Social Capital in The End Times.

Inspired by Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower.

A paper towel dispenser that's sick of the fucking bullshit.

I know what you're thinking. Isn't the point of being an EarthSeed - a believer of impermanence and interconnectedness - to refute the damaging concepts of capitalism? Yes, my young, tenacious EarthSeed. You are right. But you must understand that in order to dismantle powerful systems, we must first work within their boundaries. Once you are an expert at maneuvering capitalist systems with civility, we can make up our own rules.

Disclaimer, this post is basically an annotated bibliography of this paper:

Carmen, E., Fazey, I., Ross, H., Bedinger, M., Smith, F., Prager, K., McClymont, K., Morrison, D. 2022 Building community resilience in a context of climate change: The role of social capital. Ambio 2022, 51:1371-1387. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-021-01678-9

Building Community Resilience in a Context of Climate Change: The Role of Social Capital is a meta-synthesis of 187 studies and uses statistics to find similarities of proven practices that enhance community resilience through social capital. Structural and socio-cultural aspects of a community intersect to guide outcomes of resilience. Through the observed studies, it is found that community resilience is more than just infrastructure. Institutions that mediate access to resources + opportunities, like government organizations, non-profits, and clubs, are influential in increasing or decreasing resiliency.

Considering diverse social and psychological factors is important. A core sector of this research involved identifying “different social factors that shape potential or actual collective action for change and resilience.” There are some knowledge gaps acknowledged within this sector of research. For example, many studies lacked practical insights, meaning they contained no correlation to direct action plans for communities to build resiliency. Looks like we'll have to get innovative! Ultimately though, the conclusion is simple:

“Local knowledge sharing, clear communication, social learning, and people-place connections” are all important facets of building community resilience.

Through compiling 187 research papers, community resilience was defined as ‘the existence, development, and engagement of community resources by community members to thrive in an environment characterized by change, uncertainty, unpredictability, and surprise.’ Mimicking larger-scale ecological dimensions and dynamics, human social aspects are intertwined. It is important to note that resilience is not an end goal. Resilience is a constant ever-evolving process combining influences and factors to encourage community social capital to be advanced. Resilience is further broken into three classifications: reactive resistance, responsive resistance, and proactive resistance. Quite self-explanatory, reactive resilience is community actions to “cope with the immediate aftermath of a shock,” to return to the status quo. Responsive resilience is learning from shocks and adapting systems and relationships to “strengthen the existing system” and “reduce negative consequences from future shocks.”

Proactive resilience involves a constant adaptation of systemic and multi-scalar approaches using “foresight, experimentation, reflection, and learning,” and considers “norms, identities, and values, and [the] potential need for radical change.”

Considering the multi-layered crisis of Climate Change, system-oriented reconstruction will be required. A beginning stage is intentional connection with diverse members, perspectives, and needs, all in the face of climate change. Emplaced tactics, often top-down, forceful structures intended to encourage social capital, can end up discouraging social capital, leading to an increase in socioeconomic exclusion and resistance. Be wary of your wokeness.

Through the compilation of these 187 studies, social capital was found to be defined “as: 1) social networks; 2) social networks and outcomes; 3) social networks, trust and norms of reciprocity; 4) social networks and socio-cultural dimensions.” There is a strong emphasis on the community networks responsible for “linking social capital, [and] emphasizing connection across formal hierarchies.”

Think of these community networks as spiderwebs on a bridge. The bridge is the formal hierarchies and systemic infrastructure we currently have in place. We understand where these systems fall short. The spiderwebs are the links created through social capital to connect people and resources that otherwise wouldn't have the opportunity within our pre-existing system.

In turn, this means that structural as well as subjective social aspects are closely related to shaping outcomes of resilience. The authors did make a note that there is a lack of studies focused on community-level socio-cultural aspects of resilience. I recommend we continue not to expose these secrets as culture is sacred and not for scientific investigation. However, with the awareness of equity and diversity growing in mainstream media, more recent studies have highlighted “integrative conceptualizations of social capital by… emphasizing social identities and norms of solidarity.” 

Ultimately, this research asks the question, how does social capital yield resilience?

To move beyond an immediate crisis and bring awareness to methods of improvement, both bonding and bridging of social capital through network diversity are required. For “new information, ideas and knowledge” to be considered amongst a community, “decision-making and cooperation between groups” must occur. All in all, it is important to have community frameworks that can connect diverse groups to support, resources, and new ideas.

A huge discovery of these studies is the trend that social networks with norms of trust and reciprocity are required for resilience to emerge. Yet again, white man western science methodologies prove an indigenous concept known for millenniums. It was also observed that the “active management of a combination of natural, physical, economic and human factor[s]” can help create space for social capital to build. However, many studies “underscored the importance of laws, national policy, regulatory frameworks and actors (local government and non-government organizations), in helping or hindering social capital and resilience.” Collective action is shaped by linking individual social capital to the ideas and practices of over-arching community organizations.

With proactive resilience, the studies confirmed the “importance of enhancing slow-changing factors” like “the nature of social relationships, experiential knowledge, and natural resources.” Within a socio-cultural dimension, a “sense of place, belonging, norms, identity, and values” is “closely entwined with material aspects.” This means that proactive resilience can be encouraged through “overcoming collective norms that exclude or favor certain types of actions,” or through “promoting] a willingness to change.”

However, it is critically important to promote these norms through autonomy and individual agency.

Priorities within decision-making are completely dependent on who is involved in the conversation. We've seen this historically repeated throughout United States History through exclusion, gaslighting, and erasure. If a community were to only focus on the structural elements of creating resilience, the long-term social capital would decline. Furthermore, top-down hierarchies that direct resilience, hinder engagement at the community level by underscoring natural community engagement and curiosity. This occurs often with high levels of government shaping local decisions through pressure and expectation, rather than the organic community-level bridging and bonding. Often this is observed as encouraging individualistic gain over cooperation for the collective - the opposite of civility. By considering social capital as a dynamic resource, active agents of organizations must be present to interact with and encourage the creation of diverse networks, building trust and reciprocity from organization to community.

The practices and norms that occur within organizations have a direct impact on the social capital they can create. It is also important to remember that in times of crisis, communities will be competing for resource access.

Developing social capital prior to crises, reduces tensions during the crisis, and prevents the continuous deterioration of social capital in the aftermath.

In some cases, after a crisis, there was a bonding of social capital but a limited bridging of new information and resources. This combination causes distrust to arise within a community, leaving them to wonder how and why a need for change is perceived. Systems must be in place for easy access to resources, information, and new ideas. It is also important to consider spatial and temporal scales. Within rural communities, natural capital is valued more, whereas, in urban settings, physical capital tends to be valued more. However, slower-changing factors like cultural dimensions, are much more important to resilience than fast-changing factors, like infrastructure.

It is also important to remember that within marginalized communities, other factors constrained opportunities for resilience. For instance, the fourth dimension of time is systemically suppressed in marginalized communities. If you worked multiple jobs and had children to care for, would you spend your free time conducting collective action? I'd probably be taking a god damn nap. Space must be created to create bridges for these groups where they are. “Although social capital may be central for shaping action, the type of outcomes that unfold are also shaped by the availability of other resources.” A high level of “bonding, bridging and linking social capital was found to be important for expressions of autonomy at the community level.”

While exclusionary norms can exacerbate isolation and hinder the development of bridging social capital, “collective agency [was] related to good neighborliness, solidarity, and activism.”

It is important to be transparent and raise the community awareness that actively pursuing social capital is a resilience-building strategy itself. The collective action initiative you've been daydreaming of starting? Do it. The club you've considered attending? Do it. Considering chatting up your neighbor? Do it.

Your social capital is the anti-capitalist economy dollar and direct path to community resilience in the face of climate change. Put down the phone and say hello to someone, irl.