Urban populations and their social capital (completed)

Sören Petermann


Social capital is regarded as individual resources that can be accessed by the embeddedness in personal networks of kin, friendship and acquaintanceship. Social capital facilitates individual or collective action that otherwise would not take place. That means individuals can satisfy their needs in a better way if they use their social capital. But social capital is not equally available to all. The project investigates inequalities of social capital in terms of capital accumulation, capital compensation and opportunity structures (in particular the spatial dimension). These investigations are theoretically based on a micro level model that includes reciprocity and trust. The model will be empirically tested with individual survey data on urban populations in Saxony-Anhalt and North Rhine-Westphalia.

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