SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Whilst no longer as prominent as it was at the turn of the millennium when being promoted by the World Bank, social capital still remains a significant, if fundamentally flawed, category within social science in general and development studies in particular. This chapter offers a critical account of social capital and, in particular, how its use in the Indian literature has both replicated common aspects and displayed others more specific to the Indian context. It shows the Indian literature’s bias towards the civil society, with economic, ideological and social power, trade unions, mass organizations, the state, and the conflicts over them, relegated to the background. The chapter then shows how this has changed in recent critiques highlighting the role of social capital in the reproduction of power relations and hierarchies, hindering inclusive development. The World Bank itself admitted that most of the criticisms of social capital were warranted and shifted focus to other developmental concepts such as empowerment, participation and other constituents of “good governance” in order to relieve the state from public investment. The chapter ends with a critique of the relationship between social capital and micro-finance points to World Bank–sponsored scholarship in behavioural economics and RCT becoming successors to social capital.