Bridges in social capital: A review of the definitions and the social capital of social capital researchers


Semih Akçomak

#2009-002

There has been a recent surge of interest in social economics and social capital. Articles on social capital that are published in the last five years constitute more than 60 percent of all articles on social capital. Research on social capital is now massive and spans sociology, economics, management, political science and health sciences. Despite this interest there is still not a consensus on the definition and the measurement of social capital. This paper argues that this is due to lack of interaction between disciplines. The social capital of social capital researchers is low between disciplines. Different from other theories of capital, social capital theory has concurrently been developed by various disciplines and as such, advancements in social capital research could only be achieved by conducting crossdisciplinary research.

Key words: Capital, social capital, co-authorship network

JEL codes: A13, Z1

UNU-MERIT Working Papers ISSN 1871-9872

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