Valuing Social Resources or Capitalising on Them? Limits to Pro-poor Urban Governance in Nine Cities of the South

It has become increasingly common for a rich associational life to be identified as a key predictor of social capital, defined by Robert Putnam (1993:167) as ‘features of social organisation, such as trust, norms, and networks, that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions'. The concept has been employed across a range of concerns. For example, Fukuyama (1995) has shown how trust, norms and social networks have operated in the interests of business cliques by reducing transaction costs, while in the context of urban development it has been argued that social capital is an important component of the ‘asset portfolio of the urban poor’ themselves (Moser, 1998). Recently social capital has come to refer more specifically only to associational life or social networks, rather than social norms as such0 (Foley and Edwards, 1999), while Putnam in his current work (2000) focuses primarily on the issue of civic engagement. It is largely in this later vein that contributors to development debates have suggested that social capital may lead to more effective development interventions.