Social Capital, Too Much of a Good Thing? American Religious Traditions and Community Crime

Using American religious traditions as measures of bonding and bridging social capital in communities, we empirically test how these different forms of social capital affect crime rates in 3,157 U.S. counties in 2000. Our results suggest that the bonding networks evangelical Protestants promote in communities explain why counties with a greater percentage of residents affiliated with this tradition consistently have higher crime rates. Conversely, our results suggest that the bridging networks that mainline Protestants and Catholics foster in communities explain why counties with a greater percentage of residents affiliated with these traditions generally have lower crime rates. This article thus provides empirical corroboration for recent theoretical discussions that focus on how the social capital that groups cultivate in communities need not always benefit communities as a whole. Few concepts in the social sciences have received more scholarly attention and public notoriety over the past decade than social capital. When conceptualized as networks that link individuals and the resources embedded in those linkages, social capital has substantially enhanced our understanding of various social processes and outcomes. The majority of research on social capital has focused on its positive benefits. Among other things, this research has shown that social capital promotes social support, boosts physical health, improves academic performance and increases job contacts (Granovetter 1985; Hurlbert, Haines and Beggs 2000; Pong 1998). However, the tendency to focus on social capital’s positive effects has recently drawn a chorus of criticism from scholars who point out that social capital need not necessarily produce positive consequences, and that it may even produce negative results (Fiorina 1999; Paxton 1999, 2002; Portes 1998; Putnam 2000:350-363). Social capital by definition benefits those who possess it. Yet there is good reason to expect that the advantages individuals accrue from social capital often come at the expense of others. For example, while strongly knit groups provide various benefits to members, their general exclusivity restricts entry to others and denies benefits to nonmembers (Portes 1998). Strongly knit groups can also have deleterious consequences for the wider community in which they reside. Consider militia groups that have strong internal ties but few or no external ties in communities. Their intense within-group solidarity provides numerous benefits to members, such as emotional support and a sense of belonging. However, because militia groups do not forge connections with other residents, they truncate the wider network We thank Christian Smith, Kenneth Bollen, anonymous reviewers and the editor of Social Forces for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. An earlier version of this article received the 2004 Best Graduate Student Paper Award from the Community and Urban Sociology (CUSS) and Crime, Law, and Deviance (CLD) Sections of the American Sociological Association, and the 2004 Best Graduate Student Paper Award from the Crime and Juvenile Delinquency (CJD) Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Direct correspondence to Kraig Beyerlein or John R. Hipp at the Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Hamilton Hall, CB #3210, Chapel Hill, NC 27599. E-mail: kkbeyerl@email.unc. edu or johnhipp@email.unc. edu. © The University of North Carolina Press Social Forces, Volume 84, Number 2, December 2005 structure of the community and thus decrease its overall cohesiveness (Paxton 1999). This problematizes viewing social capital as a homogenous concept at one level of aggregation, and points to the importance of distinguishing types of social capital and the differing effects they can have at different levels of aggregation. We differentiate bonding social capital in which linkages are mainly or exclusively among members of the same group from bridging social capital in which linkages exist among members of different groups in communities (Paxton 1999, 2002; Putnam 2000). Although bonding groups increase social capital within their group, they can reduce social capital at the community level, as the above example of militia groups illustrates. On the other hand, bridging groups that establish connections with others outside their group increase social capital at the community level by expanding the overall network structures of the communities in which they are embedded. To the extent that community cohesion and connectedness influence the incidence of crime (Lee 2000; Sampson, Raudenbush and Earls 1997), the type of social capital that groups foster in communities should be of considerable importance for explaining differences in crime rates across communities. We do not assume, however, that members of bonding and bridging groups are committing crimes in communities or that they are doing so at different rates. We argue rather that groups exhibiting bonding social capital will be less effective in generating network structures that help the larger community deal with the threat of crime, while groups exhibiting bridging social capital will be more effective in creating these network structures. Importantly, by providing an empirical test of this hypothesis, we substantially advance the literature on social capital. Providing an empirical test of the differing effects of bonding and bridging groups on community-level outcomes is a challenge due to the difficulty of measuring these types of social capital. Adequately measuring bonding and bridging social capital requires capturing entire network structures of communities, a daunting task for researchers. An alternative strategy utilizes measures that serve as proxies for these concepts, and recent scholarship in the sociology of religion generally demonstrates the division of American major religious traditions into bonding and bridging camps (Ammerman 2002; Beyerlein and Hipp 2006; Chaves, Giesel and Tsitsos 2002; Iannaccone 1994; Putnam 2000:63-79; Wilson and Janoski 1995; Wuthnow 1999, 2002). Consequently, religious traditions are one way to operationalize bonding and bridging groups in communities, and to test whether these types of social capital have differing effects on communities’ crime rates. Linking Bonding and Bridging Social Capital to Community Crime Although scholars have defined social capital in various ways, we conceptualize social capital as network structures linking individuals in communities (Coleman 1988; Paxton 1999; Putnam 2000). Because network structures vary in the extent to which they narrowly or broadly link residents in communities, it is important to differentiate bonding social capital from bridging social capital. Bonding social capital consists of network structures in which connections are primarily or entirely among members of the same group, while bridging social capital consists of network structures in which connections crosscut members of different groups (Putnam 2000). Ties comprising bonding social capital tend to be stronger in nature, while ties comprising bridging social capital tend to be weaker in nature (Granovetter 1973). While not using the language of bonding and bridging social capital, scholars working within the social disorganization tradition have suggested that such differences in network structures are important for explaining variation in crime rates across communities. Bellair (1997) focused on the degree of interaction among neighbors, theorizing that because infrequent interaction is more likely to occur among a greater percentage of residents than 996 • Social Forces Volume 84, Number 2 • December 2005