The appeal of social capital: analyzing the conceptualization of the concept
Author
Erden, Veysel Yiğit
Advisor
Özcürümez, Saime
Date
2018-06Publisher
Bilkent University
Language
English
Type
ThesisItem Usage Stats
315
views
views
175
downloads
downloads
Abstract
This thesis aims to make an analysis of conceptualization and operationalization of the
concept of ‘social capital’ in the social sciences. Therefore, this thesis looks for
answers to the questions such as why the scientific community focused on the
conceptualization and operationalization of this concept more frequently compared to
several other concepts which could have gained popularity in social science literature,
and how and why the number of references to the concept of social capital started to
increase dramatically in literature during the 1990s and 2000s. For answering the two
main questions of this thesis, the most cited academic studies according to Google
Scholar were examined in detail to comprehend the main framework used by wellknown
scholars to conceptualize and operationalize the concept of social capital. This
thesis identified that the scientific community focused on the conceptualization and
operationalization of the concept of social capital due to the explanatory power of the
concept as opposed to concepts such as financial capital, physical capital and human
capital for the transformation in and complexity of industrial societies. It does so by also examining the types of and questions around measurement while using the
concept. Other concepts were considered as less comprehensive for explaining the
transformation processes especially in economic development, employment, poverty
alleviation and democracy at the micro and macro levels in the modern world.
Furthermore, by operationalizing social capital as the independent variable, scholars
were also able to capture the post-1990 transformations in the advanced industrialized
world better, especially when holding other variables constant. Thus, both its
explanatory power and the shortcomings of the other concepts in capturing the
transformation led to its appeal.