Maintaining Social Ties: Social Capital in a Global Information Age

Maintaining Social Ties: Social Capital in a Global Information Age John F. Helliwell Abstract Recent research has documented that social and economic relations remain strikingly local, at least especially when viewed in the light of many discussions of globalization. The main evidence for this is that the density of social and economic exchanges declines far more with distance, and with the crossing of national borders, than could possibly be explained by transportation and border-related costs. One hypothesis explaining this localization in the face of global information is that social capital – “networks, together with shared norms, values and understandings that facilitate co-operation within and among groups “(OECD 2001, 41)both supports and is supported by frequent interactions. There is less available empirical evidence about how the various types of local, civic, regional, national and international social capital are created and destroyed, and how the different types of social capital are related to one another. This paper surveys evidence suggesting that the relations among social capital of different types, and of different radii, are complementary rather than competitive. If these results should turn out to be generally applicable, they suggest, in an optimistic vein, that adding social capital of types needed to better support international and global cooperation can be done without threatening the nature and value of more local loyalties. On a more pessimistic note, there is an increasing body of evidence showing that social capital, and the trust engendered by the right types of social capital, is more quickly destroyed than created. This asymmetry suggests the need for thinking ahead to avoid heedless destruction of trust that would be hard to rebuild.