Book Review: Dilworth, R. (Ed.). (2006). Social Capital in the City: Community and Civic Life in Philadelphia. Philadelphia: Temple University Press
Abstract
MaraSidney Rutgers University In traditional understandings of urbanization, city life is lonely and anonymous compared to the tight-knit communal life of small towns and rural areas. Yet researchers often cite studies of social capital in cities, usually without explicitly theorizing the links between social capital and the urban. In his edited volume, Social Capital in the City, Richardson Dilworth aims to explicitly consider this relationship by bringing together 10 studies of social networks and social capital in Philadelphia. The book has many strengths. First, it offers readers a range of ways to think about social capital and its impacts. Because Dilworth did not impose a definition of social capital on the volume's contributors, the authors each discuss and defend their various understandings of the concept and their approaches to studying it. Readers therefore learn much about the intellectual origins of the concept and debates surrounding the various notions of social capital. For example, Ferman and Patterson each contrast Putnam's emphasis on social networks, trust, and cooperation with Bourdieu's emphasis on the location of networks within the capitalist power structure. Although Putnam sees social capital improving civic life, Bourdieu calls attention to the role of social capital in maintaining