What Is Coleman’s Social Capital the Name of? A Critique of a Not Very Social Capital

Abstract

Coleman’s concept of social capital has acquired an eminent place within various regions of the current sociological imagination as well as in policy discourses. Yet, it is founded on some very questionable premises. This article starts by reconstructing and assessing the problem – theoretical and empirical – that Coleman’s social capital sought to respond to. Then it examines the sociological thrust of social capital to show how Coleman’s formulation of the concept is caught up in some irreconcilable tensions, some logical problems with ideological implications, and some conceptual blurriness and silences around structures of inequality and the ways in which these structures causally mediate many aspects of what Coleman gathers under the name of social capital. It also shows how social capital is premised on a mix of communitarian, culturalist and familial axioms within a normative vision for suburban milieus where social capital features as a constitutive marker of territory.