THE IRRELEVANCE OF SOCIAL CAPITAL IN EXPLAINING DEPRIVATION: A CASE STUDY OF TURKISH GECEKONDU HOUSEHOLDS

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SEBNEM EROGLU
School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NF, United Kingdom. E-mail: S.Eroglu@kent.ac.uk Date received: January 2008; revised October 2008 ABSTRACT This paper seeks to understand what difference social capital makes to deprivation and what factors affect its capacity to deliver benets. The study develops a clear-cut and empirically workable denition of social capital, and uses social exchange theories to distinguish between its reciprocal and power-based forms. The data is drawn from separate interviews with both partners of 17 households randomly sampled from a gecekondu settlement, participant observation and respondent diaries. Contrary to the dominant view, the research shows that the volume of social capital makes little difference to deprivation largely due to economic constraints. It also demonstrates the limited nature of its contributions to income generation, consumption and investment. Key words: Social capital, reciprocity, urban livelihoods, poverty, mixed methods, Gecekondu, Turkey

INTRODUCTION A dominant view that has gained particular support within World Bank-inspired research is that greater social capital leads to reduced poverty (Narayan & Pritchett 1999; Grootaert 2002). This paper calls into question this conventional wisdom about social capital by focusing on the lives of low-income gecekondu1 households from the capital city of Ankara. The aims are two-fold: (1) to examine the likely inuences on the capacity of social capital to deliver benets and (2) to evaluate its signicance for income generation, consumption and investment. It is argued that no matter how great its volume, social capital is likely to make little difference to deprivation largely due to economic constraints. The paper has two parts. The rst critically reviews the major conceptions of social capital, and introduces the theoretical framework used to explore the relationship between social capital and deprivation. The second

outlines the ndings from research that forms part of a longitudinal study on household responses to poverty (Eroglu 2004). SOCIAL CAPITAL: CONCEPTUAL MATTERS The concept of social capital has been applied to micro, meso and macro-level research from a variety of disciplines and elds of study in order to understand a wide range of phenomena, including families and youth behavioural problems, schooling and education, collective action, community life, democracy and governance, economic development, health and wellbeing, household welfare, poverty, work and organisational behaviour. One generic problem with this body of research concerns the indiscriminate use of the term. This section seeks to overcome this problem by developing a clearcut theoretical framework for use in micro-level research. It then describes the main features of

Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geograe 2010, Vol. 101, No. 1, pp. 3754. 2009 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

38 the household response model developed to explore the possible links between social capital and other inuences on deprivation. I shall start by clarifying the position taken here in relation to earlier theoretical debates about social capital. First, unlike scholars who argue that the term capital is inapplicable to social phenomena (see e.g. Fine & Green 2002), I share the view that the term can be used as a metaphor to connote individuals investment in social relations for expected returns (Lin 2001). I nd this view plausible because although economic motivations may not govern why people establish social relationships, people generally take an interest in receiving material and/or immaterial rewards from social interaction (Blau 1968). Second, in contrast to the large part of the literature which takes for granted the view of social capital as an absolute good or a metaphor for advantage (e.g. Burt 2001), I see social capital as being a neutral phenomenon. This is because, as shown by earlier studies, besides providing benets, social interaction can also have a downside for example, it can be exclusive, impose restrictions on individual freedom or put downward levelling pressures on the parties involved (Portes & Landolt 1996; Van Staveren, 2003; Cleaver 2005). I shall now seek to develop a workable conception of social capital, which, according to Schuller et al. (2000), needs to be: (1) based on existing theoretical frameworks; (2) analytically productive; and (3) empirically operationalisable. An extensive review of existing theories of social capital would be an ideal starting point for this purpose. However, due to space limitations, the following review will only illustrate some of the key conceptions and their shortcomings (for adetailedreviewseee.g.Field2003;Eroglu2004). The French sociologist Bourdieu refers to social capital as an aggregate of the actual and potential resources which are linked to the possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalised relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition or in other words, to membership in a group which provides each of its members with the backing of the collectivity-owned capital, a credential which entitles them to credit, in various senses of the word (1986, pp. 248249). Independently of Bourdieu, Coleman (1990) develops a similar
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S EBNEM EROGLU conception of social capital with a particular emphasis on its function. For him, social capital denotes varieties of entities with two elements in common: they all consist of some aspects of social structures, and they facilitate certain action of actors whether persons or corporate actors within the structure (Coleman 1990, p. 302). Criticising Colemans approach for failing to specify those entities that enable individuals to attain their goals, Portes and Sensenbrenner (1993, p. 1323) propose an alternative denition where social capital is construed as expectations for action within a collectivity that affect the economic goals and goal-seeking behaviour of its members, even if these expectations are not oriented towards the economic sphere. In his subsequent work, Portes (1995, p. 12) redenes social capital as the capacity of individuals to command scarce resources by virtue of their membership in networks and or broader social structures. More recently, scholars have begun to use the concept in order to depict an individuals stock of social networks (Wellman & Frank 2001), or resources embedded in a social structure which are accessed and/or mobilised in purposive actions (Lin 2001, p. 12). Another widely held perspective views social capital as a generalised disposition to trust (Putnam 1993; Fukuyama 1995; Inglehart 1997). For Putnam (1993, p. 167), social capital signies the features of social life networks, norms and trust that facilitate co-operation and co-ordination for mutual benet. Similarly, Inglehart (1997, p. 118) refers to it as a culture of trust and tolerance in which extensive networks of voluntary associations emerge. In my view, there are two major limitations with the denitions presented above. They fail to offer clear-cut boundaries for the concept, and are empirically difcult to operationalise. The boundary problem is evident, for example, in those conceptions which portray social capital as resources embedded in ones social networks (see e.g. Bourdieu 1986; Lin 2001). This particular understanding of social capital is too vague to avoid the indiscriminate use of the concept as there is a high risk of interpreting the term resource in a very broad sense to include any means that serves an end within a given social interaction. Neither do denitions which equate the concept with individuals network of connections fully address the boundary issue as

THE IRRELEVANCE OF SOCIAL CAPITAL IN EXPLAINING DEPRIVATION it remains unclear in what ways social capital is distinct from social networks. The empirical shortcomings of the concept are also evident in the trust-based denitions, due to the difculty of measuring how trusting people or nations are. Likewise, Bourdieus denition is operationally problematic due to its dual character. It seems that for Bourdieu, social capital embraces the social relationship itself that allows agents to claim access to resources embedded in these networks, as well as the amount and quality of the network resources (see also Portes 1998). This duality poses an empirical problem for poverty studies by preventing us from drawing a clear contrast between social contacts and the outcomes of likely interactions between these contacts. In my view, a sound response to the conceptual and empirical limitations of the above denitions comes from Pizzorno who construes social capital as the relations in which more or less durable identity of participants are recognized (2001, p. 5). Pizzornos denition offers well-dened boundaries for the term, which can be operationalised for example, by asking whether the respondent intends to maintain links with a given social contact in the foreseeable future. However, I believe Pizzornos idea of excluding the market from the domain of social capital is rather problematic given the evidence that informal transactions can take place between employers and employees (White 1994; Kalaycoglu & Rittersberger-Tl 2001). Thus, I shall use the term social capital in a broader sense than Pizzorno to refer to relatively durable social contacts established inside or outside the market sphere. I consider these contacts to have a potential downside as well as a capacity to deliver material and non-material benets. This is to suggest that social capital can act as a resource in which individual agents invest and which they use to gain access to information, jobs, money, goods, services, etc. The body of relationships described above as social capital is by no means uniform in character. Of various types of social capital identied previously, the distinction drawn between the bridging and bonding capital has attracted the most attention (Woolcock 1998; Putnam 2000; Field 2003). Scholars now speak of a third dimension called linking social capital (Halpern 2005). However, the literature offers

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no reliable explanation as to which aspects of social capital give it a distinctively bridging or bonding character, rendering such classications rather less workable. I propose that social exchange theories can be used in developing an alternative classication of social capital since the ow of benets in a social environment is mediated by the rules of social exchange (Bourdieu 1986). The classication advanced here draws on a synthesis of Blau (1964) and Sahlinss (1974) approaches. Blau refers to social exchange as voluntary actions of individuals which are motivated by returns they are expected to bring and typically do in fact bring from others (1964, p. 91). Blaus denition limits social exchange to actions, which are rational, voluntary and rewarding, while Sahlins (1974) extends it also to include unrewarding transactions as well. This study favours the latter as it is better suited to the idea that social capital can have a downside. My classication of social capital rests partly on Blaus (1964) contention that social exchange transactions can either be unilateral or reciprocal in nature. For Blau, these transactions share two basic characteristics; namely, trust and pretence of disinterested generosity. The point of distinction between them lies in the reciprocity element. A social transaction is considered to be unilateral when the parties fail to reciprocate on an equal footing, which in turn creates power differentials between them. This type of transaction implies a direct cost of subordination for the subjects of power. On the other hand, a social transaction is regarded as reciprocal when the parties meet the obligation to reciprocate on an equal footing. In developing this concept further, Sahlins (1974) identies three distinct forms of reciprocal transaction, drawing on the idea that social exchange is situated between the unsociability and solidarity extremes. Accordingly, negative reciprocity, where each party is seeking to obtain an advantage at the expense of others, is located at the unsociable extreme. In between is balanced reciprocity based on the simultaneous exchange of exactly the same types and quantities of goods within a nite and limited period. Finally, at the solidarity end, exchange transactions take the form of generalized reciprocity, by which Sahlins (1974, pp. 193194) refer to putatively altruistic
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40 transactions where assistance is provided and returned if possible and when necessary. The above hybrid of social exchange theories leads me to identify two major forms of social capital. One refers to reciprocal contacts with which one enters into social transactions on a balanced or generalised basis, sometimes with the intention to accumulate advantage at the expense of others. The other involves powerbased contacts with which one complies in exchange for the benets such compliance produces. The latter is in my view embodied within patron-client relationships, whose signicance for the lives of low-income urban groups is welldocumented (Lomnitz 1977; Nelson 1979; Heper 1982; Norris 1988; Roberts 1991). Two broad clusters of meanings are attributed to the term clientelism. The anthropological literature refers to it as a specic type of dyadic relationship, which ties people with unequal status or power and which depends on exchange of favours between these actors (Boissevain 1974; Scott 1977; Eisenstadt & Roniger 1984; Burgwal 1995). In the political science literature, clientelism is understood as a political machine by which mass-based parties mobilise political support (Nelson 1979; Chubb 1982; Banck 1986). I conceive of clientelism as a form of unilateral exchange where the transaction of favours between parties depends on the compliance of the less powerful party (Eroglu 2000). So far, I have sought to develop a theoretical framework which species the boundaries of social capital and which offers an alternative way to distinguish between its different forms. The advantages of this framework are as follows. First of all, it avoids the indiscriminate use of the term, as well as offering a sound basis for its operationalisation. Second, it allows an emphasis on the instrumentality of social relationships as a potential resource with varying capacities to deliver benets. Finally, it provides further insight into the downside of social capital through a focus on the negative forms of reciprocity, relationships of subordination and various other constraints on the ow of benets. I shall now focus on how the relationships between social capital and other inuences on poverty can be conceptualised. Much recent poverty research draws on variations of what is widely referred to as the
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S EBNEM EROGLU livelihood framework in order to understand how the use of various resources, including social capital, affect the lives of impoverished urban and rural groups (see e.g. Carney et al. 1999; Moser 1996). This theoretical framework is of particular signicance in that it advocates a people-centred approach to understanding poverty, while exploring, at least theoretically, the structural inuences on livelihood resources. There are however certain limitations with this framework. In my view, the main drawbacks include: (1) the limited coverage of key resources; (2) the narrow denition of poverty;2 and (3) the lack of a behavioural dimension to demonstrate systematically how resources are deployed within different responses to poverty. The household response model advanced here extends the livelihood framework so as to overcome these common drawbacks (see also Eroglu 2004). The model explores the multiple dimensions of poverty from a deprivation perspective, focusing on the absence of living standards that are deemed critical to maintaining a decent life. The measurement developed as part of this model combines three objective dimensions of deprivation (i.e. monetary, consumption and work-related), and weights them according to subjective perceptions of respondents regarding which items are more critical to deprivation (Eroglu 2007). The model focuses on three key inuences on poverty, one of which concerns the composition of household resource portfolio. Social capital is treated as one of eight resources potentially contained in this portfolio. Other resources include labour power, bodily resources (e.g. human organs), disposable time, cultural capital (e.g. formal and informal skills), economic capital (e.g. nancial and non-nancial assets), institutional entitlements (e.g. rights of access to social security) and public resources (e.g. public land).3 The other two inuences are: (1) the wider structure; and (2) household characteristics, which are hypothesised to affect poverty by virtue of their role in determining the availability and/or the benet delivery capacity of household resources. For example, a stage in the life-cycle can impact upon deprivation through its inuence on the availability of labour resources, and the competition between formal and informal sectors of the

THE IRRELEVANCE OF SOCIAL CAPITAL IN EXPLAINING DEPRIVATION economy can restrict the capacity of these resources to generate an income. The model also identies four areas in which households devise responses to poverty by using the resources available to them, namely, income generation, consumption, investment and intrahousehold income allocation.4 The last area bears no direct relevance to the deployment of social capital; hence this study focuses on the rst three areas only.5 Income generation involves those activities whereby households mobilise various resources to obtain a monetary income. The particular role played by social capital in these activities can be direct, for example, as in the transfer of remittances, or indirect as in acting as a source of job information. Consumption embraces those activities situated on a continuum of commodied to non-commodied spheres, according to the extent of cash transactions involved. Thus, for example, noncommodied consumption characterises those practices that take place in the absence of cash transactions (e.g. free access to national health services). The use of this continuum is critical to understanding deprivation because it allows us to assess household resources in terms of their capacity both to provide access to certain goods and services and to counteract income shortfalls. Investment includes those practices whereby households acquire nancial and non-nancial assets. Social capital can potentially be of direct or indirect use in asset acquisition, for instance, by acting as a source of assets or loans. This section has sought to provide a conceptual framework for micro-level research aimed at exploring the relationships between social capital and poverty. The following section outlines the research design and methodology used to apply this framework in the eld. RESEARCH METHOD The research focused on two key questions: to what extent does social capital make a difference to deprivation, and what factors impact upon its capacity to deliver benets? The data was drawn from a broader longitudinal study of low-income gecekondu households (Eroglu 2004). This part of the study however made little use of over-time comparisons. The eligible households had to have: (1) an average monthly income below USr370;6 (2) four

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members; (3) nuclear structure; (4) one child at or above the age of 15; and (5) Sunni and Alevi religious backgrounds. The reasons for introducing the eligibility criteria were as follows. The income threshold which compro mises between TRK-IS (The Confederation of Turkish Labour Trade Unions) Starvation and Poverty Lines7 was used to identify poor households. The household size and structure were selected to reect the typical characteristics of urban households in Turkey, including gecekondu dwellers. The age restriction was imposed on one child to control for the stage in the life cycle.8 Finally, the religion criterion was included to represent the two largest Islamic sects in Turkey, which tend to differ in their religious practices, political viewpoints, lifestyles and their approach to women. I assumed such differences might give rise to variation in household resources and behaviour patterns. The sample consisted of 17 households randomly selected9 from a typical gecekondu settlement in Ankara, which predominantly consisted of pre-1985 rural to urban migrants from the surroundings of Ankara or other parts of Central Anatolia (Alpar & Yener 1991; Gven 2001). In principle, a probability sample could have been drawn across the city or from different localities. However, the research focused on a single settlement, based on the presumption that this would encourage the building of trust required to minimise sample attrition and to enhance data quality. The study indeed beneted from the extended time spent in one location as trust building proved to be a gradual process. The research setting was selected to increase the likelihood of nding households that meet the eligibility criteria. Hence, it was considered to be more suitable to choose the setting from gecekondu areas given their higher incidence of poverty (Bulutay 1998) and the heterogeneity in their inhabitants levels of poverty. These gecekondu features made it possible to meet the research aims through a study of a single locality. The data was obtained from semi-structured interviews, participant observation and respondent diaries. The interviews were conducted in April and October 2002. In all but one household both partners were interviewed separately on both occasions. Participant observation was conducted over a three month period, during
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42 the stages of sampling and interviewing, most of which the researcher spent staying with a gecekondu household from the studied settlement. The study combined quantitative and qualitative approaches to examine the relationship between social capital and deprivation, and to identify tendencies for households use of social capital in their responses to poverty. The qualitative analyses shed particular light on the dynamics of social capital, for example, norms of reciprocity and their effects on the ow of benets. Given the sample size, the quantitative analyses drew on descriptive statistics only (e.g. cross-tabulations and frequencies). Qualitative data and theoretical knowledge accumulated through literature review were used as a basis for the casual inferences made from the observed tabulations. However, further research is needed to test the applicability of these conclusions to a wider population. HOW FAR DOES SOCIAL CAPITAL MATTER TO DEPRIVATION? This section starts by exploring various inuences on the overall capacity of social capital to deliver benets, and then evaluates its signicance for income generation, consumption and investment. The overall relationship between social capital and deprivation Previous studies have established that greater social capital leads to reduced poverty or increased welfare, although its degree of signicance compared with other resources such as cultural capital varies from one case to another (Grootaert 1998; Narayan & Pritchett 1999; Rose 1999; Maluccio et al. 2000; Grootaert & Narayan 2001; Grootaert et al. 2002). By contrast, my research indicated that the relationship between the volume of social capital and deprivation may not be as straightforward, given the tendency for both better and worse off households to have low levels of social capital (see Table 1). This nding can be interpreted as meaning that having a greater number of social contacts implies very little about the quality and quantity of the benets obtained from them. This is to say that volume may have little bearing upon the benet delivery capacity of social capital. It follows that other factors must play a more crucial
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S EBNEM EROGLU
Table 1. Volume of social capital by household deprivation category. Social capital volume Deprivation category Worse off Low Medium High Total 3 2 1 6 Moderate Better off 2 3 1 6 5 7 5 17 Total

2 3 5

Notes : (1) The social capital volumes were determined by counting the number of social contacts which were reported in either interview to be helpful or unhelpful but active in April and expected to remain so in the foreseeable future. The information about social contacts was elicited through asking situational questions concerning various forms of social support. Despite concerted efforts to determine the precise extent of each households social contacts, the picture is bound to remain partial. Therefore, I chose to rank order households into groups with low, medium and high volume of social capital, based on the scores obtained. The ranks were formed by using cut-off points obtained through the SPSS frequency facility. (2) Household deprivation levels were measured by using an index which combined monetary, consumption and work-related dimensions of deprivation, and weighted them according to subjective perceptions of respondents regarding which items are more crucial to deprivation The index contained a total of 23 measures, indicating levels of average monthly income, debts, nancial and non-nancial assets, access e.g. to housing, household items, urban services, education and health, income/work ratio, pension prospects, occupational health and safety, etc. The weights for the selected measures were obtained through a unique application of factor analysis to data on respondent views of deprivation. Deprivation categories were then formed by using cut-off points obtained through the SPSS frequency facility (for further information see Eroglu 2007).

role. I shall now outline some of these forces from the viewpoint of the parties situated on either end of an exchange transaction (i.e. benet providers vs recipients), drawing on my qualitative interviews. On the side of providers, major constraints were found to include their limited economic capacity, self-interest and doubts about the creditworthiness of the needy. Social capital stocks of the sample households were essentially

THE IRRELEVANCE OF SOCIAL CAPITAL IN EXPLAINING DEPRIVATION composed of people in similar economic circumstances to themselves, and hence a large part of their stocks had limited economic capacity to deliver benets. This capacity seems to have been further weakened by the severe conditions of economic crisis.10 Past ndings on Turkey and other parts of the world also conrm a decline in the capacity of support networks in circumstances of economic hardship and recession (Moser 1996; Gonzales de la Rocha 2001; Bora 2002; Sen 2002; Bugra & Keyder 2003; World Bank 2003). The predominance of social contacts with limited economic capacity created further disadvantage where one or both spouses had extensive family networks. This was the case because the abundance of needy kin located at an equal social distance made it impractical for the few nancially well off contacts to support them all. In some cases, the limited availability of nancial means led to the selective provision of support, for example, where priority was given to the most impoverished. In others, it led to the withdrawal of support altogether, perhaps in order not to give rise to feelings of discrimination and resentment on the part of the unsupported. The extract from an interview with a male spouse illustrates the latter response: Interviewer: Are you in touch with your sister in Germany? DY: She is rich but we are poor so she does not approach . . . Maybe if she approaches a little more, one of my siblings would say I am hungry; the other would say I am thirsty; another would say I do not have coal, and another would say I do not have wood. . . on top of them, a mother and a father [to support]. Her in-laws circle is also poor . . . They stay away, I mean; they stay away from everybody. In addition, concerns about self-interest and creditworthiness of the needy also constrained the ow of support. These were at play especially when the type of support needed had an economic aspect to it. Paradoxically, the worse off 11 households who were most in need of such support tended to be more affected since they had the least economic ability to reciprocate. This is well illustrated by the following extracts taken from the interviews with female partners of two worse off households:

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(1) Interviewer: Is there anyone else whom we have not talked about so far but who helped you since our rst interview? JX: I swear there was no one . . . He [her husband] went to his uncles son to say come and become a shareholder of the bakery or I shall give it to you. The guy did not agree. Interviewer: Why not? JX: One of those things. He said I know nothing about the business; my money is enough for me. (2) Interviewer: Is there anyone else whom we have not talked about so far but who helped you since our rst interview? EX: No one got any job done for me; my children did though when they had any money. Interviewer: How about neighbours and the like? EX: We did not get anything from them. They do not help because we do not have anyone working. They used to help before when [I] wanted but now they dont as we dont have any security. Turning to the recipients side, the limited economic ability to reciprocate, and concerns for pride and independence were found to constrain the benet delivery capacity of social capital. Most importantly, the lack of economic capacity posed a constraint by evoking the fear of not being able to reciprocate on an equal footing and thereby becoming dependent on others. This is evident from the following quotation extracted from an interview with the female spouse of a worse off household: Interviewer: Do you ask for help from anyone, like your neighbours? SX: Not really. Interviewer: Why not? SX: Well, I cant make the necessary return . . . That might be why, for instance . . . today lets say I need tea or oil or one day I dont happen to have any tomato paste . . . Thats all we could do with neighbours, we cant do much else. The limited economic ability to reciprocate either discouraged households from seeking support or led them to take part in balanced reciprocal transactions as far as their resources allowed. It seems that the conditions of economic
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44 crisis contributed to exchanges of this nature becoming predominant especially among neighbours and friends. This is evident from the extract below: Interviewer: It appears that you had some support from your circle. JX: What kind of support is that? Interviewer: For instance, the thin sheet of bread. JX: Well but Im making the same for them. [. . .]. Do you think theyd do without expecting a return? It was in the past; it remained in the old days; those people who used to do you a favour without asking for the same in return. Interviewer: Why do you think this happened? JX: I really dont know. Within the last three or four years, people have become very different, they are so different that . . . Is it because of poverty, I dont know. We used to visit the folks a lot; we used to have a dialogue; we used to have things we gave and took. We had such a community that I could hardly describe to you. Now, not even a single mortal of God visits each other. Interviewer: Why? JX: Is it because people [in] poverty; or because there is crisis? [S]he says, I dont know what; she perhaps says if I drink a glass of tea at her place, shell come to drink at my place; so Id better sit and drink it at my own place. I guess thats what its about. Everybody is in agitation of his/her own survival. For poor households, balanced reciprocal transactions meant a restricted ow of benets since such transactions virtually conned their level of gain to what they could offer within their limited means. This was however not the case with the generalised reciprocal exchanges which were observed especially among close relatives. However, this group of social contacts often had a limited economic capacity to deliver benets. This is well illustrated by the common response to my enquiries about the receipt of social support: everybody is just about able to look after themselves. Furthermore, concerns for pride were also found to constrain the benet delivery capacity of social capital. The tendency for both spouses across all deprivation groups was to take pride in the male role as the main provider and/or the self-sufciency of the family unit. That is
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S EBNEM EROGLU why the very act of asking for help was often perceived as a threat to masculine and/or family pride. The following extracts demonstrate how such perceived threats affected support-seeking behaviour. The rst is from an interview with the female spouse of a worse off household: Interviewer: Can you afford the medicine you have to pay for? CX: Well on many occasions we could not. Interviewer: Anyone help you with it at all? CX: You cannot ask anyone, can you buy me medicine? It is a matter of pride. The second is from an interview with the male spouse of a moderately deprived household: Interviewer: Can you call on these people [lenders] for help in the future? AY: No . . . Currently I had to because of unemployment . . . You cannot ask help of everybody. Interviewer: Why is that? AY: The full stomach would know nothing of the empty stomach . . . Hed say there are jobs, he could well work and earn money. Also when people are into making money; theyd say I shall make six kurus out of three kurus; then ten billion out of this. Theres such ambition for money. Even if he [one better off creditor] offered, I wouldnt demand myself [. . .] I have a principle. I should get it hundred per cent from the person I asked for. If I didnt, then my pride would get hurt. I dont want to get my pride hurt. The last extract is from an interview with the male spouse of a better off household, but where the female spouse was also present: Interviewer: What do your neighbours do in return for the help you provide? HX: Nothing. HY: Nothing because we wouldnt say anything. HX: I dont like at all telling my neighbours give this or that to me. Id rather buy it on credit from the local shop. I cant go and ask for it from a neighbour. HY: Neighbours do come to me and ask for money, or ask for a loan. Lets say Ill go to Ulus [market] and I dont have money for the minibus in my pocket. Id rather go on foot but wouldnt go and ask for it. I have such a character.

THE IRRELEVANCE OF SOCIAL CAPITAL IN EXPLAINING DEPRIVATION HX: We dont like showing our home situation to other people. Even if Im hungry, I wouldnt say that I dont have bread at our home. It is clear that pride discouraged some households from seeking and accepting support even in cases of extreme need. Another response was to seek support from selected sources where the perceived risk of refusal was minimal. Paradoxically, nancially well off contacts tended to be perceived as a high-risk group, since they were thought to lack empathy for the impoverished conditions of the potential recipient. Either way, pride seems to have restrained the ow of benets. Other constraints were found to affect both the provider and the receiver. These included: (1) competitive attitudes largely directed against perceived equals or those who are perceived as better off; and (2) personal and familial conicts, in particular, those occurring between in-laws. Competitive and conictual inuences within ones social environment often led to negative reciprocal transactions, which not only hampered the ow of benets but also involved deliberate attempts at undermining the well being of the parties involved. This is well illustrated by an extract taken from an interview with the male spouse of a better off household: MY: I moved here in the year 1987 or 88; since then they [neighbours] were envious of me, I mean. When I rst came, oh lets not be in trouble with the neighbours, were ultimately neighbours so we ended up doing whatever they wanted; we went and helped with their construction so on so forth, and yet we couldnt cosy up to [them]. I have now stopped it [welding for others] completely. I have my own welding job here; Im making windows and doors. They make a complaint against me, saying that hes using illegal electricity; hes using illegal I dont know what! The other day, they [ofcers] came from TEK [Turkish Electricity Institution]; they checked everywhere; could nd nothing. I asked brother, who made a complaint against me? He said I dont know, brother, somebody informed us; made a complaint; he said we came upon complaint. If they revealed the name, wed at least know our friends and enemies.

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So far, I have discussed the overall relationship between social capital and deprivation, and highlighted some of the key constraints on its capacity to deliver benets. I shall now focus on the particular uses of social capital within various behavioural contexts. Income generation The households studied were found to make limited use of their social capital in order to obtain a monetary income. In fact, 47 per cent of households reported that they had received monetary contributions to their monthly income from close relatives within the previous six months to one year. However, most of these contributions were far from sizeable or regular in nature. There were two exceptions to this. One of the households was receiving from the parents of the male spouse a small amount for housekeeping and pocket money for kids on a fairly regular basis. The other household had access to considerable remittances12 sent from Germany once or twice a year by the female spouses children from her previous marriage. By contrast, social capital was used more extensively in order to attain or maintain a status in the urban labour market. Across the sample, 97 per cent of the working members were found to deploy their stocks of social capital for this purpose. Their use of social capital differed according to employment status and specic requirements of the work being sought. All of the wage earners, which comprised 79 per cent of the working population in the sample, made use of their social capital in seeking a job either on a one-off or continuous basis, depending on whether their employment was regular or casual/seasonal in status. Furthermore, all the self-employed relied on social capital to nd customers, or to a lesser extent to obtain loans for their small-scale businesses. A large part of previous research on Turkey also conrms the extensive use of informal channels by lowincome groups such as gecekondu dwellers, ruralto-urban migrants, and factory or piece workers in job search/recruitment processes (Yasa 1966; Karpat 1976; Gnes-Ayata 1991; Gke et al. 1993; White 1994; Erder 1996; UPL 2000, 2001). Due to the extensive use of social capital in the urban labour market, this research is unable to examine whether those with job contacts were signicantly better off than those without.
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46 Yet, there is room to explore whether volume of social capital had an effect. Earlier research has drawn attention to the extent of social contacts as a key inuence on the attainment of a better job (see e.g. Boxman et al. 1999). By contrast, my research demonstrated no signicant tendency for households with higher levels of social capital to be less deprived at work (see Table 2). It may follow from this that those connected to a greater number of people were not necessarily able to attain or maintain a better status in the labour market. This is supported by the following excerpt from an interview with a selfemployed female respondent who depended heavily on her social contacts to nd buyers for the bootees she made and sold informally. She was from a worse-off household and the volume of the social capital possessed by this household was one of the highest. Interviewer: How many bootees have you sold after me [our rst interview]? JX: None . . . Not even a pair. Interviewer: Oh really? JX: I swear . . . Look, it [the products] remains in the bag as the way it was. I shall bring the bag if youd like to have a look. Interviewer: Not even a single pair? JX: I sold not even a pair. Interviewer: How were your sales within the six months before April [2002]? JX: It was OK; I had sales then. Interviewer: Why do you think this happened? JX: I dont know everybody is like me . . . Due to crisis, no one [could afford]. After you left, I didnt sell even one; my embroidery edgings are resting too. Interviewer: You had several clients? JX: There were; there were lots of people I knew. There were indeed and yet they hardly get by. They cant afford to buy; how shall they buy? Interviewer: Did you take them [the products] here and there? JX: Wouldnt I do that? Of course I did. I took it [the bag] to my villagers; I took it to places my sister was acquainted with; took it to Mamak. The daughter-in-law[s] of my sister-in-law lives there. I took it to Dikmen, I could not sell [any]; I came back without even selling one. It was not worth the travel fares I paid.
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Table 2. Volume of social capital by work-related deprivation category. Social capital Work-related deprivation category High Low Medium High Total 2 2 2 6 Moderate 2 1 2 5 Low 1 4 1 6 5 7 5 17 Total

Note : (1) Work-related deprivation levels were estimated by using a weighted sub-index which included four measures: household income/hours worked ratio, household social security access ratio, male spouses pension prospects and household occupational risk ratio. Three work-related deprivation categories were then formed by using cut-off points obtained through the SPSS frequency facility.

This extract illustrates that in the face of economic crisis which seems to have caused a gradual but persistent deterioration in peoples purchasing power, the ownership of extensive social capital meant very little in terms of facilitating the sales. Bearing in mind that the observed tendencies might be specic to the economic crisis conditions, one conclusion that can be drawn here is that the volume of social capital is likely to make little difference to the attainment or maintenance of a higher job status by the poor households. So how about the status of the contact person used in nding a job? Does it signicantly increase ones chances of acquiring a better status? Previous studies explored this through a focus on occupational status. Most of them consider it to be a key inuence on job attainment (see e.g. Marsden & Hulbert 1988; Erikson 2001; Lin et al. 2001). However, one recent study challenges this assertion by demonstrating that neither occupational nor educational status has a signicant effect (Mouw 2003). My research indicated the signicance of other factors, such as location of work. To illustrate, one of the female spouses reported having found a regular job as a domestic worker through the help of her relatives who happened to work as caretakers in an apartment that belongs to the army. Since her relatives were based in the

THE IRRELEVANCE OF SOCIAL CAPITAL IN EXPLAINING DEPRIVATION afuent part of the city, they were able to provide her with a quite favourable position in the labour market. The following analyses will focus on the role of cliente list contacts in job attainment, which deserves particular attention since these ties connect poor households with people in positions of power. In 41 per cent of the households studied, at least one working member, often the male spouse, used their cliente list contacts in nding regular or casual work. The urban patrons that they used for this purpose were owners of small or medium-scale businesses in the formal or informal sector (e.g. taxi, betting shop and removal company owners), and to a much lesser extent, professionals in the public or private sector (e.g. civil engineers and doctors). The cliente list transactions that took place between the two parties were based on trust and hence middle to long-term acquaintance. The clients gave their loyalty in return for employment and other past or future benets (e.g. advance payments, second hand goods and loans). The patrons also beneted from these transactions as the loyalty of their clients meant commitment to getting the job done properly. It is clear that cliente list relationships provided some households with an opportunity for employment. However, whether these households were relatively better off than those which did not enter such relationships of subordination is another matter. My research revealed a moderate tendency for households where at least one of the working members found his or her current job through cliente list contacts to display reduced levels of work-related deprivation. In fact, the 44 per cent of the households, that used cliente list contacts, had the least deprived conditions of work, compared with the 25 per cent of those households that did not. This still meant that a considerable number of client and non-clients suffered from moderate to high levels of deprivation at work by settling for low paid jobs with long working hours and limited or no access to pension and/or medical services. The above ndings provide some support for the argument about the diversity of urban patrons and the varied control over valuable resources that emerge from this (Nelson 1979). The small improvement cliente list contacts

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made on work-related deprivation may well be linked to the control of the patrons over less valuable resources. There were indeed a few cases where the patrons were deemed equally deprived as the respondent households themselves. However, in my view, this explains only part of the picture. The limited contribution of cliente list contacts seems also to be associated with: (1) the majority of patrons being of employer status in the private sector; and (2) the increased desperation for work in circumstances of economic crisis, high levels of unemployment and saturation in the informal labour market. On the one hand, these circumstances reduced the incentive of these patrons to deliver favours to their clients in return for their loyalty. On the other hand, they compelled the clients to accept unfavourable conditions of work dictated by their patrons or to respond to their other demands in the hope of keeping their current employment or obtaining future work. This meant that it was the subordinates who incurred the costs of cliente list transactions. An extract from an interview with an employee of a medium-sized metal factory illustrates some of the costs involved: MY: We [I] bent our [my] neck [debased myself] to everything, and came to work for them once again. Our neck is bent to everything even if they beat or swear. We do not calculate our ve, ten minutes or one hour. If we stop working at 5:30 or 7:30, we [work] until 7:45 and sometimes half an hour or an hour more, when necessary. He says this task is urgent. We dont say but we have our break, I mean. As a matter of fact, cliente list contacts were found to be more benecial when the patron was not the employer of his own enterprise but a professional who mediated access to a relatively favourable position in the public sector. However, this route was open only to the lucky few. It may hence be inferred that those who used cliente list contacts in nding their jobs did not necessarily attain a better status as compared with those who simply used their reciprocal contacts. Consumption Social capital was found to have two distinct uses in the households consumption practices. It was used: (1) to obtain free
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48 access to labour, goods and services; and (2) to purchase commodities cheaply and/or exibly. The rst use of social capital was more evident in the areas of food (e.g. bread, our and home cooked meals), clothing, household items and utilities (e.g. fuel for wood burner), as opposed to those of health, education, housing, house maintenance and transportation. One striking nding concerns rural food support. Although 59 per cent had food sent by their relatives still living in the village, only a few households had access to bulk supplies of rural food and even this access was irregular in character. This is indicative of a drastic decline in a source of support, which was once signicant. The account of a female spouse from a better off household conrms this trend: Interviewer: Has anyone provided you with food support lately? KX: We borrow and lend; other than this no . . . Obviously, we give it back when we borrow. But in the past we used to say just take it but not anymore . . . I cannot resent anyone; everybody is like how I am. Also the gecekondu environment is a poor environment . . . We are all the same; people are frying by their own oil [i.e. just about able to look after themselves], what can you expect from them? You can borrow and lend only. Theres no one whod say Ill give a plate from the food my husband brought from the village. Interviewer: How was it in the past then? KX: We used to be so different towards each other; I used to go to the village to bring some; the other also goes and brings some; we would give it to each other; we wouldnt know what borrowing did mean. Interviewer: So you mean there used to be a lot more [food] coming from the village? KX: It used to be a lot. Now, the villages stopped it. Had we ever used to pay for the bulgur wheat in the past? We used to go to the village to make and bring some. Not any longer, though. There are some who still do; those who are deeply rooted in their village; those with mothers and very close relatives in the village. Since we do not have any, who would do it for us? Overall, even though the households gained some free access to goods and services by using their social capital, for the majority, this meant
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S EBNEM EROGLU little improvement on deprivation as their access was: (1) restricted to a few areas of expenditure; (2) limited in quality and quantity; and (3) irregular in nature. Free access to the labour resources of social contacts was however a more common occurrence. The additional labour power obtained was put to use in self-provisioning activities that took place in the areas of food, home maintenance and to a lesser extent in clothing. The major labour contributions of social capital were observed in food processing activities that helped households combat winter decline in the seasonal labour market and/or high winter food prices. The supply of labour for demanding tasks such as seasonal bread making was maintained among a group of households on the basis of balanced reciprocity. In this way, households were able to cut the costs involved in self-provisioning to a small degree. The second use of social capital to buy commodities cheaply and/or exibly was apparent in all areas of expenditure. It involved for instance, buying on credit from local shop owners who knew and trusted the households, and paying in instalments without incurring extra costs. This way, the households were able to remove some pressure on their income, or at least spread the pressure over a longer period of time. However, none of the households were able to avoid having to cut back or go without certain consumption items that they deemed critical to deprivation. Such adverse patterns of consumption were indeed observed across the sample to considerable degrees. On the whole, it seems that the capacity of social capital to counterbalance income shortfalls by virtue of its role in free or cheap access to labour, goods and services was rather limited. Thus, contrary to past conclusions (Carter & Maluccio 2003), I would rather hypothesise that social capital is likely to make little difference to consumptionsmoothing (i.e. maintaining consumption levels prior to economic crisis). Investment The households studied were found to rely on their stocks of social capital extensively in building up assets. For 65 per cent of households, it proved useful in the direct supply of the asset (e.g. through inheritance), for 53 per cent in the organisation of gns,13 for 47 per cent in access to information on asset

THE IRRELEVANCE OF SOCIAL CAPITAL IN EXPLAINING DEPRIVATION availability and conditions of purchase, for 41 per cent in the supply of loans, for 24 per cent in the provision of labour and material support for the actual making of the asset (e.g. gecekondu), and nally, for 12 per cent in the supply of monetary gifts towards the purchase of the asset. Despite the variety of its contributions to asset acquisition, social capital was of limited help in two respects. First, it hardly helped remove the pressure on income or existing assets. Second, even in cases where it did, for example, by directly supplying assets, the assets involved had limited benet delivery capacity in terms of ensuring: (1) further income generation; (2) further asset accumulation; and/or (3) other forms of security (e.g. tenure security). Let us now elaborate on these points. As shown above, social capital most often acted as an informal lender which supplied loans for the purchase of assets. As a matter of fact, 86 per cent of the households which still had asset-related debts in April borrowed the money required from their relatives, neighbours and friends. Most of these debts were considerable in size, ranging from USr201 to USr4,191 (i.e. 268 million to 5.6 billion old Turkish Liras). The mean asset-related debts were USr1,647 (i.e. 2.2 billion old Turkish Liras), amounting to six times the mean monthly household income. Debts were created in the form of gold or foreign currency to protect the initial value of the loan against ination. However, between April and October, the debts grew well above the ination rate as the nancial market conditions offered investors high real returns on deposit account, gold and foreign currency (TIK 2002). It might be true that social capital made asset ownership possible for those who lacked the ability to obtain a loan from a formal institution, as the limited and/or irregular nature of their earnings raised doubts as to their creditworthiness, and for those who avoided formal institutions, fearing that their limited earnings might not allow them to meet the repayment schedule. However, social capital borrowings tended to leave households with a considerable pressure to make the necessary repayments. This seems to be ignored by scholars who argue that informal credit opportunities enable the poor to cope with unpredictable incomes (Dercon 2002). By providing a exible repayment sched-

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ule over a relatively long period of time, social capital might in fact help counteract such uncertainty. However, such schedules did not always have the level of exibility required by the households, and this may explain why some had to resort to what I call debt chaining. This response involved borrowing from one contact in order pay the debts to a previous contact. Debt chaining is a rather ineffective way of managing debts because the debts essentially remain unpaid. Moreover, there are limits to this activity due to concerns regarding the creditworthiness of poor households. Previous studies reported such concerns as a major reason as to why borrowings via social capital are less of an option for these households (Moser 1996; Gonzales de la Rocha 2001). Household incomes obviously came under no pressure where the assets were supplied for free. However, a large part of the assets households acquired in this way were comprised of inherited rural land, to which 56 per cent of spouses attached little value in terms of reducing deprivation. This is no surprise given the lack of demand for this type of land and its limited potential for prot. Only 24 per cent of households owned assets which had a considerable benet delivery capacity and/or which signicantly reduced pressure on their incomes. These households owned one of the following assets: work equipment (i.e. four stands in a bazaar and a truck), squatter housing and a plot in the periphery. Overall, although social capital was used by poor households in asset acquisition, its impact on reducing their deprivation tends to be limited since their social capital resources had little capacity to provide access to benecial assets without putting incomes under signicant pressure. CONCLUSION This paper has advanced both conceptual and empirical claims about social capital. In response to wider debates concerning the applicability of this concept to social phenomena, it was argued that social capital can be used as a metaphor for ones investment in social relationships for expected returns, but should be dened neutrally to accommodate the possibility that these expectations remain partially or fully unmet, or are realised at a certain cost. It
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50 was also argued that the generic problem with the indiscriminate use of the term in social capital research stems from the failure of the existing theoretical frameworks to offer a clearcut and empirically operationalisable denition for the concept. This paper has sought to address this problem by conning social capital to those contacts whose relatively durable identity is recognised by the individuals, households or families. Furthermore, a new distinction was drawn between reciprocal and power-based forms of social capital, based on the theories of social exchange of Blau (1964) and Sahlins (1974). These theories were claimed to offer a sound basis for understanding the downside of social capital, for example, by allowing a focus on how norms of reciprocity and relationships of subordination affect the ow of benets and hence deprivation. Empirically, the study has examined the role of social capital in the lives of poor gecekondu households in order to understand the actual contribution of this resource to reducing their deprivation. The ndings from this study challenge the conventional wisdom about social capital by demonstrating that size of social capital is less important than other forces on deprivation (e.g. economic inability to reciprocate, competitive attitudes, doubts about credibility, pride and concern for nancial independence). Furthermore, it was shown that despite the widespread use of social capital for income generation, consumption and investment purposes, this resource played a limited role in reducing deprivation because the stocks of social capital possessed by the majority had little capacity to: (1) give access to better jobs; (2) counteract income shortfalls; (3) enable regular access to essential goods and services; and/ or (4) supply assets with a signicant potential for income generation or further asset accumulation. It was also shown that having greater social capital made no signicant difference to the attainment of a better status in the urban labour market. Even the engagement in powerbased relationships with urban patrons did not lead to better jobs for the majority of households which were dependent on them. It is likely that the economic crisis environment in Turkey characterised by increased unemployment, worsening conditions of work, declining real incomes, etc., had an effect on overall out 2009 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG

S EBNEM EROGLU comes by further reducing the job chances as well as the nancial ability of poor households to full the obligations of social exchange. One key conclusion that can be drawn from these ndings is that social capital has little capacity to help the low-income urban households meet the needs they deem critical to maintaining a decent life. Poverty in urban areas cannot therefore be tackled effectively by assuming that social capital will offer the poor a lifeline. An effective solution to this problem should rather involve providing adequate social welfare and improving the conditions in the labour market.
Acknowledgements I acknowledge the valuable feedback I have received from Professor Chris Pickvance on successive drafts of this article. I am also grateful to two anonymous referees for their comments. Any remaining errors belong to the author. Furthermore, I thank the Foundation for Urban and Regional Studies, School of Social Policy and Social Research at the University of Kent and Overseas Research Students Award Scheme for funding my PhD study upon which this paper is based. Finally, I am thankful for the funding from the ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme, which made it possible to prepare the earlier drafts for publication. Notes 1. Gecekondu means built overnight in Turkish, originally referring to urban squatter housing, much of which has become legalised throughout the 1980s. 2. In fact, most livelihood research neither uses poverty measurement nor relies on income as a proxy. 3. The model demonstrates a potential set of household resources owned at one particular point in time. It should however be acknowledged that the relationship between social, cultural and economic capital is more dynamic than the model suggests given the convertibility of three forms of capital to each other (Bourdieu 1986). 4. Borrowing practices are subsumed either under consumption or investment behaviour, depending on their purpose. Though not taken up in this paper, the model considers insurance as an area that is rather distinct from investment.

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5. For a detailed examination of income allocation patterns see Eroglu (2009). 6. Please note that there was variation below this threshold. 7. The respective lines represent the monthly income needed for the basic food and basic foodand-non-food needs of four member households (Bagdadoglu 2002). The gures in March 2002 were USr234 and USr712. 8. This led to the selection of households that had been in and were entering the phase of consolidation. Consolidation indicates a stage when the female partner reaches the end of her fertility and children begin to participate in the labour market (Gonzales de la Rocha 1994). 9. The sample was obtained by starting from an ofcial database, containing the intended household size, structure and age of children for two areas; one predominantly Sunni and one predominantly Alevi. Random number tables were used to select from this database and then households with an income above USr370 were excluded. 10. The Turkish economy witnessed a severe nancial crisis in February 2001, which led to a dramatic decline in growth rates and an increase in ination and unemployment rates. The growth rates declined from 6.1 per cent in 2000 to -9.4 per cent in 2001. The annual rate of ination increased from 39 per cent in 2000 to 68.5 per cent in 2001 (Akyz & Boratav 2003). Finally, the unemployment rate rose from 6.4 per cent in 2000 to 8.4 per cent in 2001 (TIK 2006). It should be born in mind that these rates represent rather conservative gures based on a narrow denition. 11. Worse off and better off household categories respectively refer to those that are most or least deprived relative to others in the sample (see Table 1). 12. Unlike those studies that view remittances as a signicant source of urban survival (Hoodfar 1996; Kalaycoglu & Rittersberg-Tl 2002), my research indicated their limited relevance to poor households (see also Itzigsohn 1995). 13. Gn (i.e. day) in Turkish refers to rotating savings and credit associations (roscas) (see e.g. KhatibChadidi, 1995; Beller-Hann 1999). Broadly speaking, roscas are an association with a core of participants who regularly contribute to a common pot which is partly or fully allocated to each contributor in turn (Ardener 1995). The implications of gn participation for deprivation are discussed in Eroglu (forthcoming). However,

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