Society building - welfare, time and social capital

Social capital is a relatively new concept compared to welfare, though debates on the advantages of different welfare regimes and thelinks between state provision and social participation are tentatively connecting the two areas. Esping-Andersen classifies welfareregimes into three types - market-focused liberal, status-focused corporatist, and equality-focused social democratic regimes. Each hasbeen well studied with regards to the effects of commodification (market dependency), stratification (inequality and stigma), andfamilialisation (paternalistic family dependency). However, such focus largely upon economic rather than social concerns. This thesisexamines the proposition that welfare can ‘build society’ by promoting these social aspects otherwise known as social capital.The social capital concept has definition and measurement problems with causality and the capture of social activities rather than justnorms. Acknowledging, this, social capital is preferably defined from the literature as norms of trust, networks of associationmembership, and practices of volunteering and socialising. A critical reading highlights the importance of separating bonding socialcapital, as captured in Bourdieu and Coleman’s exclusive networks, from bridging social capital, more akin to Putnam’s civil societyand thus closer to social welfare. This thesis examines numerous empirical measures of bridging social capital, by looking at normsand networks through the World Values Survey, and practices through the Multinational Time Use Study across nine OECD countries.Results show that social democratic welfare regimes do promote social capital, with high levels of trust, membership and socialactivity. Corporatist welfare regimes show low but constant levels of social capital, whilst liberal welfare regimes have experienceddeclines in trust. Increasingly means-tested liberal regimes register high levels of commodification, with poor work-leisure balances,and are also more stratified with