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On the fragility of associational life: A constitutive liberal’s response to Patrick Lenta 123
Some forms of capital are, by choice or necessity, inward looking and tend to
reinforce exclusive identities and homogeneous groups. Examples of bonding
social capital include ethnic fraternal organisations, church-based women's
reading groups, and fashionable country clubs. Other networks are outward
looking and encompass people across diverse social cleavages. Examples of
bridging social capital include the civil rights movement, many youth service
groups, and ecumenical religious organisations … Bonding social capital
provides a kind of sociological superglue whereas bridging social capital
provides a sociological WD-40. 25
One way to distinguish further between the two networks would be to
'contrast the strong bonds of reciprocity and care that are found inside
families and small communities (what we might call normative bonding
social capital) with the … self-interested norms that tend to predominate
between relative strangers … and through which relative strangers can
cooperate successfully (what we might call 'normative bridging' social
capital)'. 26 But that is just a start. High-bonding communities tend to
feature well-established, historically-entrenched belief sets, shared assets
and rather rigid rules regarding membership, voice and exit (and
enforcement mechanisms regarding those rules). Bridging networks are
often extra-communal and bring together rather diverse groups of
individuals in the pursuit of singular, generally self-interested ends.
Membership, voice and exit tend to be both more flexible and more formal
in bridging networks.
However distinct these two kinds of social capital networks may
appear on the surface, I would argue that the success of a developmental
state such as South Africa depends upon (a) respect for the significant
public goods created by private bonding networks (schools, hospitals,
charities); (b) leveraging, where possible, admission into bonding networks
for persons (and groups of persons) who would otherwise not have access
to the goods made available within those networks; and (c) the use of state
resources to build linking or bridging networks that, over time, produce
social capital that is comparable in nature and quality to that social capital
produced in bonding networks.
2.3.2 Social capital: The fragility of associational life in South Africa
As De Tocqueville was first to note, medium to large-scale democracies
only flourish in an environment with a rich associational life. 27 Social
theorists have come to recognise that there is a direct correlation between
(a) the availability (or the lack of availability) of social capital; (b) the
presence (or absence) of bonding networks and bridging networks; and (c)
the virility (or the sterility) of political life. This syllogism is not the product
25 Putnam Bowling alone (n 20 above) 22-23.
26
Halpern (n 21 above) 20.
27 A de Toqueville Democracy in America (1835).