Case Study 1: Maintaining and Transforming Bridging Capital in a Swedish Interreligious Youth Project

Abstract

In this case study of an interreligious youth project social capital is understood as an individual disposition, i.e. the participants in the study rely on their former and parallel experiences of capital as a social resource. In order to maintain the project as a sustainable network, norms and sanctions that are adapted to particular situations by means of relations work supporting social trust, are necessary. The study has shown that social capital is a vulnerable category that needs to be maintained by conducted bridging capital. Bonding capital contributes to bridging capital, but also seems to create a complex relationship between them. This is due to the fact that bonding operates through another selective logic than bridging capital, namely the bolstering of the (more) narrow social self. Norms and sanctions are the basic components for achieving bridging capital, although bonding also operates within partly excluding bonding mechanisms.