Farmers' Lack Of Social Capital, The Ethics Review

The theory of social capital provide a new view for the problems of farmers, and point out a new route of solution—promoting the farmers' social capital. Many researches of different subjects in the end concern ethical problems, including justice, trust and cooperation in the social relations and the fabric of society. Therefore, it contains important theoretical and practical value to analyze the ethical roots of the loss of the farmers' social capital and seek for the ethical routes of promoting the farmers' social capital.Social capital in this paper is the "profiting capabilities" from the social resources embedded in the network of social relations, which can help fulfilling individual aims, including institutions, standards, social relations and positions. The fulfilling of this "profiting capabilities" needs two steps: the first is to fetch the social recourses of institutions, standards, social relations and positions; and the second is to transform the social recourses into social capital of the "profiting capabilities" nature, by the values of equality, respect, reciprocity, trust and cooperation spirit.Social capital is the product of a certain "membership". And also, social capital is the identification of this kind of "membership" and it is a kind of "member rights". Once the "membership" is identified, the corresponding social capital should be given. All the owners of "membership" should possess the social capital. In this sense, the loss of the farmers' social capital materially means that the farmers' "memberships" and "member rights" are deprived. Obviously, social capital is full of ethical sense.Under the ethics, the absence of institutional justice is the realistic root of the loss of the farmers' social capital; moral disorder is the catalyst for the loss of the farmers' social capital and the lack of the farmers' autonomy consciousness is the subjective root of the loss of the farmers' social capital. Consequently, the ethical route for promoting the farmers' social capital is recovering institutional justice, renewing the tolerance spirit and cultivating the farmers' autonomy consciousness.