 Social Policy and Development: Social Capital as Point of DepartureBen Fine Chapter 4 in Social Policy in a Development Context, 2004, pp 80-96 from Palgrave Macmillan Abstract: Abstract The relationship between the economic and the social has ever been theoretically uneasy. The result has often been a hardening into one of two extremes. As perceived by neo-liberalism, the economy is best left to the market and, at most, the social is viewed as a necessary evil, required to oil the wheels of commerce. In contrast, the alternative stance is to emphasize both micro and macro market imperfections and, thereby, to understand the social as an essential means to correct them. I suspect and welcome that the intellectual, ideological and policy mood is currently swinging away from the first and towards the second position. One indicator of this is the extent to which the social, often previously rounded up in the notion of ‘civil society’, has increasingly been seen as both an instrument and a goal of economic and social policy. Nonetheless, a casual reading of any area of such literature, accompanied by a modicum of critical thinking, suggests a number of cautionary tales. Keywords: Social Capital; Civil Society; Social Policy; Welfare State; Social Theory (search for similar items in EconPapers) There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:sopchp:978-0-230-52397-5_4 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Social Policy in a Development Context from Palgrave Macmillan |
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