The Founding Concepts of Social Capital - Bourdieu’s Theory of Capital and Coleman's Rational-Choice Approach to Social Capital

Abstract

Bourdieu and Coleman are the founding theorists of social capital because they introduced the term social capital systematically for the first time. Although they did so nearly simultaneously, they introduced the term independently of each other. In the present monograph, we aim to discuss the term social capital from its roots, and thus this chapter introduces first Bourdieu's concept and then Coleman's. We discuss both concepts critically and draw a conclusion about which features are important for a social capital theory.

Previous versions of Chapters 2-4 can be found in Häuberer (2006).