Trustful Relationships: Partnerships, Social Capital and Individual Agency

Globalisation and reflexive modernity are said to be generating new opportunities for local territorial and individual agency. As actors seek to intervene in order to ensure an equable socio-economic outcome, they increasingly employ the theory of endogenous development. However, the theory itself does not explain the nature of human and territorial agency, nor the mechanism by which such agency is created and maintained. The current stress on partnership working is examined but experience suggests that the creation of a regeneration partnership in itself does not guarantee an enhanced agentic capacity for the territory concerned. Social capital, as a propensity to form local associations based on trustful relationships, is examined through the work of Putnam, Gramsci and Fukuyama. But, again, the causality between forms of association, social capital and socioeconomic vibrancy seems weak. This paper then argues that the key to territorial socio-economic development is to be found at the level of the individual person. Goleman's concept of emotional intelligence is used to emphasise the necessary characteristics of individuals who would form trustful relationships. This is then integrated with the ideas of Emirbeyer on how intra-personal cognitive processes and linked to the socio-cultural milieu. It is through the effect of individuals, as they relate to broader ideas and activity that converts human agency into territorial agency.