Six forms of community capital

We Create Here was an initiative within the Gazette Company to develop evolving narratives and authentic conversations throughout Iowa's Creative Corridor. read more

Note from Sarah: This piece was written by Benjamin Smith, born in Cedar Rapids and currently living in Berlin, Germany. Ben is a major contributor www.communitybuilding.us. As we focus on community mapping, it is interesting to consider these types of capital that may not usually be visible on a "map." Earlier this week, I asked what should be included in a map of the startup and innovation economy in Eastern Iowa. How can we represent all forms of capital in our map? Drop me a line: sarah.binder@sourcemedia.net. 

By Ben Smith

Assets, gifts, capital, and resources are, at their most basic, the ability to get something done. Of course they come in many forms – skills, connections, know-how, money, tools, votes, spaces, etc. In each system different forms of capital are important and the rules for exchange between forms of capital varies. It is essential for community builders to understand where this capital is located, how it can be exchanged, and where connections can lead to greater use of existing reserves.

1. Social capital: the value of relationships between persons. Like economic capital, social capital is a store of power that can be called upon to get things done and which operates according to certain local rules of exchange. Social capital is different from economic in that "spending" it doesn't usually diminish current stocks, but increases them as long as the exchange is perceived to be reciprocal.

2. Economic capital: liquid and illiquid stores of economic power. Money, building space, land, equipment, production capacity, etc. While it is sometimes erroneously considered the only "real" kind of capital, it is still essential to most community and organizational work.

3. Symbolic capital: the ability to affect discourse. It is the power of a symbol to get something done and the power of certain people and organizations to create such symbols. The largest concentrated holdings of symbolic capital have traditionally been in the hands of governments, media organizations, “taste makers”, religious leaders and other people and institutions with extensive access to mass discourse and high levels of trust.  

4. Human capital: the knowledge and skills a person possesses relevant to accomplishing tasks. Skills can be very general and have wide applicability, such as the ability to read or organize a team, or they can be very specific, such the ability to make crème brûlée. Knowledge can likewise range from the very general to the very specific.  

5. Cultural capital: the set of ingrained habits and dispositions that a person possesses which allow them to navigate certain cultural fields. In a sense these are a combination of human capital – skills regarding how to behave in certain situations, how to dress, how to speak, bodily comportment, dining skills, rules of grammar and pronunciation, etc. – and knowledge about the practices, customs, and reference works within a given cultural field. Often they are essential to gaining trust with a community.  

6. Spiritual capital: the ability of a person or place to put people in touch with more fundamental levels of reality; the ability to enable people to come in closer contact with their own integrity, meaning, and voice. While this form of capital is rarely discussed, many projects and initiatives originally spring from individuals' access to people or places that put them in touch with these deeper resources.

These six forms of capital are intended to cover all the bases, but many actual asset maps will be more specific. For example, many civic revitalization projects now conduct cultural asset inventories to make visible the wealth of cultural assets, institutions, people, and events that are already present. Natural environment asset maps can show communities where to go for a run, a walk, or just a picnic. In a non-profit an asset map focusing on symbolic and cultural capital might allow them to better get out the word about services or information.