Social capital’s self-reinforcing strength does not explain how it emerges originally.

Evidence

The robustness of social capital is theorized by Putnam as being the consequence of a self-reinforcing effect: “virtuous circles result in social equilibria with high levels of cooperation, trust, reciprocity, civic engagement and collective well-being” (Putnam, Leonardi, and Nonetti 1993, 177). But just because social capital would have this self-reinforcing effect does not account for its emergence. All these positive effects would not help us too much if it were impossible to generate social capital, especially in a non-dominating way. Here the observation that social capital is often a byproduct of other social activities (Putnam, Leonardi and Nonetti 1993, 170; Fukuyama 2001, 7) is going to be crucial. This is, for instance, how Brehm and Rahn (1997) model social capital, as being “a tight reciprocal relationship between civic engagement and interpersonal trust. The more that citizens participate in their communities, the more that they learn to trust others; the greater trust that citizens hold for others, the more likely they are to participate” (1001-2). — Adelin-Costin Dumitru, Forging the Resistive Republic, 38

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the theoretical distinction between the self-reinforcing equilibrium of social capital and its initial emergence.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Adelin-Costin Dumitru, Forging the Resistive Republic: Social…, 38
• XREF: connects to: Social capital grows from participation, not prior endowment alone. — Adelin-Costin Dumitru, Forging the Resistive Republic: Social…, 49

Related

• Social capital grows from participation, not prior endowment alone. (similarity 0.88)
• Social capital enables citizens to contest policies endangering non-domination. (similarity 0.83)
• Social capital works without assuming individuals share common-oriented goals. (similarity 0.82)
• Social trust is an outcome and byproduct of social capital (similarity 0.80)
• Republican governance presupposes social capital that citizens must actively build (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Social capital grows from participation, not prior endowment alone. #expands (0.80) — Adelin-Costin Dumitru, Forging the Resistive Republic, 49