Spatial capital

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Spatial capital

• From social to spatial capital
• The forms of capital
• Spatial capital as a resource
• Spatial capital and inequality

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1. From social to spatial capital

• networks are a city's irreplaceable social
  capital. Whenever the capital is lost, from
  whatever cause, the income from it disappears,
  never to return until and unless new capital is
  slowly and chancily accumulated.
• Jane Jacobs (1964) The Death and Life of Great
  American Cities. Harmondsworth Penguin 138

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1. From social to spatial capital

• All forms of social capital 'consist of some
  aspect of social structures, and they facilitate
  certain actions of actors - whether persons or
  corporate actors - within the structure' (Coleman
  1988 S98)
• Coleman, J. (1988) 'Social capital in the
  creation of human capital', American Journal of
  Sociology 94 S95-S120.

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1. From social to spatial capital

• Colemans key examples imply spatial networks,
  contexts and locations
• wholesale diamond market in New York
  clandestine study circles amongst South Korean
  student activists public parks in Jerusalem
  Kahn El Khalili market in Cairo

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2. The forms of capital

• Bourdieu, P. (1997) 'The forms of capital', in
  A.H. Halsey, H. Lauder, P. Brown and A.S. Wells
  (eds) Education Culture, Economy and Society.
  Oxford Oxford University Press. pp 46-55.

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2. The forms of capital

• Different forms of capital
• economic capital
• cultural capital
• social capital
• symbolic capital

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2. The forms of capital

• Social power is linked to both
• the overall volume of capital
• the combination of different kinds of capital
• For Bourdieu, class power in contemporary
  societies is to be understood in terms of overall
  command of various forms of capital economic,
  cultural, social and symbolic

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2. The forms of capital

• Different forms of capital
• economic capital
• cultural capital
• social capital
• symbolic capital
• spatial capital

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2. The forms of capital

• Spatial capital
• the resources that may be accessed or mobilised
  through occupation, of or claims, to particular
  spaces

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2. The forms of capital

• How is this distinct from categories such as
• locational advantage?
• economic clustering?
• property?

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2. The forms of capital

• Spatial capital and habitus
• Habitus defined as a system of dispositions,
  that is of permanent manners of being, seeing,
  acting and thinking common to people who share
  similar positions in social space

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3. Spatial capital as a resource

• spatial capital - as a property of individuals,
  groups or networks - has a collective rather than
  an individual character
• it tends to be enhanced, rather than diminished,
  by use
• it is accumulated slowly but can be lost very
  quickly
• elements of spatial capital can be viewed as
  having intrinsic value in themselves
• See Woolcock, M. (1998) Social capital and
  economic development, Theory and Society 27/2
  151-208.

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4. Spatial capital and inequality

• uneven geographies of spatial capital
• critical analysis needs to centre on questions
  of
• (i) inequality
• capacity
• how can space be capitalised?
• how are spaces devalorised?