Social Capital, Culture and Theories of Development

This article offers a critical review of the concept of social capital, focusing on the theoretical underpinnings of the communitarian approach. It argues that this approach has a culturalist bias that omits key issues of inequality, conflict and power, making it a tool that is unlikely to contribute significantly to poverty reduction or development. As an example, it describes the adoption of the concept by the World Bank and provides a case study of rural community organization in Ecuador.