scholarly journals Social Capital, Innovation, and Local Resilience

Asian Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 283-313
Author(s):  
Heide Imai ◽  
Yao Ji
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Community Identity ◽  
Informal Networks ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Resilient Communities ◽  
Local Resilience ◽  
Research Findings

This paper is based on research that centres on the city of Tokyo, a mature city that is experiencing various transformations, in order to show how social capital and innovation can help build up resilient communities. It presents two major topics: 1) the potential of localities and their social capital and social innovation to actively react to change, and 2) the role of localities for inclusive urban governance. By focusing on five small neighbourhoods in the south of Taito-ward in central-east Tokyo, the paper addresses the following questions: a) what kinds of social networks and interaction exist at the local level, b) how are residents contributing to neighbourhood revitalization and community identity, and c) what are specific examples of social innovative practices, emerging in periods of crisis, in the case-study area as a direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic? By adopting a mixed methods approach drawing especially on in-depth interviews conducted with a range of independent business owners, the study reveals the dynamics between long-term residents and newcomers as they negotiate shared identities that continue to shape the present and future of some of Tokyo’s oldest neighbourhoods. The research findings highlight the need for good urban governance to draw on an improved understanding of the potential of localities, place-based social capital building, and new social practices that are emerging in local third sectors, such as volunteer-run industry-based organizations, which are vital in maintaining informal networks as an alternative to more traditional neighbourhood groups to bond, bridge, and link diverse community members.

Blueprints for the Future of Welfare Provision? Shared Features of Service Innovations across Europe

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Ewert ◽  
Adalbert Evers
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Innovations ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
The One ◽  
Eu Project ◽  
Welfare Reforms

This article discusses localised forms of social innovation in social services in relation to social policy and welfare issues. It draws upon research findings from the EU project ‘Welfare Innovations at the local Level in favour of Cohesion’ (WILCO), which takes in social innovations in twenty European cities. First, we argue why there is currently a significant gap between the debate on social innovation and the debate on social welfare reforms. Second, we present attempts that have been made to identify and interpret recurring approaches and instruments in the social innovations studied in relation to various dimensions of the debate on social welfare and services, such as the search for new ways of addressing users and citizens; the emphasis on new risks and related approaches to the issues of rights and responsibilities; and finally the concern with issues of governance. We argue that the features of the local innovations we identified may be significant for welfare systems at large, going beyond the introduction of special new items in special fields. However, the degree to which this will come about in reality will depend on building more bridges of shared understanding between concerns with social innovation on the one hand and welfare reforms on the other hand.

scholarly journals Assessing the Impact of Social Innovation Education on Student’s Engagement

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 389
Author(s):  
Irene Kalemaki ◽  
Ioanna Garefi ◽  
Aristidis Protopsaltis
Keyword(s):  
Online Survey ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Positive Influence ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Educational Approach ◽  
Innovation In Education ◽  
Cognitive Behavioural ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Academic Year

This paper presents the findings of the H2020 NEMESIS project that aims to design, test and validate a consolidated approach for embedding Social Innovation in Education. Social Innovation Education (SIE) is a new educational approach that aims to empower students to take action for a more democratic and sustainable society. During the academic year 2018-2019, eight schools from five European countries applied the NEMESIS SIE framework by involving 56 teachers, 1030 students and 69 community members in a variety of SIE approaches. This paper reports on these attempts with a particular focus on analysing their impact on student’s engagement. Data were retrieved through focus groups with 80 people, an online survey to 206 students, interviews, classroom observations and students’ narratives. Research findings suggested positive outcomes for students in terms of emotional, cognitive, behavioural and agentic engagement. Findings also showed a positive influence of SIE on the cultivation and progression of students’ social innovation competences.  These initial findings have the potential to pave the way for more research in the under investigated field of SIE as well as to encourage policies and initiatives for promoting social innovation in education.

scholarly journals THE PRESENCE AND INSINUATION OF SOCIAL CANCER AMONG SEA INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN MALAYSIA

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-94
Author(s):  
W. A. Amir Zal
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Community Development ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Exploratory Case Study ◽  
Community Capital ◽  
The Social

Background and Purpose: Disturbances that hinder community development affect social capital. I refer to such disturbances as social cancer. This article aims at explaining the existence of social cancers, their typologies, and implications for Sea Indigenous People’s community development through economic activities.   Methodology: This exploratory case study involved 12 Sea Indigenous People in Johor, Malaysia. Data obtained through interviews were analysed using a thematic approach.   Findings: The findings revealed four types of social cancer in the community’s economic activities: 1) jealousy, 2) prejudice, 3) slander, and 4) defamation. Those social cancers had direct impacts on community development, specifically forming sabotage actions, negligence in using community capital, reducing community cohesiveness, causing a decline in the production of social innovation, and the existence of a hanging community and the death of the community.   Contributions: This study calls for a self-realisation mechanism to be introduced to community members so that their capacity for social capital can be developed to overcome the social cancer. Keywords: Community development, self-realisation mechanism, social cancer, social capital.   Cite as: Amir Zal, W. A. (2021). The presence and insinuation of social cancer among sea indigenous people in Malaysia.  Journal of Nusantara Studies, 6(1), 73-94. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol6iss1pp73-94

The Class of Social Capital: A Case Study in Barpak Village Coping and Recovering Process after the Gorkha Earthquake 2015

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-137
Author(s):  
Narayani Devkota
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Economic Capital ◽  
Community Member ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Gorkha Earthquake ◽  
Informal Group ◽  
Level Institution ◽  
Rescue And Relief

Social capital is one most important attribution of a resilient community. It is manifested in a human relationship or network between the community member such as family, friends, relatives, neighbourhood, membership on a formal and informal group of society, colleague and so on. This article is about the role of Social Capital to cope at the time of Gorkha Earthquake 2015 in  Barpak Village. The article is based on the primary data, which is collected through the interview with 28 ordinary people and a leader of Barpak Village after the Gorkha Earthquake 2015. In this article, I focused on a few key areas of social capital such as family, friendship and neighbourhood, people's involvement in the local level institution, job pattern or profession of a villager, social norm and value as responsibility for fellow community member, collective mobilization in the aftermath of the earthquake.  In the Course of my research I found the reality that social capital also closely tied with economic capital. In the rescue and relief time social capital work for all villagers or community members. But when villagers started to rebuild their house, economic capital became a core of social capital.   

scholarly journals The Sharing Economy and Social Capital: The Fictional Expectations of Sociality in a Time Bank

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 128-155
Author(s):  
Майя Андреевна Шмидт
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Sharing Economy ◽  
Market Exchange ◽  
Care Providers ◽  
Informal Networks ◽  
Generalized Trust ◽  
Professional Activities ◽  
Explanatory Hypothesis ◽  
Time Bank

This article looks at time banking ­– a system of exchange in which people trade services with one another using time instead of money as currency. Time banking is framed from a social work perspective as a social innovation that contributes to poverty alleviation and increasing inclusion. However, most such organizations fail to institutionalize as care providers and fail within the first three years. In this paper, I discuss a rare success story—a time bank in Nizhny Novgorod, the fourth largest city in Russia—which has been functioning for over 15 years and positioned itself as a non-charitable organization. I engage with sharing economy studies—a growing but ambiguous field—to explain the success of the time bank in Nizhny Novgorod. Research in the sharing economy has mostly concentrated on two extreme cases: business-to-customer operations or grassroots communities practicing radical alternatives to market exchange. The case studies have been united by an assumption that sharing economy organizations would generate social capital. However, there has been limited evidence to support this claim. In this article, I aim to test this hypothesis and explore whether the informal networks, norms of reciprocity and trust that are fostered among members of the Nizhny Novgorod time bank are the factors that explain the sustainability of this association. The study is informed by 22 in-depth interviews with the gatekeepers and members of this community. In the interviews, I paid attention to the socio-demographic characteristics of the participants and the structure of their social capital; the characteristics of the mode of exchange practiced in the community (the volume, direction, and range of services, the relatedness to professional activities and other spheres of life); their value set and worldview (egalitarianism, altruism, justice); and indicators of generalized trust. Results revealed that time bankers do not tend to create strong and sustainable relationships outside of the framework of the exchange. I put forward the following explanatory hypothesis: the calculativeness of time bankers, the market-driven valuations of ‘egalitarian’ service exchange and a unilateral attitude to the exchange are in conflict with a longing for Gemeinschaft—a community with strong bonding interdependence based on the norms of mutuality. This association failed to provide the conditions for generalized trust to emerge. The attempt to simultaneously create a tightly bonded community, but still answer the needs of the digital age resulted in a pastiche of a sharing economy platform. Beyond the case at hand, this study theorizes the rhetoric and reality of the sharing economy by summarizing the grounds for the expectations of generating social capital and explains why certain expectations could not be met.

scholarly journals Expanding Social, Psychological, and Physical Indicators of Urbanites’ Life Satisfaction toward Residential Community: A Structural Equation Modeling Analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
Chuanyu Peng ◽  
Guoping Yuan ◽  
Yanhui Mao ◽  
Xin Wang ◽  
Jianhong Ma ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Life Satisfaction ◽  
Community Engagement ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Urban Community ◽  
Community Identity ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Geriatric Population ◽  
Residential Community ◽  
Green Area

Attention on, and interest in, life satisfaction has increased worldwide. However, research on life satisfaction focused toward the urban dwellers’ residential community is mainly from western countries, and the limited research from China is solely focused on the geriatric population via a narrowly constrained research perspective. This study, therefore, aimed to investigate urbanites’ life satisfaction toward their community, combining the psychological (behavioral community engagement, mental state of flow, and cognitive community identity), physical (PREQIs-perceived residential environment quality indicators: e.g., green area), and social perspectives (social capital). The proposed conceptual model was tested on a regionally representative sample of 508 urban community residents in the city of Chengdu, Sichuan province, China. Data were analyzed via a structure equation modelling approach in AMOS software. Findings suggested that all of the psychological, physical and social factors contributed to a prediction of life satisfaction. Specifically, social capital mediated the path from community engagement and flow to life satisfaction, and community identity mediated the path from flow experience and green area to life satisfaction. Additionally, social capital contributed to predict life satisfaction through its influence on community identity. Findings provide suggestions for urban designers and policymakers to focus on creating an urban community equipped with green area, which helps to promote physical activities that are flow-productive, to enhance residents’ identification to their residential community and, therefore, increase life satisfaction.

Social capital and national innovation system: a cross-country analysis

2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sepehr Ghazinoory ◽  
Ali Bitaab ◽  
Ardeshir Lohrasbi
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
National Level ◽  
Innovation System ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Different Dimensions ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Positive Effect

Purpose – In the last two decades, researchers have paid much attention to the role of cultural values on economic and social development. In particular, the crucial role of different aspects of culture on the development of innovation has been stressed in the literature. Consequently, it is vital to understand how social capital, as a core cultural value, affects the innovation process and the innovative performance at the national level. However, to date, the impact of different dimensions of social capital and innovation has not been properly portrayed or explained. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of four different dimensions of social capital (institutional and interpersonal, associational life and norms) on two of the main functions of national innovation system (NIS) (entrepreneurship and knowledge creation) based on over 50,000 observations in 34 countries. Design/methodology/approach – In this regard, national-level data from the World Values Survey database was employed to quantify social capital. Entrepreneurship is, in turn, assumed to consist of three sub-indexes and 14 indicators based on the Global Entrepreneurship Index. Knowledge creation is also measured through US Patent Office applications. Also, exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling approach were used to build the measurement model and investigate the impact that each factor of social capital had on entrepreneurship and knowledge application, respectively. Measurement and structural models were built and their reliability and validity were tested using various fit indices. Research findings suggest the strong positive effect of institutional trust and networking on entrepreneurship. Also, interpersonal trust and networks were shown to have high influence on knowledge development at the national level. Norms appear to have naïve to medium negative effects on both functions. Findings – Research findings suggest the strong positive effect of institutional trust and networking on entrepreneurship. Also, interpersonal trust and networks were shown to have high influence on knowledge development at the national level. Norms appear to have naïve to medium negative effects on both functions. Originality/value – However, to date, the impact of different dimensions of social capital and innovation has not been properly portrayed or explained.

Social trust, norms and morality

Human Affairs ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miroslav Popper
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Trust ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Dynamic Change ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Increased Sensitivity ◽  
The Individual

AbstractThe article approaches the topic of social trust from an evolutionary perspective. It begins by summarising the most influential approaches that have defined specific and social trust and ascertains what causes differences in degrees of trust and how the potential risk of deception might be lowered. It then notes that the basis of morality had already been formed during the era of prehistoric man, who was able to create coalitions against aggressors and to socially control the behaviour of deviants. It points out, however, that having a certain predisposition to behaving cooperatively or an increased sensitivity to recognising and not tolerating behaviour aimed at abusing cooperation is not a sufficient guarantee of the fact that people will always (or at least in the majority of situations) favour cooperation over deception. One of the reasons for this is a tendency to favour short-term gains over long-term ones. The article argues that establishing norms (moral, social and legal) produces a higher level of social trust because it not only “encourages” individuals to behave in certain ways in particular situations but also works as a sanction which “discourages” the individual from socially deviant behaviour. The article then focuses on a debate about the causal relationship between social trust and social capital. It discusses the suggestion that political institutions, government and the judiciary may reduce rather than raise levels of social capital and consequently also the level of social trust. This is partly because of their powerful position and the consequent scope for corruption and partly because of the fact that even when attempting to act honestly, representatives of these institutions cannot sufficiently reflect upon dynamic change at the local level. Finally, the article ends by adopting the position that social trust is built primarily from bottom up and so it is risky to continually doubt the very existence and usefulness of social norms and morality and to be governed simply by legal norms.

Taking Financial Literacy Downtown: Leveraging Community Partnerships to Increase Communication of Essential Financial Information in an Urban Area

2021 ◽  
pp. 001312452110638
Author(s):  
Lindsay Neuberger ◽  
Deborah A. Carroll ◽  
Silvana Bastante ◽  
Maeven Rogers ◽  
Laura Boutemen
Keyword(s):  
Focus Groups ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Financial Literacy ◽  
Community Partnerships ◽  
Wealth Accumulation ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Financial Outcomes ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Credit Scores ◽  
Priority Populations

Financial illiteracy is a systemic issue across the country, especially among lower-income individuals in urban communities. This low level of financial literacy often leads to higher levels of debt, lower credit scores, less wealth accumulation, and poor retirement planning. Increasing financial literacy in these priority populations can be effective in combatting some of these negative financial outcomes. This study emerged from a partnership between community organizations in a large urban metropolitan area and scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. Guided by formative research principles, this manuscript reports on research findings derived from several focus groups with community members. These focus groups helped to identify existing perceived financial knowledge levels, categorize barriers to enhancing financial literacy, and illuminate potentially pathways to effective financial literacy program development.

Challenges and opportunities for social entrepreneurs in civil engineering in Brazil

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernesto Ferreira Vasconcellos ◽  
Bernardo Henrique Leso ◽  
Marcelo Nogueira Cortimiglia
Keyword(s):  
Civil Engineering ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Social Enterprises ◽  
Exploratory Research ◽  
Social Entrepreneurs ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
The Government

Purpose This paper aims to identify challenges and opportunities for social enterprises (SE) in civil engineering in Brazil. Design/methodology/approach Starting from the transformative social innovation theory and inspired by grounded theory principles, this paper conducts three-stage exploratory research. First, this paper mapped the Brazilian SE civil engineering ecosystem. Next, this paper classified the SE initiatives along with an organizing framework. Finally, this paper conducted 11 interviews with key ecosystem actors and analyzed data through iterative, parallel and interrelated content analysis procedures. Findings The 37 SE found were classified along “Sustainability,” “Housing,” “Transportation” and “Sanitation” pillars, which are aligned with the United Nations’ social development goals. This paper found 50 challenges and opportunities, which were aggregated along seven dimensions. Three elements are particularly relevant as opportunities: opportunities for SE with ecosystem supporters, specialized investors and partnership with major companies; while government and early investment are the most relevant challenges. Research limitations/implications Research findings and conclusions cannot be extended to other sectors and countries. Usual limitations associated with exploratory qualitative research must also be highlighted. Practical implications The government should offer financial and technical support for civil engineering in working in partnership with ecosystem supporters. Academy could use SE content and ecosystem for its students and should offer diverse resources for network creation. Originality/value Focusing on civil engineering SE in Brazil, this study sheds light on a high-impact sector that has not been studied yet.

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