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Do capital based perspectives help to conceptualise the potential of lifelong learning? Ralf St.Clair University of Glasgow Paper presented at the 35th Annual SCUTREA Conference July 5-July 7 2005, University of Sussex, England, UK There a number of applications of the term ‘capital’ in lifelong learning and in social theory more generally. In this discussion I examine these uses, with an emphasis upon social capital, and suggest that not only are capital-based approaches to educational analysis not as progressive as they may appear, they represent a specific example of the colonisation of the social sciences by economic thinking. Forms of capital The classic form of capital is, of course, economic capital. Those in possession of economic capital have a wide field of activity open to them because of these resources, and are in a position to perpetuate their accumulative activities (most analysts accept that the family is a crucial vector for this activity). Since Marx, the creation, accumulation, and reproduction of economic capital has been analysed by thinkers of every political persuasion. The idea is foundational to our understanding of Western society—enough that it appears as an intuitive and obvious idea to many people. By the middle of the twentieth century there was growing awareness that the economic version of capital was failing to explain a number of phenomena, such as importance of education and experience. In the 1960s Becker (1993) and others developed the concept of human capital. This idea originally applied to country level analysis, and suggested that the productivity of a particular nation was due to both economic capital, including equity such a manufacturing equipment, and human capital, including the education levels of the population. The two forms of capital could be calculated and compared using similar analytical tools. Over time, the idea of human capital changed, and instead of being applicable at the level of the nation it was used more often as a way to examine the productivity of individuals (Marginson, 1997). By attending university, for example, an individual could enhance their human capital, and companies could also invest in the human capital of their workers by supporting employee development schemes. The idea of human capital is not as intuitive as economic capital, and is often seen as less acceptable by people who balk at the idea of reducing human knowledge to terms so strongly reminiscent of economics. Over the last twenty years a third form of capital has become widely discussed. Social capital is one of those terms that currently seems to be everywhere: in government planning documents, research proposals, and learned journals. It has made its way from the specialised language of sociology (Bourdieu, 1986) to the working papers of the European Community, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the World Bank. However, its meaning has changed along the way, and any discussion of social capital does well to bear the evolution of the idea in mind. I will devote more space to this capital form than to others because it is still relatively incompletely understood. Bourdieu (1986) originally developed the idea of social capital to provide insights into the process of capital accumulation in a late capitalist society. He was interested in the factors that influenced accumulation but that were not themselves strictly economic, and he proposed that it is useful to consider economic, cultural, and social forms of capital. Put extremely simply, cultural capital is knowing how to achieve your goals and social capital is knowing the people who could help you to do so. Economic capital is self-explanatory. Bourdieu (1986) saw the three forms of capital as running together in class formations—if you possess a lot of one of the forms you tend to possess a great deal of the others too. To some extent this is because, he suggested, the forms are convertible, and if you have enough of one form you can gain the others by exchange. For example, the upper classes convert economic capital into cultural and social capital by sending their children to private schools. Social and cultural capital gain their value because people with status recognise the value of each other’s capital, so even though these capitals are utilised by individuals (and individual families) they have collective effects. For Bourdieu, these three forms of capital come together to shape the permissible actions in any particular field of operation. If you have sufficient capital you can operate a lot more freely than those with less. At around the same time, the idea of social capital was attracting the attention of a different group of theorists. These writers were struggling with the notion of human capital, which seemed to explain many features of a developed industrial society, but also left many gaps. There were aspects of people’s lives that had value, but were not captured in the standard, credential based human capital models. The notion of social capital, the value of an individual’s placement within social networks, seemed to offer a way to conceptualise these factors. The idea developed, then, in a completely different context from Bourdieu’s (1986) notional mechanism for replicating privilege. Instead it was a resource that, theoretically, was available to any and all members of society in the right circumstances. Coleman (1988) was instrumental in developing this view of social capital, with more emphasis on the collective aspects of social capital and less on social capital as a tool of social control. He argued that ‘social capital is defined by its function. It is not a single entity but a variety of different entities, with two elements in common: they all consist of some aspect of social structures, and they facilitate certain actions of actors’ (p. S98). This functionalist view of social capital rings true on many levels, but raises substantial questions about what the concept includes and what it does not. Coleman outlines three aspects of social capital: obligations and expectations, information flow capability, and norms accompanied by sanctions. The most obvious common ground between Coleman and Bourdieu is the notion that social capital can be converted into other forms of capital, and Coleman also uses the example of private schools to illustrate his ideas. For Coleman and Bourdieu, education is a critical nexus for social capital. Putnam’s writing (1993) is probably the most well-known contribution to the popularisation of the concept of social capital. He explained the perceived loss of mutual concern within American society using a model derived from a study of Italian local government, with social capital as the central factor. Social capital, in Putnam’s view, consists of the ‘features of social organisation such as networks, norms, and trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit’ (p.1). While Coleman does not fully address the social policy implications of social capital, Putnam was particularly careful that his version of social capital should not be seen as a substitute for economic capital. People living in poverty cannot emerge with social capital alone. He argued in support of social spending, for example, that ‘social capital is not a substitute for effective public policy but rather a prerequisite for it and, in part, a consequence of it’ (p.5). This does, however, appear to confuse the issue of convertibility between the forms of capital. Putnam’s arguments anticipate one of the applications of social capital theory, where policymakers justify reduced public spending on the basis that social capital is the crucial form of capital, and cannot be reinforced by financial support. These three foundational views of social capital have much in common, but are also very different in their philosophy. Bourdieu’s conception of social capital is relatively sinister—it is clearly a tool of oppression. Putnam’s view is far friendlier, and seems to regard association between people as positive in its own right. Coleman’s perspective, while viewing social capital as more neutral, emphasises the use of social capital as a precursor of human capital. These differences are challenging to a mechanistic application of the social capital notion—it is far more insightful when used as a magnifying glass than as a scalpel. The three forms of capital are often treated as if they were convertible—human capital, as in educational qualifications, leads to social capital, as in a productive and enabling social network, which in turn leads to economic capital. So logically an argument can be made that material derivation can be addressed through the enhancement of social capital. While this is clearly a problematic argument, it underpins a great deal of policy making around lifelong learning. The value of capital-based perspectives The idea of capital appears to have great potential as an explanatory tool. If a particular initiative, such as a community-based ICT programme, works in one area and not another, capital explanations can be invoked. The programme was attempting to bring human capital to the people of each area, but only one area had sufficient social capital for it to work, for example. In the area where it does not work, the computers may have been continually stolen, illustrating a lack of social capital in the form of trust. The question of how one could empirically justify this argument remains open, and really social (and even human) capital seems more useful as a conceptual catch-all than a well-defined analytical category. It is particularly important to avoid all too easy reification of the concepts, and resist the temptation to imagine that there really is something resembling human and social capital ‘out there.’ Capital-based models, for all their utility, contain the potential for mis-understanding. One of the most interesting aspects of social capital is the degree to which it appears to have become a desirable object for policy-making in recent years. Policy can aim to increase social capital with little risk of criticism—as with the related ideas of ‘school improvement’ and ‘social inclusion,’ social capital is viewed as an undisputed good. To be against any policy with social capital as an outcome is to be against people. On a more theoretical level, social capital can be conceived as a potential bridge across the age-old sociological dichotomy of structure and agency (Coleman, 1988). It represents one of the points of interaction between individual and society, since social capital allows the individual to act in certain ways, but only within a collectively defined and supported area of freedom. When social capital is used by writers one of two approaches is generally used. One is to view it as a literal form of capital, and attempt to devise instruments to measure it in absolute and relative terms (Van Der Gaag & Snijders, 2003). Economists often take this perspective. The second approach is to view it as a metaphorical form of capital, and approach it through highly descriptive methods (Preece & Houghton, 2000). While this conceptual flexibility is appealing to theorists, it also indicates just how problematic the term can be. Overall, capital-based models offer a vocabulary to policy makers and others containing a number of benefits. By invoking the concept of capital, complex and essentially unquantifiable facets of social interaction can be made to appear intuitive and even fiscally accountable. The language of community development as a tool to increase the social and human capital of a given area may be far easier for a politician to understand than discussions about empowerment or political engagement. Viewed from this perspective, capital-based models are a useful communication tool pressed into service for the good of educational ends. But is there more to them than this? The sinister side of capital! Even though capital based models have expanded a great deal from the purely economic, they can still hardly be viewed as innocent when applied in the educational arena. There are a number of general and specific concerns it is important to take into account. The first is the overarching issue of the appropriateness of models derived from economic analysis for educational and social endeavours. When economic models such as capital are used as explanatory mechanisms in other areas they bring a number of assumptions with them, without which they are untenable. Fine (1999) argues that one of the most troubling is the assumption of individual optimization, the notion that people make decisions based on their own judgement of how to maximise their return. There is little evidence to suggest that this is how people make decisions about educational involvement, either before or after their learning. This perspective, however, normalises economic ways of thinking about education, and makes cost/benefit analysis appear not only virtuous but potentially the only reasonable way to assess educational interventions. Fine (1999) places this within an overall process of economics colonising the social sciences, and uses social capital as a primary example. He argues that economic structures are being used to understand areas of life that are not themselves economic. In the case of human capital, he suggests that the idea is being used in the non-economic social sciences without full understanding of its philosophical origins and implications, that it is not treated as cautiously as within economics, and that it is being used in a heavily reductionist way. Despite these concerns, Fine believes that ideas of ‘personal capital’ (p.414) have spearheaded the colonisation process. These arguments are entirely consistent with Habermas’ (1984) description of interactions between the lifeworld and the systemsworld, where the internal lifeworld is being colonised by the economically rooted systemsworld. There is surely a cause for some concern here. If capital metaphors inevitably bring with them a set of values based in classical economic theory we may have to be a great deal more cautious about their application. It seems ironic that some of the strongest supporters of social and human capital models of education are individuals who would strongly resist the reduction of education to economic terms, as well as administrations and bodies who would rather consider themselves to be progressive. There is the potential for a Trojan horse effect, where economic mindsets are smuggled into the city disguised as a way to add rigour to social concerns. However, this is not the only reason for concern about capital based concepts. Even if the ideas could be sanitised of their unsavoury (to many social scientists) reductionism and hyper-rationality, the ideas themselves have got some way to go before they can be considered truly useful. The first of the internal challenges is the enormous fuzziness of the terms involved, and indeed the questions of whether they really are a set of separate ideas. There is an interesting argument that if economic, human, and social capital are convertible and co-terminous, tending to run together and accrue in the same people, do they actually represent different aspects of structure? There is a need to consider carefully what is gained by separating them analytically both on the theoretical level and in practice. Related to these issues is the lack of clarity regarding how education and capital forms interact. Clearly there is a strong relationship between human capital and education, since that is what human capital is designed to capture. But it is unclear how education can provide social capital, and economic capital remains outside the remit of education. It would be really helpful in thinking through lifelong learning for marginalised groups in particular to have some clear conceptions of what education can—and can’t—contribute to the amelioration of structural inequities. What do metaphors of capital suggest that a more unified, and less economically grounded, idea of privilege does not? A second area of concern about capital based models is their innate conservatism. Rarely do these approaches go beyond the forms of capital that are already valuable to consider what other formations might be desirable. In the case of human capital, for example, there is little consideration of factors beyond the conventional educational progression, and the vast majority of analysis examines ‘years of schooling’. In the case of social capital, networks with privileged people capable of bringing about desired ends are unproblematically assigned high value. However, it is likely that a majority of people would find less conventional relationship networks more relevant to, and useful for, their lived experience. Some of this conservatism is moral. There has been very little work looking at the social capital of groups like burglars and fences, or drug consumers and suppliers. In many ways these would represent potentially invaluable special cases where social capital has to be maintained in the face of social and legal disapproval—creating a social group with a degree of siege mentality. It is quite feasible that the patterns of social capital in these contexts are closer to those of marginalised learners than the networks approached through questions enquiring into personal knowledge of doctors and lawyers. Finally, capital based models have the potential of blaming the individual, albeit implicitly, for lacking the particular capital asset. Analysis often uses the individual as its focus, as do many educational interventions designed to ameliorate the disparities of capital, which tends to obscure the essentially social nature of all forms of capital as well as the arbitrariness of their distribution. This is even more the case when the convertibility of capital forms is taken as granted. In this case, where lack of economic capital can be overcome by at least two other routes, surely it can only be the fault of the individual if they are not prosperous? Conclusion Capital based analyses of lifelong learning have become increasingly popular over the last few years, often framed in such a way as to suggest that they take the analysis of education beyond economic imperatives. In this discussion I have tried to suggest that capital-based approaches require some care. They bring with them some specific constructions about the nature of education and the way educational decisions are made. As well as that over-arching concern, I have shown some other reasons to resist the glib application of these ideas. They are not fully developed, and yet they are not as innocent as they appear. The title of this paper is a question, and I will end by answering it. Capital is an effective metaphor for some aspects of lifelong learning, but cannot be universalised. The discourse of lifelong learning as a means to develop social and human capital contains within it the intrinsic tendency to economistic thinking, and educators who are interested in more critical models cannot accept it wholesale. Nonetheless, the concepts of human and social capital point towards important ideas deserving of our consideration even though the tools to understand and incorporate those ideas fully are not yet available. References Becker, G.S. (1993) Human capital: A theoretical and empirical analysis with special reference to education, Chicago, University of Chicago. Bourdieu, P. (1983). The forms of capital. In J.G. Richardson (Ed.) Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Coleman, J.S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94 (supplement). Fine, B. (1999). A question of economics: Is it colonizing the social sciences? Economy and Society, 28(3). Habermas, J. (1984). The theory of communicative action. Vol 1: Reason and the rationalization of society (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Marginson, S. (1997). Markets in education. St. Leonards, NSW, Australia: Allen & Unwin. Preece, J. & Houghton, A. (2000). Nurturing social capital in excluded communities: A kind of higher education. Aldershot: Ashgate. Putnam, R.D. (1993). The prosperous community: Social capital and public life. American Prospect, 4(13). Van Der Gaag, M. & Snijders, T.A.B. (2003). A comparison of measures for individual social capital. Groningen, Netherlands: University of Groningen.