Social Capital and Local Development

In this paper, Trigilia argues that the concept of social capital can be helpful in understanding local development as well as
with formulating more appropriate policies. Trigilia explores how social capital relates to the study of economic development
and examines the variables in cases where positive consequences for development occur.

According to Trigilia, the concept of social capital first began to be used in the sixties. Trigilia describes social

capitalism this way:

"Social capital can be considered as a set of social relations of which a single subject (for instance, an entrepreneur or a

worker) or a collective subject (either private or public) can make use at any given moment. Through the availability of this

capital of relations, cognitive resources - such as information - or normative resources - such as trust - allow actors to

realize objectives which would not otherwise be realized, or which could be obtained at a much higher cost. Moving from the

individual to the aggregate level, it may also be said that a particular territorial context is more or less rich with social capital depending on the extent to which the individual or collective subjects of the stressed that this definition,

taken from Coleman (1990: 300), places a greater emphasis on social networks as the basis of social capital rather than on

shared culture, trust and civicness, as in the well-known studies by Robert Putnam (1993) and Francis Fukuyama (1995)."

One key question that Trigilia explores is "Why has social capital become more important?" Over recent years interest in the positive consequences of social capital on economic development has grown. The first stages included the growing role of the state and industrial relations. Trigilia refers to "Fordism" an expression that refers to the differentiation of the economy from society: it reduced the importance of factors such as personal entrepreneurship and the local institutional context, which therefore included the reduction of social capital in economic development. New economic realities included economies of scale, replacing entrepreneurs with managers, institutionalisation of different productive stages, and controlled the labour and product markets. The result was companies becoming more autonomous from their environments. Trigilia describes that in this framework "the non-economic factors which most influenced development were mainly of two types. At the micro-level, they involved the organizational capacity of the firm – the “visible hand” of the organization (Chandler, 1977).

At the macro-level, state policies were crucial, both the Keynesian ones which aimed at stabilizing the market, and policies

that attracted large external firms by means of incentives and infrastructures for backward areas."

In working toward an understanding of cultural identity in networks of groups, Trigilia refers to research carried out by

Weber who developed an analytical path that demonstrated that "the idea that the positive functions of the social networks of

a religious type do not depend only on cultural conditions but also on political ones." He further postulates that "the rule

of law should be well established and predictable, and the bureaucratic structures of the state should function according to
universal rules. Only under these conditions social networks could sustain the modern capitalism based on the market." Based

on Weber's line of thinking, it is "not possible to define a priori the effects of social capital on economic

development."

Trigilia describes more recent trends as the idea of local development being tied to the capacity to learn, and to developing

specialised areas of knowledge which can add to productivity and more attention is paid to social networks at the local level.

Trigilia describes a good endowment of social capital as allowing "for policies which are more efficient and effective for

promoting human capital and specialized knowledge, and for providing collective goods such as services for firms and

infrastructure." He goes on to describe social capital as "a strategic resource to favour the competitiveness of a certain

territory and therefore its positive integration in a globalized market."

In conclusion Trigilia asserts that "recent changes in the organization of production, as well as the process of globalization, are increasing the importance of social capital for local development....Today, even more than in the past, economic development has a social dimension that cannot be ignored."