Social capital and the business of the middle class: Rebecca Marsh and Daniel Reidpath hear echoes of nineteenth-century etiquette in social capital rhetoric.

Social capital has been taken up with fervour by local, state, commonwealth and international governments. It has found favour among the 'neo-' politicians: neo-liberals, neo-conservatives and New Labour, and within international institutions like the World Bank. So accepted has it become in government in Australia that measures of social capital now form part of the officially collected statistics at both a local and national level.

Despite benign and popular appearances to the contrary, social capital can be seen as a manifestation of class that allows government to abrogate its social responsibilities and thereby entrenches existing social inequalities. In short, it serves to preserve the cultural dominance of the middle class.

Pioneered by sociologists such as Pierre Bourdieu and James Coleman, social capital was popularised in the 1990s by the American sociologist, Robert Putnam. 'Social capital' came to mean the ties or relationships between people in groups characterised by the mutual trust and reciprocity that lead to material and social advantage. It emphasised the centrality of social networks, which facilitated the building of trust and co-operation between people for their mutual benefit. Social capital appeared to offer the middle way between the laissez faire individual freedom of the political right and the structured, economically determined social position anticipated by the left.

Despite the apparent novelty of the idea of social capital expressed in its popular adoption by government and social commentators, it is not a neutral intellectual notion about social relationships. Rather, it operates as a class discourse. Specifically, it draws on two related discourses: one about middle-class culture, the other about commercial enterprise. Both of these are necessarily and inextricably bound together within the discourse of capitalism.

Bourdieu outlined the idea that the adoption and transmission of particular tastes, habits and sensibilities from generation to generation are instrumental in reproducing class position. This can be seen in the inculcation by middle-class parents into their children the academic aspirations and language skills necessary to succeed in the school system--itself a tool of middle class culture that privileges the attainments and dispositions of its own.

Social capital can, similarly, be seen as representing a particular set of historical (middle-) class preferences and habits relating to the formation of social networks for material benefit and upward social mobility. The social significance of networks for material benefit has its origins in the very beginnings of middle-class culture. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the entrepreneurial and professional classes that emerged out of the industrial revolution struggled to define themselves through a transformation of the tastes and preferences of the ruling elites and in opposition to the working classes. They were guided in this endeavour by etiquette books, manuals of appropriate social behaviour and advice.

Whereas in the early eighteenth century, etiquette books had generally been written by elites for elites, as the century progressed, these instructional monographs became increasingly popular among the middle class. By the nineteenth century, etiquette books were predominately written by the middle class for the middle class, including The Laws of Etiquette, Self Help, The Lady's Guide to Perfect Gentility, and, classically, Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management.

While these books do not provide a mirror of contemporary behaviour, they document the anxieties, preoccupations and aspirations of the emergent middle class. Much of the advice centred on the facilitation of social intercourse within the middle class and between the middle class and the elite. They revealed the belief that specific behaviours were fundamentally instrumental in the attainment of upward mobility, and that sociability was essential to social success. One popular book written in 1836 contained the assertion that: Whatever may be the accomplishments necessary to render one capable of reaching the highest platform of social eminence ... there is one thing, and one alone, which will enable any man to retain his station there; and that is, GOOD BREEDING. Without it, we believe that literature, wealth, and even blood, will be unsuccessful ... To obtain, then, the manners of a gentleman is a matter of no small importance.

In this context, 'good breeding' meant 'good manners'--specific behaviours that could be acquired to facilitate strategic social connections. The middle class developed elaborate rituals and practices around visiting or 'calling', building a complex web of acquaintanceships, friendships, contacts and associations, each cultivated to generate prestige and respectability that could later be transformed into income generation. These relationships required significant maintenance that was usually carried out by middle-class women. Books of etiquette from the period both encouraged the development of these networks and steered readers through the complex reciprocal obligations involved in their maintenance.

Calls were generally made after luncheon or on a specific 'visiting day'. In the first instance, a calling card alone could be left. Once this had been reciprocated a visit could be arranged. Calls were to be made after dining at someone's home, after a ball or a picnic, after deaths or happy events. Isabella Beeton recommended that visits should be brief, no more than twenty minutes and 'a lady paying a visit may remove her boa or neckerchief; but neither her shawl nor bonnet'.

'These forms [of behaviour] may be abundantly absurd', advised another etiquette book, 'but they still must be attended to; for one half the world does and always will observe them, and the other half is at a great disadvantage if it does not'. It was also recommended that a strict account should be kept of visits and notice taken of how soon the visit was returned. Thus, in the carefully contrived social pas de deux of calling cards and luncheon visits, tentative and tenuous relationships could be developed and cemented.

Shifting one's gaze to the present, the middle-class preoccupation with the instrumental value of social networks appears to be a part of a historical continuum, a result of the generational reproduction of culture. 'Social capital' is the fashionable rubric by which we now refer to the current articulation of those nascent class-based preferences apparent in the industrial revolution.

The calling card has been replaced by the business card, and etiquette manuals have been replaced by business advice and self-development tracts such as Nonstop Networking: How to Improve Your Life, Luck, and Career and Make Your Contacts Count: Networking Know How for Cash, Clients, and Career Success. The modern language and practices, however, bear a startling similarity to those of the nineteenth century.

In modern business, networking--defined as 'the process of establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with other business people and potential clients and/or customers'--is paramount. According to the business advisors, the average person knows about 250 people, and each time he or she develops a relationship that is perceived by both parties in terms of trust and mutuality, they gain access to another 250 potential contacts. These contacts can provide information on jobs, customers, investments and other financially rewarding information. According to one web-based business advisor, 'by not consistently widening our circles of acquaintances and contacts, we may be severely curtailing our chances for advancement and success'.

Just like the etiquette manuals, the business advice manuals list precepts and rules of appropriate behaviour. Recommendations include minimum targets for the early career networker: two mentors, three peer relationships and two mentoring relationships. Professional, interest groups and community groups should be joined to maximise potential contacts. Coffee and lunch arrangements should always be used as opportunities to establish or develop business contacts. Perhaps insidious to the outside observer, the early career networker should create obligation by referring business to clients through the purposeful and strategic passing on of clients' business cards, remembering to note one's name on each card.

As with the etiquette manuals, readers of business manuals are advised to keep a comprehensive record of their contacts, noting the details and importance of each one and tracking the nature of the relationship. For the entrepreneur--the epitome of middle-class aspiration and the capitalist ideal--networking or relations with peers are the most profitable activity to be engaged in. 'There are endless opportunities to combine your interests with networking ... Good networkers', we are told, 'are in networking mode 24 hours per day, not just business hours'. In the world imagined by business gurus, the work of productive socialising looks like leisure and the socialising associated with leisure looks like work--a seamless merging of social interaction and material advantage.

The language of social capital is uncannily similar to those business ideas and practices. As Robert Putnam argues, social capital relates to 'social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them'. Just like the business entrepreneurs, Putnam speaks the language of relations of trust and mutual advantage. It is all about social networks, about the importance of cultivating relationships that create opportunities for material benefit, such as education or job opportunities. Business and sociability are thus the largely indistinguishable discourses of the middle class.

Notions of social capital increasingly underpin government policies relating to exclusion, marginalisation and inequality. It has been observed, for instance, that disadvantaged communities and communities with large marginalised subgroups are lacking in social capital. Studies suggest that individuals within such communities express lower levels of trust towards one another, do not engage in community activities as frequently and are less likely to help or expect to receive help from a neighbour. By a twist on logic, the disadvantage of a community is seen to be driven not by social structure, but by a failure in personal responsibility or personal capacity.

Within the social capital framework, it is through the development of policy that creates opportunities for civic participation and a greater sense of community that government can most assist the disadvantaged to rise out of their social miasma. The discourse thus operates to deter structural change, which may redistribute power and wealth, and enshrines the status quo of middle-class privilege.

Associated notions of 'bonding' and 'bridging' social capital clearly illustrate the use of class-based preferences to understand and address inequality. 'Bonding social capital' refers to networks that are developed between people who share a similar social identity such as ethnicity, locality and/or familial relatedness where relationships are close and strong. The types of resources that are characterised as accruing from these relationships are social support resources like child minding, labour exchanges and food sharing. Bonding social capital is said to be good for 'getting by' but not for 'getting ahead'.

In contrast, 'bridging social capital' refers to networks between people who are more socially distant or different, and is thought to generate resources that lead to social mobility and material advancement. Bridging social capital is viewed as preferable to bonding social capital because it is associated with social mobility and material advancement.

The books on business networking reinforce this view in slightly different language: 'You alone cannot make yourself successful. Only others can do that for you. What you can do is to select the best relationships and alliances for your purposes'. In order to be most strategic and ensure the highest returns, business people are advised to network outwards and upwards, to adjacent industries and more senior people or those most likely to rise. Business advice manuals state that networking relationships should be founded on a mutual enjoyment of each other's company, respect, shared experience, reciprocity and trust. This is framed, however, in terms of purposive conduct aimed at securing future material and social benefits. In the words of the business writer, these relationships are all about 'an investment in the future'.

Even where poor and marginalised groups may have highly cohesive, co-operative social networks, research studies suggest that they lack the right kinds of social networks and therefore hold a surfeit of the wrong kind of social capital. The implication is that if only these poor and marginalised people would join the right groups, extend themselves to meet the right people--in short, invest in more bridging social capital--they could lift themselves to betterment.

This conclusion, which informs much currently fashionable social policy, is arrived at by an erroneous application of inductive reasoning. Specifically, it has been observed that the middle class actively engage in social networking for material advantage. The middle class is materially more advantaged than the marginalised and socially excluded. Therefore, so the false logic goes, the way for the poor and marginalised to become materially advantaged is for them to adopt the tastes and fashions of the middle class and network their way to success.

While it is easy to see the advantages of networking up, it assumes that the more advantaged networker will arrive at a mutually advantageous relationship by networking with the disadvantaged networker. If, of course, everyone is networking up, no one can be networking down. Even supposing that some who are up can recognise a personal advantage in networking down, given the pyramidal nature of social class distribution, there are too many below seeking to rise. Without structural change, the inequality will remain. The power of the rhetorical device is to reinforce class structures, because any inequality can be blamed on the indolence of the less well off for their failure to adopt those middle-class preferences and habits that have proven so successful.

Government policy and rhetoric around social capital effectively universalises a set of cultural preferences and beliefs and imposes them onto those who are marginalised and excluded. It is behavioural advice to the poor on self-improvement, and revisits the advice offered by Mrs Beeton in 1861 on how to associate with the poor. The poor were to be advised and instructed 'in a pleasant and unobtrusive manner, in cleanliness, industry, cookery and good management'. They were, in short, to be instructed in how to become more like 'us'.

This idea that the less well off can improve by adopting the attitudes and habits of the better off recalls the imposition of middle-class values on workers during the industrial revolution, specifically around self-discipline and time management. Workers moving from home-based and agrarian industries to organised factory work were encouraged to develop the kind of steady work habits that made factory production efficient but were completely at odds with the seasonal and demand-based workflows they had previously known. Those workers who did not comply were punished through harsh fines and dismissal, and were identified as slothful or dissolute. The discourse of self-discipline and steadiness was linked to notions of respectability and responsibility that, while contested at the time, nevertheless became the dominant attitude to work. As a discourse it has served capitalism well, creating nations of largely compliant workers contributing by their labour and industry to the national economy, which has come to be synonymous with the national good.

The success of social capital as a concept in academia and government policy attests to the ascendance of the middle class. Social capital reflects their cultural preferences for accruing productive social relationships, and the dominance of corporate business language in public life. The professional sector (academia and government) has united the neo-liberal business model (itself a product of the aspirational pursuit of capital) and the cultural practices of the middle class in the concept of social capital. This is perhaps fitting, for according to Marx, it has been the role of the professional sector to 'develop and perfect the illusions of the class about itself'. And, it would appear, to perfect the illusions of the class about the poor and the marginal. Social capital as progressive social reform is one such illusion.

Rebecca Marsh is a social historian in public health based in Melbourne. Daniel Reidpath is Professor of Public Health at Brunel University, UK. The development of this essay was supported by a grant and fellowship from the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation.