Faith and social capital after the debt crisis
Subtitle: the laughter of bishops
By: Adam Dinham
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 204
ISBN-13: 9780230276987
Subjects: POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Social Policy; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General; Religion and state; Social capital (Sociology); RELIGION / Faith; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology of Religion; RELIGION / Religion, Politics & State
Description: The founding father of 'social capital', Pierre Bourdieu, said that treating the church as an economic enterprise would lead to uproar, disbelief and the laughter of the bishops. Yet, in the last couple of decades, policy-makers and social scientists have increasingly sought to capitalize on faith by asking whether it produces social capital. In the context of faith-based social action in communities, this book asks what becomes of faiths when seen as social capital? Is the social subjugated to the capital part of the equation? As the debt crisis took hold, doesn't the relationship between the social and capital seem increasingly unbalanced? Using new research, theory and critical analysis, this book asks whether faiths can help rebalance society in favour of the human scale of life in communities, focusing on the value of the ordinary relationships which are already there, regardless of their wider 'use'.