical. The chapter therefore begins by recognising the contested nature of the concept of ‘community’, noting critique of assumptions regarding shared interests and priorities, and reflects on different forms of community, how communities may emerge over time and recognition of ‘delocalisation’ of communities in relation to natural resource governance. Different bases of social cohesion are then considered and forms of the related concept of social capital reviewed. Insights from research into how cohesion and social capital influence co-management emphasise the centrality of relationships. Given that co-management may involve multiple and diverse communities, representation of actors is generally necessary. The section on representation considers what representation implies and what bases of representation have been found within the experience of co-management.

This chapter explores the transatlantic and global mobility of Romani families from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. It focuses on their development of “mobility capital,” a form of social expertise in navigating international migration systems. Case studies highlight how Roma drew on kinship networks, economic skills (e.g., coppersmithing) and strategic self-presentation to cross borders and adapt to varied legal and cultural contexts. Far from being passive victims of discrimination, these families actively shaped and reshaped their identities, legal statuses and migration strategies. Using a wide range of archival sources, the work argues for a shift from “methodological nationalism” to a transnational perspective on migration, by showing how Romani itineraries challenged existing notions of borders, belonging and mobility.

The epilogue reviews the central conclusion—that racial reckoning must focus mainly on material accountability for cumulative racial inequality, especially at the local and state level—before summarizing many of the principles, goals and strategies discussed in the previous chapters. For instance, a key principle is to view policies about the way public goods are distributed through the lens of racial equity, even if the solution is to pursue race-neutral means. An underlying goal is to promote democracy through the deconcentration of social capital. The strategies that follow include specific, mostly localized policy choices in the areas on which the book focuses: place-based inequality, the racial wealth gap, racial health disparities, deterrence of police misconduct, DEI and equitable growth at the local level. There is also a brief example of a reparations program for urban renewal.

This chapter explores how elements of ‘sense of place’—place dependence, identity, and attachment—are essential for creating liveable, healthy communities. It discusses how community social interaction, cohesion (sense of community), and collective action enhance liveability. Addressing frequent shortcomings in defining and measuring ‘liveability’, the authors integrate recent geospatial population health research to establish connections between place, health, development, and policy. A framework linking community cognitions, attachment, and social action in response to environmental threats and disruptions is applied to brief case studies from Bulgaria and the United States illustrating varied community responses aimed at healthier, more liveable environments. Recommendations include leveraging liveability audits to evaluate local and regional impacts of disruptions, articulating threats to community identity and economic wellbeing, and embedding psychological conceptions of place into public-health and urban-planning assessments. This integrated, ecological approach aims to strengthen community responses and inform policy decisions supporting population health and wellbeing

Social network ties represent an important and complex confluence of sundry social processes and their consequences. It is an enduring fact of life that the more socially connected a person is, the better off they are. This goes for well-being, for health, for social stature, for popularity and prestige, for social mobility, and for access to material resources. Social connections give people power. They plug people into a switchboard of opportunities and resources, making them part of a resource-rich social system. Social connections liberate people from the stringencies of what might otherwise be stultifying conditions of everyday life. They create trust and produce the capacity for collective action to deal with local and regional social problems. They help people live longer lives. And social connections generally make life more fun, and richer, in every sense of those terms. It is a bundle of benefits that cannot be unwound. This introductory chapter lays out the primary motivation behind this book, which is an attempt to understand whether everyone has equal access to these valuable social resources, and whether they are so potent as to substitute for other valuable resources, such as wealth and prestige, in shaping people’s life chances.

Because social capital is an inherently multidimensional concept, its study calls for a detailed analysis of a wide variety of social resources, ranging from intimate personal relationships with friends and family to linkages to the broader community via involvement in clubs, groups, and other organizations. Research on this topic usually focuses on particular aspects of social capital, often drawing on just one data source or measure. This chapter describes the wide range of measures we interrogate in our analysis and the numerous data sources upon which it is based, including sources such as the General Social Survey (GSS), the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), the Current Population Survey (CPS), the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality (MCSUI), the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), and nearly two dozen other data sources – some nationally representative, some more regionalized, including an analysis of urban elites’ networks in a large city. This chapter clarifies the conceptualizations of social capital implied by this data coverage. It also lays out the steps we take in analyzing these data, including different types of descriptive analysis, heavy reliance on tables and figures, and a parsimonious and uniform approach to multivariate analysis.

The overarching question that guides this chapter is: Are social ties, and the resources they represent, equally distributed throughout society? That is, are these connections so free and abundant that they transcend the relentless constraints that people face in obtaining other forms of capital? In particular, do people from disadvantaged backgrounds enjoy the same level of access to such ties as wealthy people? This requires close examination of factors such as people’s connectedness to friends and family; the number of such ties they have and how often they engage them; how much turnover and instability there is in people’s networks; the internal wiring of the networks in which they are embedded, and how that relates to dense connections and brokerage potential; the status and wealth of their contacts; involvement in exchange processes; and connections to community organizations. This chapter navigates the thicket of findings regarding the distribution of these various forms of social capital by first walking through analyses of personal, micro-level connections, and then proceeding upward to more macro-level, organization-oriented indicators. This set of analyses reveals some latent, surprising, and fateful truths about how universally bountiful and reachable these valuable social resources really are.

From its humble beginnings in the hills of Appalachia – where Weber, while witnessing a baptism, had his epiphany about the importance of clubs and groups as resources – the concept of social capital has captured the attention of thousands of social scientists. It is a concept that lends itself to multidimensional interpretations in many disciplines, including sociology, economics, and political science. Classical theorists such as de Tocqueville, Durkheim, Weber, and Simmel laid the groundwork for more focused treatments of the concept. These include unique conceptualizations and expansions that have focused on different aspects forms of social network ties, stemming from the work of scholars such as Bourdieu, Coleman, Burt, Lin, and Putnam. Together, these theories culminated in the perspective that social connections are valuable resources that can change the course of people’s lives. They point to the role that hidden features of social structure, such as the presence of structural holes in networks, play in channeling resources across social groups. They also raise the specter that valuable features of networks are unequally distributed throughout the population in such a way as to confer greater advantage upon those who are already wealthy and powerful.

One of the most spirited debates about social capital raises the promising and reassuring prospect that the social connections and networks in which it resides are so omnipotent as to serve as an optional equal substitute for other valuable resources such as wealth. Some scholars are optimistic in this regard, seeing social ties as potential social levelers. Others, in recognizing the extraordinary value of these ties, are less certain, feeling that anything that is so incredibly valuable as social capital appears to be will inevitably be closely intertwined with other forms of capital: that is, that social capital and more material resources – such as money – tend to move together. This chapter undertakes an analysis of all of the varieties of social capital that were examined, theorized, and documented earlier chapters, with an eye toward assessing the extent to which they are associated with income in particular. These analyses tell us a lot about how universally “free” these ties really are, and provide a provisional answer to the question about whether social capital is a potentially viable substitute for material resources, or whether the two forms of capital are inseparably tied together.

It is tempting and heartening to think of social relationships as readily available substitutes for access to other, harder-to-reach resources such as money. Imagine the social problems that could be solved if they were: the promise that as long as one is sociable, all of the resources one needs to maximize one’s life chances are there for the taking. As one steps back and takes in the body of evidence we present, though, it does not take long for doubts concerning the more optimistic scenario to settle in – suggesting that impoverished people will continue to toil in poverty in spite of their theoretical access to social relationships, and elites will continue to enjoy power, prestige, and prosperity because of these connections. This is not to say that social relationships do not confer their own rewards and help ease the pressures of everyday life. That is part of their enduring power. But for a variety of reasons, discussed in this chapter, it may not be enough to overcome the constraints on access to other forms of capital that are embedded in social structure. Understanding the causes and consequences of this potentiality will remain of vital importance in future social science research.

If the past half-century of social science research has taught us anything, it has taught us both that people can gain advantages and resources through social networks and, at the same time, that any valuable resource is prone to unsparing social inequality. This book is therefore motivated by the worrying concern that access to social network ties is not, in fact, distributed equally throughout the population. This chapter outlines the scope and structure of our foray into this complex problem. It briefly discusses the outline of the book, addressing what we cover in each chapter: the theoretical origins of and controversies surrounding the concept of social capital, introducing the questions of how it is distributed throughout society and whether it is linked to other forms of capital (Chapter 2); an overview of the data and methods we use to study this topic (Chapter 3); a detailed set of analyses using multiple indicators and data sources to ascertain how social capital is distributed (Chapter 4); an examination of how social capital is linked to other valuable resources, such as money (Chapter 5); and our ultimate conclusions and suggestions for future research on this topic (Chapter 6).

Reflective civics is a duty and delight for free people, especially Americans, given our founding principles viewing citizenship as not only a right but also a duty and a matter of sacred honor. American schooling K-16, and civic culture, can redress our recent deficits of civic health and of individual mental and spiritual health by emphasizing the higher meaning provided throughout the study of, and civil discussion about, citizenship and self-government in both civil society and public affairs. Then sections on (a) Civic Friendship and Replenishing America’s Civic Capital – including renewal of civil society and voluntary associations; (b) A Sputnik Moment for Academia: Restoring a Higher Civics – emphasizing the need for professors and higher education leaders to provide guidance and a good example on renewing civics, and supporting its renewal in K-12 schooling and civic culture; and (c) Lincoln’s Higher Call – that a renewed civics across K-16 and American culture should emphasize the consensus-forging figure of Lincoln, his magnanimity and statesmanship in the Second Inaugural in particular, calling for “malice toward none” and “charity for all.”