Social Capital and Human Capital Revisited

Abstract

Abstract IN this concluding chapter we address directly the relationship between human capital and social capital. In part this reflects the origins of the volume, which lie in our participation in the ‘Learning Society’ Research Programme, sponsored by the UK Economic and Social Research Council in the late 1990s. The second, more contentious, reason is this: the later decades of the twentieth century saw a massive swing towards the view of human capital as the royal road to economic success and social cohesion. This was based on rather simplistic linear models, which imply that investing in education yields returns in the same way as investing in stocks or bonds, with measurable, tangible results. This view is being challenged by recognition that more complex processes are at work, with multiple interactions between different social forces, and with the possibility that not all learning is individually or socially beneficial in a straightforward, aggregate fashion. In particular, we cannot simply tot up the numbers of people achieving educational qualifications and assume that we are progressing-or not-towards a ‘Learning Society’.