IJE Advance Access originally published online on July 28, 2004
International Journal of Epidemiology 2004 33(4):682-690; doi:10.1093/ije/dyh177
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IJE vol.33 no.4 © International Epidemiological Association 2004; all rights reserved.
Commentary |
Commentary: Reconciling the three accounts of social capital
1 Department of Society, Human Development and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, USA
2 Magdalene College, Cambridge University, UK
Correspondence: Prof. Ichiro Kawachi, Department of Society, Human Development and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115, USA. E-mail: Ichiro.Kawachi@channing.harvard.edu.
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The three accounts of social capital |
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The subject matter of social capital tends to arouse passions. After years of debate that often generated more heat than light, Szreter and Woolcock1 have come up with a conceptual framework for examining social capital and health which promises to reconcile the opposing camps. They identify three existing accounts of social capital as it relates to population health, which they refer to respectively as the ‘social support’ perspective, the ‘inequality’ thesis, and the ‘political economy’ approach. As noted by Szreter and Woolcock, an often polarized debate has taken place within public heath between proponents of the ‘inequality’ thesis and the ‘political economy’ approach, with the former group additionally tending to emphasize the ‘psychosocial’ interpretation of the mechanism linking social capital to health,2 as opposed to the ‘neo-material’ interpretation favoured by the latter group.3 We have argued elsewhere4 that the ‘debate’ between the psychosocial and neo-material positions poses an unnecessary distraction.
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Individual versus collective accounts of social capital |
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Methodological implications |
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A future for social capital in public health? |
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