Social Capital As The Extended Order

In recent years, the concept of "social capital" has become a new focus in the realm of social science. There are so many praises on social capital that it seems to be a cure-all for social problems. However, its negative aspects should be seriously considered by us and cannot be neglected and dodged by its advocators. In China, where personal relations are extremely important in the society, the definition of social capital is more confused. People usually equal social capital with the society relation, thinking that "exploiting the relation" and "going through the back-door" are the utilization of social capital. Some people even treat it as a kind of "theoretical basis" to obtain benefits for their groups. All of these cause low social efficiency. Aiming at the misunderstanding of social capital in the realistic society of China, the paper reviews the definition, makes a beneficial limit with "promoting the efficiency of the whole society", and then introduces Hayek's "the extended order of human cooperation". The conclusion is that the continuously-extend order is the standard of the social capital we need. It means that extended order is the real social capital. At last, the paper puts forward that positive externalities is the reason of cooperation order extending, and that the non-personified market ruled by the law will give full play to positive externalities. We hope that the redefinition will be useful to us to understand well and make good use of social capital, and be useful to the development of the economy and society.