An accidental outcome: Social capital and its implications for Landcare and the “status quo”

Fragile environment in need of resilient carers? A case of regional natural resources management in Perth, Western Australia

“…While it is theoretically possible for an ECO to be too rigid on its initial position and not adapt to the emerging circumstances, the case of ECO#58 supports the view of Cohen and Prusak (2001) that being opportunistic in building, maintaining, and utilising linkages with relevant stakeholders inside and outside the community enhances the outlook of organisations that often have to do "more with less". This association between organisations which are optimistic about the future and the ability to harness social capital is consistent with the observations of Hegney et al (2008) and Compton and Beeton (2012) in that being proactive and positive enables community organisations to overcome vulnerability and become resilient.…”

Exploring the role of social capital in influencing knowledge flows and innovation in smallholder farming communities in the Caribbean

“…In particular, it plays an important role in developing area contexts where strong social ties function to counter poorly developed or weak institutions (Fafchamps 2006;van Rijn et al 2012;Lowitt et al 2015a). For example, social capital has been used to assess the barriers and opportunities for rural community collective action (Rastogi et al 2014;Rahman et al 2015); to improve understanding of agricultural innovation in smallholder farming systems (van Rijn et al 2012); to help design more integrative and decentralized policy frameworks (Bodin and Crona 2009;Crona and Hubacek 2010); and to enhance collaborative governance through supportive community institutions (Compton and Beeton 2012). Through such research, social capital has been usefully conceptualized as comprising three dimensions: 1) bonding social capital, which includes the horizontal connections found within a group, (also referred to as 'strong ties'); 2) bridging social capital, involving the horizontal links that are found connecting or bridging individuals who belong to distinct groups ('weak ties'); and 3) linking social capital, described as vertical ties to sources of power and finance developed among social actors involved in shared tasks to improve the common good (Grootaert et al 2003;Sabatini 2009).…”

How Local Intermediaries Improve the Effectiveness of Public Payment for Ecosystem Services Programs: The Role of Networks and Agri-Environmental Assistance

“…Schomers et al [23] consider social networks (social capital) and trust to be favorable characteristics of intermediaries helping to improve both farmers' participation in and spatial targeting of PES. Social capital in general is created through repeated interactions by individuals spending time and energy working together to achieve certain aims [24,25]. In the context of practical PES implementation, the provision of bonding and bridging social capital is considered to be particularly favorable [23,24].…”

“…Social capital in general is created through repeated interactions by individuals spending time and energy working together to achieve certain aims [24,25]. In the context of practical PES implementation, the provision of bonding and bridging social capital is considered to be particularly favorable [23,24]. Bridging social capital predominantly includes the links between individual actors within a social network; bonding social capital focuses on linkages between collective actors and groups [26][27][28][29].…”