Bridging capital and social cohesion in an English village

1
Bridging capital and social cohesion in an
English village
Roy Greenhalgh 12th November, 2008
2
Context

• A small English village of 900 inhabitants.
• Has a primary school, Anglican church,
  independent chapel, pub, community run shop and
  post office and village hall, and village field.
• Has a growing retired population with few young
  families and transitory professionals. Turnover
  of houses approx 5 to 7 p.a.
• Has full range of semi-skilled workers (quarry
  and farming) through to senior management in
  multimillion private sector and security sector.
• Mix of housing with 80 private, estate and
  housing association

3
Purpose of the study

• A gradual change in age of population leads to
  change in interest in joining/membership of
  voluntary local associations
• Despite a low rate of influx of young families,
  involvement in voluntary village associations
  proves difficult
• Village has a thriving, successful community
  owned and run village shop/post office.
• Surfaced question is-
• Can small communities or informal groups with
  high social cohesion positively affect others
  with low social cohesion? If so, how?

4
Study design

• A case study
• group numbers lt 35 per group, therefore
  traditional quantitative approach inappropriate
• Traditional sampling approaches inappropriate ..
  scale too small
• Diffusion is an individual process
• Need to maintain all the characteristics of each
  individual
• A suitable philosophical approach is primarily
  relational
• Analytical method is to use Network Analysis.

5
The broad issues

• Social cohesion is a state of affairs ....
  amongst members of society as characterised by a
  set of attitudes and norms that include trust, a
  sense of belonging and willingness to participate
  and help as well as their behavioural
  manifestations (p.290)
• Bridging capital is outward looking, requiring a
  wide network of less dense relationships with
  far fewer multiplex strands
• Bridging and bonding capitals strength can be
  measured in terms of weak to strong ties
  (Granovetter)
• Theorised that an increase in cohesion is brought
  about by an increase in deployment of bridging
  capital.

6
Method

• Relational qualitative plus
• Qualitative questionnaires with supplementary
  semi-structured interviews to verify and extend
  known knowledge.
• 3 organisations
• Village shop 31 members
• WI committee 6 members
• Parish Council 6 members .

7
Method (2)

• Indicators
• A measure of -
• the network in which subjects lived
• the reciprocity between subjects
• the trust between subjects
• the manner in which social norms operated between
  subjects
• how social agency appeared to work.

8
The Questionnaires
9
Response matrix
10
The distribution of ties at level I know very
well between helpers and supervisors
Density 0.18, SD 0.38
At level 2,3 4, Density 0.94 With SD
0.244.
11
Frequency of working together, 1, 2 or monthly
12
Distribution of shop helpers/supervisors who are
members of and office holders in other village
organizations
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Findings - shop workers

• Cohesion amongst the shop workers is high
  (d0.94)
• Correlation between How often do you work with
  these helpers? with a subset (reply value of 2)
  of How well do you know these helpers? (r0.34,
  sig lt0.001) indicates a situation where staff
  can continue to get to know each other
• High network connectivity facilitates easy flow
  of resources throughout the network
• Ratio of strong ties to all ties (0.180.94) is
  healthy and shows there is no potential
  lock-out of new members
• There is a wide spread of involvement in other
  village organisations.

14
Involvement of supervisors and helpers in other
village organisations
15
Findings WI committee

• Network values for the committee show high
  cohesion (d0.99) and in-out degree at 1.0 for
  all officers
• High trust and high reciprocity exist, with good
  obligation debtedness
• High involvement in other village organisations,
  with equally high officer membership
• Local branch have regular group and national
  meetings with opportunities to bridge to
  out-of-village WI organisations
• Some committee members do bridge to non-WI
  organisations in and out of village.

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Conclusions

• Successful bridging has been an individual social
  activity
• Bridging is risky
• Most bridgers are professional class in-comers
• Initial moves were to develop vulnerable
  weak-weak ties
• Some weak-weak ties have changed into stronger
  ties
• It is the learned professional skills that have
  been the basis for bridging skills.

17
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