Faith and Social Capital After the Debt Crisis

The founding father of 'social capital', Pierre Bourdieu, said that treating the church as an economic enterprise would lead to uproar, disbelief and the laughter of the bishops. Yet, in the last couple of decades, policy-makers and social scientists have increasingly sought to capitalize on faith by asking whether it produces social capital. In the context of faith-based social action in communities, this book asks what becomes of faiths when seen as social capital? Is the social subjugated to the capital part of the equation? As the debt crisis took hold, doesn't the relationship between the social and capital seem increasingly unbalanced? Using new research, theory and critical analysis, this book asks whether faiths can help rebalance society in favour of the human scale of life in communities, focusing on the value of the ordinary relationships which are already there, regardless of their wider 'use'.

Adam Dinham is Reader in Religion and Society at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. He is also policy advisor to the Faith Based Regeneration Network and Director of the Faiths and Civil Society Network of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, UK. His previous publications include Faiths, Public Policy and Civil Society, Faith in the Public Realm (with R. Furbey and V. Lowndes) and Faith as Social Capital (with R. Furbey, R. Farnell and D. Finneron).