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