INDIVIDUALISM-COLLECTIVISM AND SOCIAL CAPITAL AT THE INDIVIDUAL LEVEL

1. Introduction The concept of social capital is currently one of the trendiest terms in the social and behavioral sciences. It has been widely used in disciplines as diverse as sociology, economics, political science, and psychology for about the last twenty years (Halpern 2005, Realo and Allik 2009). Many believe that social capital is the much sought answer to the question of what it is in a community that brings people together for common purposes, a question much older than the social sciences themselves. The concept first drew wider attention when Pierre Bourdieu and James Coleman adopted it independently from one another for the theoretical explanations of their empirical findings. Bourdieu (1985) defined social capital as "the sum total of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual (or a group) by virtue of being enmeshed in a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition" (p. 248). Coleman (1988) claimed that social capital facilitates certain actions of individuals within the social structure. Since then, social capital has been treated in two ways in the literature and research: both as an individual asset and as a feature of communities and nations. Originally, both Pierre Bourdieu and James Coleman focused on individuals (or small groups) as the unit of analysis. The concept of social capital was later extended to the level of larger groups by Robert Putnam (Portes 2000). In Putnam's interpretation, it became an attribute of communities and nations. In Bowling Alone, which quickly made social capital one of the most frequently cited concepts in the social sciences, Robert Putnam (2000) claims that the basis of social capital is that social networks are valuable. After all, collective action strongly depends upon social networks and the trustworthiness of fellow citizens. Cooperation and coordination for mutual benefit are facilitated by reciprocity and trust. Despite the fact that the exact meaning of social capital is still widely debated, it seems that most authors agree that social trust or trustworthiness constitutes the core of social capital (Paxton 2002, Portes 1998). According to Paxton (1999), social capital involves at least two important components: objective associations between individuals (i.e. individuals are tied to each other in social life) and a subjective form of association (the ties between individuals must be trustworthy and reciprocal). For Putnam (2000), too, social capital "refers to connections among individuals--social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them" (p. 19). Social capital is considered important in many regards, as higher levels of social capital have been associated with many desirable outcomes, such as faster social and economic development, greater effectiveness of political systems, and better health (for a review, see Portes 1998). At the same time, low levels of social capital may have much less desirable consequences. And, like all other forms of capital, social capital is, unfortunately, not evenly distributed. Putnam (2002) has argued that, given that it has accumulated most among those who need it least, social capital may, in fact, conceivably be even less equitably distributed than financial and human capital. The results of international research show this to be the case (Cox 2002, Offe and Fuchs 2002, Skockpol 2002, Wuthnow 2002). Indeed, previous research has shown that social capital at the individual level is dependent on many socioeconomic factors, such as age, gender, education, and income (for a review, see Kaasa and Parts 2007), indicating that many acquired as well as attributed properties of individuals may affect the quality of social capital at their disposal. Most importantly, however, Putnam (2000) alerted us to the fact that, in most Western countries, many national-level indicators of social capital have shown signs of decline over the past few decades. …