Social Capital, a Multidimensional Concept

There is little doubt that the concept of social capital represents a useful tool for many social sciences. Nevertheless, its use in broad domains and in different disciplines could lead in weak and, sometimes, inaccurate theoretical propositions. We suggest here to pose two basic distinctions up to better focalize the analysis and its effects on the behavior both of actors (micro level) and of social systems (macro level). The first examines the dimensions of its use: by a single versus a larger group of actors. The second distinguishes between two levels: one includes elements built and changed directly by the single actor, while elements included in the other need collective action to be created and modified. We also show the relations between dimensions and levels depicted, and their effects both on micro (individual behavior) and macro (social system behavior) levels of analysis. In the second part of the paper, we use two empirical cases to illustrate the usefulness for analysis of the proposed distinctions. The first one focusses on research regarding the labor market, the second on collective action problems related to common-pool resources management.