British Educational Research Journal, Vol. 26, No.

5, 2000

Social Capital: exploring the theoretical

foundations of community development
education

PAULINE MCCLENAGHAN, University of Ulster

ABSTRACT Social capital as a concept has over the last decade or more been gaining
signi cance in relation to a number of linked elds of analyses, including the
identi cation of factors in uencing educational attainment; explanations of differing
levels of participation in formal and informal adult education; and conditions necessary
to the construction and enhancement of institutions and practices conducive to lifelong
learning. Within these contexts, social capital has come to be de ned in a variety of
ways, all of which have been linked to collective norms, values and relationships
re ecting the involvement of human individuals in a common life based on family and
community. In this respect, social capital enhancement appears to have direct links with
community development education in that community development is generally de ned
as a social learning process which serves to empower individuals and to involve them
as citizens in collective activities aimed at socio-economic development. In this contribu-
tion, the author questions the validity and ef cacy of social capital as an analytical
concept in the eld of adult education research by exploring a number of key issues
related to the assumed links between community development and social capital
enhancement. The analysis is based on research currently being conducted by the School
of Social and Community Sciences of the University of Ulster.

Introduction
Social capital as a concept has over the last decade or more been gaining signi cance
in relation to a number of discrete yet linked elds of analyses, including the
identi cation of factors in uencing educational attainment; explanations of differing
levels of participation in formal and informal adult education; the generation and
reproduction of conditions necessary to the evolution of institutions and practices
conducive to lifelong learning; the maintenance and enhancement of social cohesiveness,
social integration and political stability; and (either directly or by implication) the
Received 11 May 1999; resubmitted 6 January 2000; accepted 3 March 2000.

ISSN 0141-192 6 print/ISSN 1469-351 8 online/00/05056518 2000 British Educationa l Research Association
DOI: 10.1080 /0141192002000779 7
566 P. McClenaghan

economic growth potential of communities, regions and more latterly societies and
nations. Within these different contexts social capital has come to be de ned in a variety
of ways, most of which have been linked in one sense or another to collective ties,
norms, values, interactions, networks and relationships re ecting the involvement of
human individuals in a common life based on family and community.
In this respect, social capital enhancement could be construed as having direct links
with community development adult education in that community development is gener-
ally de ned as a social learning process; a learning process which serves to empower
individuals and social groups by involving them as citizens in collective activities aimed
at socio-economic regeneration, development and change. In this contribution, the
validity and usefulness of social capital as an analytical concept in the eld of
community development adult education research is examined through the exploration of
a number of issues relating to the assumed links between community development and
social capital enhancement.
This endeavour is prompted by a number of events including recent involvement in
collaborative research with Professor Toshimasa Suzuki and his team at the University
of Hokkaido, Japan. This collaboration is focused on the evolution of a common
theoretical perspective and conceptual framework relating to the role of community
development adult education in community responses to problems generated by econ-
omic and social transformation; problems which are becoming more apparent in Japan
as that society is increasingly integrated into the global economy.
Efforts to evolve common meanings and understandings, in relation to the theoretical
assumptions and associated concepts underpinning this joint work, raised differences in
interpretation in relation to those aspects and elements of social structure, social ties,
structures of relations, forms of interaction and organisation which have increasingly
come to be conceptualised as the de ning features of social capital and, more impor-
tantly perhaps, the validity and ef cacy of the use of the term capital to describe social
phenomena of this kind. Our discussions also raised questions in relation to the
determination of appropriate and effective measuring devices and techniques which
would allow for the empirical analysis of these various aspects of social life and their
assumed strategic role in relation to economic growth and development; particularly
questions regarding the liquidity and convertibility of facets of social relations into both
collective and personalised and embodied capital stock which would allow for the
opening up of real and sustainable economic opportunities in marginalised communities
and among socially excluded groups.
The second factor in uencing our decision to interrogate the social capital concept
relates to our engagement in a local communityuniversity education access network in
Northern Ireland, sponsoring and offering university validated community development
adult education in the form of progressively linked courses from access level through to
postgraduate and doctoral level studies; a progression route largely provided within an
institutional context but the rst year of which is offered in a community setting. The
network has its origins in contacts constructed within communities as a consequence of
12 years of practice and research experience in university community development
education provision, much of which was funded by the European Union (EU) within the
context of policy strategies aimed at combating social exclusion.
Provision at postgraduate level includes an EU-sponsored SOCRATES Intensive
Programme (the European Community Action Programme for co-operation in the eld
of education) offered in association with the European Society for Research on the
Education of Adults, the Northern Ireland (NI) Western Health and Social Services
 Foundations of Community Development Education 567

Board and the Community Development Education Access Network. This course and the
postgraduate Diploma/MSc Professional Development in the Community, to which it
is attached, provide shared learning environments involving local and European pro-
fessional practitionershealth workers, social workers, planners, development workers
and educationalistsand their community counterparts. These developments re ect the
mainstreaming of community development in social policy implementation and social
and health services, provision at state and European levels (EU Commission, 1994;
Department of Health and Social Security [DHSS], 1997, 1999; Department of Social,
Community and Family Affairs [DSCFA], 1999); a facet of the general shift away from
bureaucratic modes of welfarism to the consumer-driven framework of New Right
marketisation, molli ed more recently through the promotion of community values and
the engendering of active citizenship in a mixed economy of care.
In this context, community action, as an expression of active citizenship, becomes a
desirable social asset and the quality of a democracy is no longer to be determined by
the justice of its basic structures but also by the qualities of its citizens (Kildal, 1999).
Herein lies the important contemporary social role of adult education, and more
particularly community development adult education, with its emphasis on personal and
community responsibility and empowerment, on democratic participation, on communal
identity, social cohesion and solidarity, on exible and particularistic responses to human
need and on forms of pedagogical practice based on contextuality, collective partici-
pation and experiential and situated learning.
Involvement in this innovative work has provided a unique opportunity to examine the
links between community involvement, informal social learning and participation in
formal adult education and the possible implications of these activities for individual and
collective economic opportunity. We have only just begun to map out the complex
structure of relations which would form the focus of such an analysis and to devise
analytical tools for their study and measurement. What is presented here is reasoning
with regard to the validity and ef cacy of the social capital concept as a theoretical
foundation for this kind of adult education research, based on and informed by insights
already emerging from this initial mapping exercise.

De ning Social Capital

The current popularity of the social capital concept makes us almost reluctant to restate
the major de nitions which have in uenced and infused contemporary academic thinking
in adult education research and community development theory and practice. Many
recent articles seeking to examine links between adult learning, in its variety of forms,
and socio-economic development include as a theoretical premise de nitions of social
capital drawn from the work of Bourdieu (1986, 1993), Coleman (1988, 1990, 1993) or
Putnam (1993a, 1993b, 1995, 1996). So popular has the social capital concept become
that it has entered into the discourse of a range of academic and professional disciplines
as well as into the day-to-day language of community development groups. Yet, in many
instances the term has been incorporated without the support of a disciplined body of
evidence as to the nature, characteristics and role of social capital at the community
level. In order to effectively unpack and problematise the concept, we must return to
those in uential, if not altogether original, de nitions wherein the salient characteristics
of social capital are described and (for Coleman and Putnam at least) its strategic role
determined.
568 P. McClenaghan

Social Capital in the Reproduction of Inequality: Bourdieu

Bourdieus conception of capital re ects his positioning of actors in social space
according to economic, social and cultural characteristics. Economic capital is expressed
in property rights, while cultural capital may take many forms, re ecting the internalisa-
tion of behaviours, dispositions, knowledges and habits acquired in the socialisation
process or accumulated through investment in education and training or in the acqui-
sition of cultural goods. Some forms of cultural capital endow the holder with symbolic
power signifying status and prestige, and the capacity to de ne and legitimise social and
cultural values, norms, standards and practices. Social capital, on the other hand, he
de nes as the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to the
possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalised relationships of mutual
acquaintance and recognition (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 248); in other words, the totality of
actual and potential resources individuals can mobilise through membership in organisa-
tions and social networks.
Bourdieus analysis takes place primarily at the meso-level in that he develops a
theoretical constructsocial eldsrelated to functionally differentiated parts of
society, wherein the totality of relevant individual and organisational actors, equipped
with varying amounts of capital in its several forms, struggle for dominance. Fields are,
therefore, dynamic but the dominance of speci c forms of capital is characteristic of
different types of social elds.
Different forms of capital vary in terms of their liquidity and convertibility from one
form to another. Economic capital is the most liquid, most readily convertible By
comparison, the convertibility of social capital into economic capital is costlier and more
contingent; social capital is less liquid, stickier and subject to attrition (Anheier et al.,
1995). In Bourdieus analysis, social and cultural capital are never completely reducible
to an economic form but they are still fundamentally rooted in it, since all types of
capital can be derived from economic capital through various efforts of transformation.
What makes social and cultural capital effective is that this relationship to economic
capital is concealed and obscured. Privileged groups are endowed with the symbolic
power to dominate and reproduce their capital uncontested (Bourdieu, 1993) and their
access to social capital allows them to reduce the transaction costs of using other forms
of capital. Hence, social capital endows holders with advantages and opportunities
accruing through membership in certain communities and it is an important means
whereby social inequality and social exclusion are reproduced.

Social Capital and Human Capital: Coleman

In Colemans analysis, the dynamic and competitive nature of social elds, generated by
variations in capital endowment, and the relations of dominance and subordination which
permeate them, tends to slip away. In uenced by Loury (1977), who used the term to
describe familial and communal resources that promote childrens cognitive or social
development, Coleman de nes social capital as a variety of different entities, with two
elements in common: they all consist of some aspect of social structure and they
facilitate certain actions of actorswhether personal or corporate actorswithin that
structure (Coleman, 1988, p. 598). In other words, social capital is a social structural
resource that serves as a capital asset for the individual and facilitates certain actions
and outcomes for those who occupy a given social structure (Coleman, 1990, p. 302).
Unlike other forms of capital, it is not possessed by individuals but exists in the
 Foundations of Community Development Education 569

relationships between individuals and it is characterised by mutual trust and an expec-

tation of reciprocity. Trust, obligations and expectations, norms, relations of authority
and shared information are all examples of social capital because they are resources that
arise from the social relations of individuals who share membership in a common social
structure (Carbonaro, 1998, p. 296). These resources allow actors to improve their
performance in a variety of activities in which they engage, including educational
performance, and they depend on a dense and relatively closed social structure that has
continuity over time (Coleman, 1993, p. 9).
Colemans empirical evidence is based on a series of studies on educational outcomes
in American schools which, he argues, suggest that variations in educational attainment
levels and drop-out rates re ect variations in levels of family stability, of parental
engagement in family and community and the quality of shared norms and values within
communities, rather than the economic class background of students or subsequent
resource differences between schools. While the volume of empirical evidence he gathers
is considerable, some important factors are excluded from the analysis: the relationship,
for example, between unemployment and poverty within families and associated and
other forms of social disadvantage and levels and quality of civic engagement. Nor does
he consider how within communities some families are able to use their heavier
endowments of economic and cultural capital to make their use of social capital more
effective, simultaneously disempowering less well-endowed community members and
possibly even teachers (Birenbaum-Carmeli, 1999). Colemans ndings also run counter
to national educational statistics which demonstrate that, in spite of a general decline in
social capital, as he de nes it, in both the USA and in Britain educational attainment
levels have continued to rise since the Second World War (Riddell et al., 1999, p. 52).

Social Capital and Political and Economic Development: Putnam

The notion of social capital as constituted by a web of relationships operating at the
meso-level of society is further extended by Putnam in his analyses of government and
civil society in Italy and the USA. He de nes social capital as features of social
organisations, such as networks, norms and trust that facilitate co-ordination and
co-operation for mutual bene t (Putnam, 1993a, p. 41). It consists of networks of civic
engagement and associated norms which affect the productivity of a community.
Networks and norms are therefore empirically related and this association has important
political and economic implications. A politically successful and economically produc-
tive community is one with a vigorous network of indigenous grassroots associations
representing the capillaries of community life; a kind of soft social infrastructure
generating a sense of citizenship which enhances reciprocity, trust and interactive
decision-making, fostering security in the interactions between economic actors con-
ducive to economic innovation and creativity (Amin, 1997, pp. 133134).
Social capital enhancement in Putnams hands therefore becomes a necessary precon-
dition for economic development and effective government. His main arguments draw on
a longitudinal study of institutional development in regional government in Italy based
on interviews with regional councillors, surveys of community leaders and voters, case
studies and legislative analyses, conducted over a 19-year period. On the basis of this
evidence, he argues that regions which had inherited a substantial stock of social capital
through strong civic traditions had higher levels of human capital endowment and
economic prosperity. Less successful communities tended to be the less civic regions
570 P. McClenaghan

where political and social participation was organised vertically and involvement in civic
associations scanty (Putnam, 1993b, p. 182).
In relation to the USA, he uses data drawn from a series of time-budget surveys
conducted in three decades from 1965 to 1985, and surveys conducted on political
participation in 1973 and 1993 which indicated that participation in many conventional
voluntary organisations had declined by between 25% and 50% over this period,
paralleled by a sharp decline in political engagement (Putnam, 1995, 1996). Putnams
indictors relating to the American studies include a diverse range of organisations
parentteacher associations, trade unions, the League of Women Voters, bowling leagues
and various other traditional clubs and societies. They are nevertheless highly selective.
Many re ect patterns of association and leisure activities which have been undermined
or displaced by increased af uence and by new patterns of production and consumption.
Declining trade union density in the USA and Europe has been associated with
deindustrialisation and informationalism, which have also brought about new social
concerns and new patterns of community action and forms of leisure activity not
included in the studies.

Social Capital as Society

Putnams analysis of social capital has been taken further by others (Evans, 1996; Lam,
1996; Grootaert; 1997), not, however, to incorporate new forms of association and
community involvement but to incorporate formal institutional relationships and struc-
tures such as governmental institutions, the political regime, the rule of law and the court
system. Previously de ned as an individual resource, it now becomes the property of
groups, societies and nations, often expressed in a somewhat contradictory fashion,
wherein social capital at once incorporates facets of state institutions and acts to
reinforce relationships between those institutions and the largely informal web of
relationships at local and community levels. It is a role which has come to be
increasingly expressed in the synergy hypothesis, which stipulates that social capital
and state institutions mutually reinforce one another in the pursuit of broad-based
socio-economic development (Buckland, 1998, p. 242); a hypothesis which has provided
a rationale for co-production systems and partnership relationships between state and
civil society entities in the implementation of economic development strategies and in
local service provision.
The social capital of a society includes the institutions, the relationships, the
attitudes and values that govern interactions among people and contribute to
economic and social development. Social capital, however, is not simply the
sum of the institutions which underpin society, it is also the glue that holds
them together. It includes the shared values and rules for social conduct
expressed in personal relationships, trust, and a common sense of civic
responsibility, that makes society more than a collection of individuals.
Without a degree of common identi cation with forms of governance, cultural
norms and social rules, it is dif cult to imagine a functioning society.
(Grootaert, 1997)
It is a valuable capital asset indeed, the stock of which actually accumulates with use
and which does not necessarily require expenditure of scare resources in its creation
(Evans, 1996, p. 1034). It is small wonder then that Coleman, Putnam and others
(Fukuyama, 1995) lament its decline and argue for the urgent need of reinventing
 Foundations of Community Development Education 571

community (Portes & Landolt, 1996); a project conceived by some to be all the more
urgent as globalisation restructures and transforms our societies in the direction of an
increasingly complex and highly individualised social world characterised by multiplic-
ity, plurality, ephemerality and indeterminacy. It is no coincidence that the resurgence of
interest in social capital has been paralleled by the re-emergence of community in
philosophical and political debates expressed in various forms of communitarianism.

Social Capital and Community Development

The attraction of these ideas for community development workers and community
educationalists throughout the world has been immense. The very broadness of the social
capital concept, re ected especially in the work of Coleman and Putnam, enables it to
be used to satisfy a very wide range of economic, sociocultural, political and even moral
agendas. The positive associations between community identi cations, civic partici-
pation, community networks, political stability and economic performance provide a
powerful rationale for the development and support of learning and educational systems
which can demonstrate their ability to enhance this valuable collective asset. A range
of educational and training methodologies and techniques aimed at reconstructing or
strengthening social capital have already permeated community development practice, as
is evidenced perhaps by the recent proliferation of educational and training programmes
emanating from a wide variety of state, voluntary and community sources, aimed at
providing civic education, enhancing community leadership or building community
capacities and networks.
Our interest, as adult educationalists seeking to establish community development as
a speci c eld of university adult education and to extend this resource outwards into
a wider community gives a certain appeal to the social capital concept. The links
between social capital and community development are, however, less obvious and
de nite than they may at rst sight appear. What the two concepts most certainly share
is a certain vacuousness which makes rigorous analysis of any relationship between them
dif cult without very de nite statements of meaning.
Community development as a form of practice has a long historya history structured
by different contexts (economic, socio-political and geographical) and by its shifting
relations at different points in time with state institutions and other institutional and
organisational actors; sometimes functioning as an opposing radical force, at others
working in partnership with state institutions; sometimes functioning in both senses
simultaneously. What links community development and social capital theoretically and
conceptually is the concept community, largely expressed in most social capital
theories as an abstractiona homogeneous social structure implying common processes
in the generation and acceptance of fundamentally positive social norms, values and
practices. But communities are rarely discrete entities; communities exist within com-
munities and some communities have greater power to de ne and legitimise meaning,
values, norms and practices than others. Access to community membership and intra-
and inter-community con ict and competition are also structured by power relations.
When we use the term community development we are not referring to community in
the abstract but very speci c and empirically grounded communities de ned by the
concept social exclusionindividuals, social groups, whole communities, parts of
communities, communities within communitiespeople whose life chances have
been affected by the multidimensional processes of social exclusion generating social
inequality.
572 P. McClenaghan

Putnam and Colemans use of the social capital concept implies a collective com-
munity resource represented by the sum total of individual social capital. Yet, if social
capital is a resource available through networks, then some individual and group claims
will come at the expense of others (Portes & Landolt, 1996). Putnam refers to the crucial
bridging function of social capital but gives little attention to inequalities in the
distribution of income or other economic, physical, environmental and social advantages
which structure relations in the eld of community life. Clearly, the traditional associa-
tional ties and forms of closure to which Putnam and Coleman refer may well contribute
to the reproduction of these advantages and by implication the reproduction of disadvan-
tage and exclusion. The deeper the inequality, the more exclusive social networks may
become (a bridge too far?). Rebuilding community as a social process of coordination
aimed at developing and enhancing social cohesion, rather than as a process of political
mobilisation to advance demands based on rights, may well reinforce the very exclusion
that community development activists in disadvantaged communities are struggling
against in the name of a common good which has subordinated the interest of these
communities to those of more powerful groups (Lister, 1998, p. 231).

Social Capital Theory and Adult Education in the North-west of Ireland

Social capital, measured in terms of family structure, church membership, levels of
charitable giving and community and voluntary sector participation and involvement, is
deemed to be relatively high in Northern Ireland in comparison to communities
elsewhere in the UK, as are levels of educational attainment among schoolchildren in the
region, suggesting a correlation between social capital, in Colemans sense, and educa-
tional performance (Field, 1998, p. 35). But Northern Ireland communities are also
deeply fragmented, fundamentally on the basis of sect, overlapped and infused by
fragmentations related to social class, geography (in terms of rurality/urbanity) and
locality. Sectarian identi cations and ties to locality are still quite strong, in both urban
and rural areas, and not only in working-class communities (Paris et al., 1998). In small
communities, some of which have long been absorbed by urbanisation or have been
overwhelmed by an in ux of new population groups, traditional social ties still tend to
form the basis of personal identity and serve to identify and de ne outsiders. Forms of
association and the ability to command resources through these varied social networks
also differ within and between communities. Local communities and neighbourhood s
may therefore be internally cohesive in normative terms, but the multiplicity and density
of interrelationships between them and the quality and resource value of the social
networks within them, even where communities are geographically proximate, can be
very different. Few womens groups in Northern Ireland would be likely to applaud the
strength and density of social networks and associated norms and values which have
effectively excluded them from full participation in the civic and political life of their
communities (Evason, 1991).
In a divided society, the dense and relatively closed social structure constructed over
time to which Coleman refers, may in fact militate against the formation of what
Granovetter de nes as weak ties which bridge (Granovetter, 1973, p. 1375), thereby
limiting the capacity of communities to act in concert and to organise effectively in the
face of economic and social transformation. Weak ties, often denounced as generative
of alienation are indispensable to individuals opportunities and to their integration
into communities; strong ties, breeding local cohesion lead to overall fragmentation
 Foundations of Community Development Education 573

(Granovetter, 1973, p. 1378). It is on this point that the analyses of Coleman and Putnam
contradict one another. In Colemans work it is the dense social bonds associated with
kinship and communal identity that have causal signi cance, whereas in Putnams Italian
study it is the horizontal networks of civic engagement that cut across social cleavages
which nourish wider cooperation and bolster the performance of the polity and the
economy (Putnam, 1993, pp. 175176). Communities with a long history of democratic
involvement, where individuals engage in collective activities as equals, tend to be more
successful than those structured by vertical networks which he associates with mutual
distrust, exploitation, isolation and disorder.
Coleman himself, in his 1992 Presidential Address to the American Sociological
Society, where he argues for the rational reconstruction of society to compensate for the
loss of social capital, alludes to the unpleasant aspects of normative systems:
They operate more via constraints and coercion than via incentives and
rewards. They are inegalitarian, giving those with most power in the com-
munity freedoms that are denied others. They discriminate they inhibit
innovation and creativity; they bring a greyness to life that dampens hope and
aspiration the interests of different members of the community are weighed
differently. (Coleman, 1993, p. 10)
Hence, the same strong social ties that help one community, or some members of the
same community, also enable them to dominate and exclude others. There has long
been a considerable volume of evidence from Northern Ireland and elsewhere which
demonstrates the ability of individuals and groups to manipulate social networks to
achieve speci c goals and to sanction and ostracise community members who violate
group norms (Mayer, 1966; Boissevain & Walster, 1969; Kapferer, 1969; Boissevain
in refs Kolankiewicz, 1996). Violation through the non-observance of accepted norms
and mores governing, for example, forms of entrepreneurial practice which favour
speci c groups can result in considerable personal loss, reducing business initiative and
militating against economic innovation and creativity.
The structure of the Northern Ireland economy is such that indigenous enterprise tends
to be dominated by small rms whose contractual and employment practices often re ect
traditional associational, community and kinship ties. Economic opportunity can there-
fore owe as much to the social networks in which individuals are embedded as it does
to nancial resources, education or technical skill. In terms of economic ef ciency and
resource use, these characteristics may well have restricted economic growth and
reduced the capacity of indigenous rms to adapt quickly to a changing economic
environment structured, in part at least, by new patterns of relationships linking global
and local enterprises. Furthermore, the informal networks governing employment oppor-
tunities, wherein human capital in the form of education, training and skill may be
secondary to other insider conditions, may act to reduce individuals capacities to
convert cultural capital into economic opportunity, thereby contradicting the social
capital theorists arguments that high social capital enhances the ef ciency of other
forms of capital. This argument, of course, has wider applicability in that it also relates
to the capacity of working-class people and other socially disadvantaged groups to
convert academic quali cations into occupational opportunity in a highly competitive
and exible labour market where educational expansion has led to credential in ation
(Brown, 1995). This is an argument which is particularly relevant in Northern Ireland
where a signi cant proportion of young entrants to higher education come from manual
working class backgrounds (Field, 1998, p. 35).
574 P. McClenaghan

Field, an exponent of social capital theory as a theoretical framework for the adult
education research, suggests that high levels of social capital in Northern Ireland have
been associated with low levels of involvement in formal adult education and creden-
tialled learning. For a young person seeking employment, or an adult looking for career
development, personal contacts and obligations are a tried and trusted route, while
formal certi cation plays a relatively muted role (Field, 1998, p. 36). In this instance
social capital does not increase human capital but reduces the motivation of adults to
acquire it; a tendency which again runs counter to the assumed positive and strategic role
of social capital in the generation and reinforcement of other forms of capital. The social
networks in which individuals are embedded, and which constrain and structure individ-
ual behaviour, may therefore limit innovation and creativity, reduce the convertibility of
human capital into economic capital and reproduce forms of social exclusion, while
simultaneously undermining the ability of individuals to overcome it.
In many disadvantaged communities in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, some families
rely heavily on kinship and social ties for economic survival. These ties often include
involvement in or reliance upon a variety of community and voluntary support organisa-
tions. In these respects social capital in these communities could be said to be
considerable, but the assets obtainable through it, in terms of objective economic
resources, are rarely suf cient to allow the larger proportion of community members to
rise above their poverty and disadvantage. In this kind of environment social networks
and ties are as likely to produce patterns of relationships and associated norms capable
of justifying a range of social practices (from the manipulation of the welfare system to
petty crime), which would be perceived by more privileged social groups as forms of
deviance, as they are to generate mutual trust and reciprocity conducive to effective
government or economic development. In such communities, what Portes & Landolt
(1996) refer to as downward levelling pressures may act to undermine individual
adult aspirations to rise above current personal circumstances through formal learning
because such aspirations are deemed by other community members to be threatening to
community identi cations and solidarity.
The relevance of a local variant of this argument is supported by evidence from our
evaluative research into the aspirations and motivations of almost 300 adult students,
who over the last 13 years have undertaken courses in Community Development
Education at the University of Ulster, Magee. The majority of these students had no
previous formal educational quali cations prior to registration. Currently, the rst year
of the undergraduate diploma programme is offered in a community centre servicing a
population which has for decades experienced high levels of structural unemployment
and a range of social problems consistent with multiple deprivation. But the majority of
students are and have been drawn from a wider catchment area which includes
neighbourhoods , villages and localities in both urban and rural areas (on both sides of
the Irish border), all of which have been socially marginalised by high unemployment
and economic underdevelopment or decline.
The research began in 1987 when European funding allowed for the design and
implementation of a 2-year action research project which would establish educational
programme appropriate to community development education targeted at socially
excluded groups, but provided within a university context. A number of evaluative
mechanisms linked to core objectives were embedded in the programme and a
summative evaluation based on in-depth interviews with the 40 students was conducted
at the end of the two years (McClenaghan, 1989; Shanahan et al., 1989). Extended EU
support allowed for the continuation of the course for a further 6 years and in 1990 the
 Foundations of Community Development Education 575

programme won the Council for Industry and Higher Educations Shell UK Award for
Open Learning.
Between 1987 and 1995, 230 men and women completed the Community Develop-
ment Studies Programme, the majority of whom were unemployed adults either inter-
ested in or already active in the community and voluntary sector. A short study of
programme outcomes relating to its impact on group development was conducted in
1995 (Shanahan & Ward, 1995) and a small life history study, based on individual
student experiences, was completed in 1996 (Shanahan, 1996). Between 1995 and 1996,
a full study was undertaken, designed to examine the overall contribution of the
programme in terms of individual development and its impact at the community level
and to identify further forms of educational support appropriate to the community and
voluntary sector (McClenaghan & Robson, 1996a).
In order to measure the personal development of students, all those who had
completed the course from its inception were surveyed (73% response rate) and the
198789 data were used as a baseline in order to assess programme outcomes. Research
objectives included (i) measuring the impact of the programme on community and
voluntary participation rates among students; establishing students pre-course and
post-course educational attainment levels; (iii) establishing students pre-course and
post-course employment and career destinations; and (iv) measuring course impact on
personal effectiveness and individual con dence. Programme impact at community level
was measured through a series of case studies wherein semi-structured interviews were
conducted among past students and their peers working in a selection of community
development projects, in order to access student contribution to group development and
skills transfer. The third facet of the study involved surveying a representative sample
of community organisations throughout Northern Ireland. In all, 113 surveys were
returned, in which group members were asked to classify group activities; to indicate
expected levels of education, skill and experience relating to both managerial and
development of cers positions within their organisations; and to rate in terms of relative
importance a range of subject areas and skill electives. Groups were also provided with
a series of key descriptors which they were asked to highlight, in terms of relevance, in
relation to employee and volunteer recruitment.
Overall, research ndings indicated that voluntary participation rates in community
sector activity among students increased quite substantially after their involvement in the
course programme and broadened to include a wider range of voluntary activity; 65% of
students progressed into higher education on completion; 46% were at the time of
interview in paid employment, 62% of which were employed in the community and
voluntary sector; levels of con dence and perceptions of personal effectiveness had also
increased; and students and their peers identi ed important contributions made to group
developments. The wider survey of organisations and groups, designed to establish
educational support needs, identi ed a surprisingly high expected level of quali cation
and skill among potential group personnel and these data and those from the student
survey clearly communicated a demand for higher level educational provision and a
coherent sequence of educational quali cations appropriate to the eld (McClenaghan &
Robson, 1996a)
This qualifying sequence has now been established and course provision has been
mainstreamed through the collaborative activities of the University, the DHSS, the
DSCFA and the Community Development Education Access Network, who provide
support to students, including in some instances nancial support which previously had
been provided through the European grant. Research continues through baseline
576 P. McClenaghan

interviews at the point of recruitment and continuous progress monitoring and evaluation
with students and their supporting groups. It has also been extended to include the
monitoring and evaluation of the degree and postgraduate courses, and speci c evalua-
tive mechanisms (which include external evaluators from other European universities)
have been designed to monitor those elements of provision which bring together
professional employees and their community counterparts.
Evidence from the student body continues to indicate that the motivations of
individuals taking the course programmes re ect student aspirations for self-
improvement and the acquisition of recognised and accredited quali cation but that the
greater proportion of individuals would not have considered the programme accessible
to them, but for the support, both nancial and affective, of the community groups of
which they are members. To have sought direct entry to a formal educational pro-
gramme, particularly a third-level university-based programme, would have been as-
sumed to be beyond our capabilities, outside our sphere, presumptuous and
re ective of self-aggrandisement.
On the other hand, to engage in an educational programme, whose subject matter
can be seen to have immediacy in relation to day-to-day experiences, both personal
and collective in community and neighbourhood, and set within a context which
physically re ects this experience, appears to have reduced student anxieties in relation
both to their own capabilities and capacities to learn, and the reactions of their peers in
the familial and other social networks in which they are embedded. What is most
striking about the interviews on which this evaluative research is based is the lack of
con dence and self-esteem expressed by students and their fear of ridicule and censure
by their peers outside the con nes of the community groups of which they are now part
and to which many had initially come as consumers of services or as a result of
a temporary work scheme; ndings more re exive, perhaps, of the importance
of Granovetters weak ties than Colemans relatively closed social structure of relation-
ships constructed over time.
What makes our research ndings particularly interesting is the apparent differential
impact of social capital on the educational outcomes of children and the participation
rates of adults in formal learning, often, though not always, in evidence within the
context of a single community (educational outcomes among children and adult edu-
cation participation rates in Northern Ireland vary by district). Field explains this paradox
by the density and multiplicity of social ties associated with informal networks linked to
employment placement and adult engagement in what he de nes as social movements,
both of which, he argues, generate suf cient stocks of social capital which provide a
far more effective means than formal quali cation, for the achievement of individual
and organisational goals (Field, 1998, pp. 3637). We take issue with these arguments
on both empirical and conceptual grounds. Firstly, we have already demonstrated how
social networks linked to employer recruitment practices serve to reproduce social
inequality. There is quite considerable evidence from Northern Ireland which suggests
that long-term unemployed people and communities with dense pockets of structural
unemployment tend to have little access to such networks in any case.
Secondly, Field himself identi es the premium placed by both parents and children in
Northern Ireland on successful educational outcomes as a means to escape, through
social and geographical mobility, the social consequences of living in communities
structured by unemployment, discrimination and exclusion. But the high premium placed
on educational achievement in childhood may impact fundamentally on adults who have
failed to achieve, for one reason or another, as children. Hence, it may not be a lack of
 Foundations of Community Development Education 577

motivation to engage in formal learning or the availability of alternative sources of capital

which limit adult education participation, but low levels of self-esteem and self-con dence
learned and embodied as a consequence of early life experience and reinforced by social
ties in adulthood.
Thirdly, Field argues that the social capital acquired by individuals through informal
learning arising as a consequence of their participation in social movements provides
a viable alternative to formal learning for both individuals and groups. Civic engagement
of this kind, he suggests, tend(s) to promote the acquisition of new skills, new knowledge
and new ways of seeing ones own identity (Field, 1998, p. 36). There are two issues
here, the rst a conceptual one. Social movements by their nature imply social
mobilisation for change; in this sense they are socio-political entities. New ways of seeing
ones identity are less likely to reinforce and strengthen existing social ties and associated
norms and values, as they are to deconstruct and challenge these ties and their implicit
normative systems in favour of new forms of association and new ways of perceiving
social relations. In this sense, they are generally underpinned by socio-political demands
based on individualised citizenship rightsthe right to a clean and healthy environment,
to political participation, to balanced forms of economic growth and security, to social
justice etc. These kinds of social links are a long way from the traditional associational
ties, the decline of which are lamented as a public loss, a sociological mistake
(Coleman, 1993) by major exponents of social capital theory.
The second issue relates to the convertibility and transferability of social capital arising
from forms of learning which refer to the ways in which diverse areas of knowledge,
or skills, are pieced together by more than one person, not necessarily operating at the
same level but complementing each other (Schuller & Field, 1998, p. 231) into other
forms of capital which will generate real economic opportunity for the individuals
involved. Field recognises this problem and suggests that developing methodologies for
the study of social capital expressed in interactive and relational settings should be the
focus of contemporary adult education research, wherein architects and city planners
(may) have a more important role in creating effective networks for learning than do adult
educators (Field, 1998, p. 38).

Economic Transformation, Community and the State

The emergence of social movements has been theorised within the context of economic
and social transformation. The changing nature and structure of Western economies and
societies, over the last two decades and more, has been such as to have extended the scope
of commodity and industrial logic to encompass new social space, including the
production and reproduction of life goods and other forms of social, cooperative and
collective activity traditionally deemed outside the formal economy. As the emphasis of
late capitalism has increasingly shifted from production to consumption, this process has
contributed to the commodi cation and valorisation of virtually all facets of social and
cultural as well as material life. The particular British political response to these processes
has involved, among other things, a seminal shift in social policy away from a general
quasi-collectivist approach, where statutory institutions and organisations directly sup-
plied welfare and caring services, to a model based on individualism and essentially
competitive market relations. Welfare provision has increasingly become the responsi-
bility of a plurality of providers (state, voluntary, community, private and informal) rather
than the main responsibility of the state; the emphasis increasingly shifting away from
the state as a provider to that of the state as an enabler and purchaser.
578 P. McClenaghan

This reorientation of social policy to civil society has enhanced the role of the
community and voluntary sector in the mixed economy of care; a process re ected in
the growing emphasis on community participation and the incorporation of community
development practice in a range of new state strategies related to local and neighbourhood
service provision and management, to local economic development and to the resolution
of community problems associated with social exclusion, crime, poverty, housing,
environmental degradation and rural and urban decline. Marketisation and contracting
arrangements have drawn the community and voluntary sector into the business world
and turned caring and altruism, in their various forms, into commodities. The emphasis
on the social bene ts of active citizenship has also placed community and voluntary groups
in stakeholder and multi-agency partnerships with statutory authorities, local, national and
supranational state bureaucracies, and a whole range of semi-autonomous bodies and
private sector agents; breaking down professional demarcations and autonomy and
reconstituting professional and other knowledge to incorporate this process.
At a time when the volume of alternative forms of economically necessary work is
diminishing, the community and voluntary sector is becoming a signi cant employer and
as groups respond to the siren call of the contract culture, evolving into major suppliers
of services, organisations are being forced to professionalise themselves (McClenaghan
& Robson, 1996b; Drake, 1998; Cowen, 1999). Market effects reconstitute roles and
responsibilities, transforming volunteers into employees, and community members into
consumers. In this new commercial environment, economic and bureaucratic systems
related to managerialism and quality assurance, budgeting imperatives, monitoring and
evaluation systems, employment rules, health and safety regulations and accredited
educational and training requirements are extended further into the civic sphere. Civil
society has been collapsed into the market (Levitas, 1996, p. 16) undermining the
autonomy of community and voluntary organisations and their representative function,
sti ing protest and leading to fragmentation and compartmentalisation as groups strive
to accommodate these different functions (Drake, 1996).
It is within this context that the transferability and convertibility of informal learning
becomes highly signi cant, not least for individuals whose motivations for civic
engagement relate to their struggle against economic and social processes which have
disadvantaged them and their communities. Limited access to formal educational
quali cations or social and nancial constraints (growing all the more important with the
commodi cation of knowledge systems) which restrict individuals from availing of
opportunities where they exist, may serve to exclude not only signi cant proportions of
community members from full participation in socio-economic development processes,
but also experienced but formally underquali ed community activists struggling to give
voice to knowledges and experiences obscured and concealed by more powerful
interests. Given these circumstances, the community sector, and the social movements
which have informed it, may well come to be dominated in the sphere of paid employment
by a professional and semi-professional elite; and community members, some of whom
may have helped initiate and construct these employing organisations, may nd themselves
marginalised to spheres of activity characterised by more precarious remunerative forms.
It is the growing awareness of these processes and their likely implications in relation
to economic opportunity arising from community action, which has increased the
demand for formal accredited adult learning, also re ected in the work of the NI
Community Education Network and the Open College Network, which now accredit
a range of competency-based courses encompassing informal and prior learning
(ONeill, 1998).
 Foundations of Community Development Education 579

As the functions and complexity of the community sector increase and more of its
activities are commercialised and economised, generating real opportunities for econ-
omic appropriation, individual group members engaged within it are seeking higher
levels of formal quali cation which will allow them to gain access to economic capital
within this increasingly complex and structured social eld. Furthermore, as the
community sector has become ever more integrated through synergy relations with
various aspects of the state apparatus and other organisational and institutional actors,
levels of remuneration have increased and have become highly differentiated (salaries
within the sector can range from 14,000 pa for a community group-based development
worker to 65,000 pa for an institutionally-based development of cer), increasing the
level of human capital needed for community members to bene t in terms of employ-
ment rather than as mere passive consumers of services or as bene ciaries in a wider
non-economic sense (e.g. personal feelings of security through improved community
infrastructure).
This is all the more important given the pattern of power relations which tends to be
re ected in these synergetic partnerships, and which is currently expressed in the form
of stakeholder participation. There is some evidence to suggest that the availability of
cultural and social capital (as Bourdieu uses these terms) to more privileged community
members enables them to acquire prominent positions in partnership networks which
open to them opportunities for economic appropriation to the exclusion of less well-en-
dowed community members. The importance accorded by funding agencies to business
sector actors and to statutory and other agents is invariably disproportionately high in
comparison to that of sociocultural community representatives (Curtin & Varley, 1997).
These processes may contribute to the generation of a cadre of social entrepreneurs
(Mayo, 1998) capable of manipulating social partnerships to their own advantage. The
nature of services and employment opportunities which may become available to socially
excluded communities and other disadvantaged groups in these circumstances may, as
Riddell et al. (1999) suggest, be such as to generate vertical rather than horizontal net-
works, re-creating new patterns of dependency and exclusion detrimental, as Putnam
would put it, to political development and economic progress. Social capital, hailed as
a desirable social asset, may thus become an additional resource for the already
powerful, constituting less resourceful populations and groups as passive, apathetic and
indifferent.
The forms of capital carried by the professional worker (the architect, the city planner,
the health worker, the social worker etc.) in synergetic partnerships also has relevance
here. Stakeholders move in different circles (Bourdieus institutionalised relationships of
mutual acquaintance and recognition) and have access to different kinds of information.
Resources attained, who is included and what is demanded in exchange can re ect
the symbolic and social capital carried by the professional as a consequence of
his/her professional status and institutional location. The recent focus on the workplace
as a source of reconstructed social capital testi es to this view (Shaffer & Anundsen,
1993; Osterberg, 1996)all the more reason to incorporate in professional continuing
education educational inputs which will challenge and deconstruct the professional
perception of social exclusion and the processes which underlie it.

Conclusions
Our interrogation of the social capital concept has suggested to us that, as an analytical
tool, the concept as it is de ned by Coleman, Putnam, Field and others provides a
580 P. McClenaghan

relatively weak theoretical foundation for the study of the relationship between adult
education, community development and socio-economic growth and change. In our
view, these various interpretations incorporate a conceptual confusion evidenced by the
different uses of the term. For the most part it is used to refer to norms, values and
networks associated with traditional family and community linkages which are being
undermined by globalisation and associated socio-economic forces, necessitating their
urgent rational reconstruction in a range of social spheres; a concern reminiscent,
perhaps, of Durkheims (1893) similar concerns a century ago in relation to the passing
of traditional norms and values under the pressure of industrialisation. At other times, the
concept is used to refer to new sets of identities, networks, and values associated with
social movements or democratic forms of institutional/civic engagement. Whatever it
de nes, in all these analyses social capital is used in such a way as to place the main
emphasis upon social cohesion; an emphasis which gives the analysis a profoundly
functionalist and socially conservative bent in that it discounts community organisation
and mobilisation in defence of citizenship rights and the political articulation of
rights-based demands which inevitably generate con ict, in favour of activities designed
to enhance social cohesiveness and, by implication, social control. Such an approach
serves only to conceal and obscure the expanding social divisions incorporated within
social capitals sister concept, community.
Bourdieus analysis of capital on the other hand provides a more precise and more
useful theoretical framework for the study of the complex social processes structuring
and restructuring the social eld in which community action takes place. In many
European societies, the social space between private households and informal communi-
ties on the one hand, and the public domain represented by the market and the state on
the other, is becoming increasingly occupied by what Alheit (1996, p. 43) refers to as
staged communities providing contracted services and offering intermediary forms of
employment. These constructed communities and groups must compete for access to
resources within this dynamic social space; space structured by power relations rooted
in varying levels of capital endowment. Just as Alderidge (1998) identi es an emerging
social eld in personal nance, arising through a project of cultural reconstruction
requiring people to take active responsibility for their own welfare, so too are the same
forces generating a new social eld expressed in the changing orientation of social policy
to civil society. Like its personal nance counterpart, this new eld may not be currently
in the consciousness of many social actors, but the project is to make it so; and while
state education will no doubt have a role in forming a habitus suitable to personal
nance, community education may already be unwittingly forming a habitus for the
emerging eld of active citizenship and community responsibility, the characteristics of
which still re ect the dominance of economic and cultural capital. Herein lies the
importance of the social capital debate in relation to community development education.
In communities with lower volumes of total capital, educational provision which will
help to make apparent these structured capital relations, which supports community
mobilisation to combat processes of exclusion grounded in these relations and which
enhances the economic and human capital potential of community actors, becomes
vital.

Correspondence: Pauline McClenaghan, School of Social and Community Sciences,

University of Ulster, Magee College, Derry, Northern Ireland; e-mail: PA.McClenaghan
@ulst.ac.uk
 Foundations of Community Development Education 581

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