The Future of Smallholder Farming in Eastern Africa - Uganda ...

include density of membership in groups, 14 diversity of membership, participation in
decisionmaking, and cognitive social capital.
At the household level, density of membership is the number of people in each
household. This can generate high levels of trust and have a mitigating influence on the costs
of information search, contract negotiation, and enforcement (Bates 1999). However, terrace
construction is largely undertaken by hired or communal labor, at least in Machakos District.
Membership diversity is measured by rating members of a group according to five
criteria: religion, gender, age, political affiliation, and education. A diversity score is then
calculated for each organization by assigning a one or a two: (a value of one for each
criterion indicates that members of the organization are “mostly from the same” religious
affiliation, gender, and so on, while a value of two indicates that members mostly come from
different groups). These scores are then summed up per household. This index procedure
assumes that each criterion has the same weight in measuring the overall diversity of
membership. As Putnam (1993) suggests, diversity can spur community members to seek out
others like themselves, caring less about those they do not know, and this can limit the level
of social capital and its effectiveness.
Participants generally believe that organizations that follow a democratic pattern of
decisionmaking are more effective than others. To determine whether an organization is
democratic, respondents were first asked to evaluate the relative roles of the leader and the
members in reaching decisions andsecond, to evaluate the effectiveness of the organization’s
leader. The two responses can then be combined into a “democratic functioning score” to
determine the diversity score as shown below:
1 = the leader decides and informs the group,
2 = the leader asks group members for their views and then decides,
3 = the group members hold a discussion and decide together
and,
1 = the leader is not effective,
2 = the leader is somewhat effective,
3 = the leader is very effective.
These scores would be added together to give an index of group diversity for each household.
14 These are local groups such as labor exchanges, water associations, funeral associations, and women’s
groups.