Social Capital And Social Transformation

Social capital, an important theoretical tool adopted by a variety of current disciplines to interpret social phenomena, has been defined and studied by scholars of different fields from different perspectives. This thesis is devoted to the study of several fundamental theoretical issues related to social capital in terms of social transformation and also the study of the phenomena of regulation loss by adopting social capital as the theoretical vehicle, and finally proposed some tentative resolutions to these urgent social issues.This thesis falls into three chapters.Considering the complexity and diversity of theories concerning social capital, chapter one seeks to focus on such basic theoretical matters as its definition, constituents, characteristics, functions, investments. Social capital refers to a mutual trust established on the basis of universal and mutually benefiting regulations in the course of citizens' participation in the network community; citizens' participation in the network community, mutually benefiting regulations and trust are important content of social capital, serving to solve the dilemma in the collective action and promote cooperation among groups. Thus we should build and accumulate social capital by means of the investment and maintenance of social capital, and make investment in it on the levels of individual, social groups and the state.Chapter two is dedicated to the analysis of several prominent social phenomena of regulation loss. By discussing the relationship between social capital and social transformation, the causes of loss are diagnosed as the loss of social capital in the course of social transformation and solid examples can be seen in the following: the closure of the network has been broken and then appears the vacuum in social control; the heterogeneity of social regulations arises and leads to the emergence of Non-regular relationship; distrust is generally intensified; and besides, they all contribute to the loss of social capital. So it is concluded that it is imperative to reconstruct social capital in the period of social transformation.Chapter three reviews the characteristics of current China' s social transformation and the overall situation of China' s social capital. This analysis points out that China is now on the way of social transformation from a society of self-supplying and semi-self-supplying product economy to one of market economy, from agricultural society to industrial society, from village society to city-and-town society, from closed or semi-closedsociety to open society, from ethical society to law-ruled society. China historically enjoys a large stock of social capital, but this capital tends to be characterized as a small circle of trust and faith; in the course of social transformation, the general situation of social capital tends to be diversified, immature, and unevenly distributed. Thus China is obliged to reconstruct its old social capital, build and accumulate new modern social capital.