Preliminary. Transformation Of The Conditions And Mechanisms Of Social Capital Generated

Social capital, as a commonly approved disciplinary pattern in academic circles at present, has manifested its social and theoretical significance which are juxtaposed with physical (economic) capital and intellectual capital. This paper simply analyses social capital forms, categories, functions and features after inquiring into its definitions. It emphatically probes into social capital growing conditions and mechanism in the period of social transformation of China. Social capital categories and functions are diverse, thus their separately growing conditions and mechanism vary. It points out: for transforming China, there exists "structural holes" questions in political and economic systems, market factors are gradually permeating, unit-institution and status-institution have relatively weakened, with community-institution and contract-institution further growing, economic and cultural pluralism are an impetus, moreover, traditional trust and reciprocity mechanism exist in our nation, etc. All these have promoted traditional social capital and modern social capital to boom, but the former looks like more thriving. They are taking positive or negative effects on our state's stability and development. So the paper finally suggests that we should adroitly guide our action according to situations, and try hard to turn negative factors into positive ones. In methodology, it adopts the ways which are generally taken in the field of sociology of combining empirical positive investigation with theoretical logical verification, of combining macroscopic analysis with microscopic observation. The original ideals lie in: firstly, attracting the difference of social capital between tradition and modernity and of their separately growing conditions and mechanism; secondly, emphasizing social capital, like physical capital and intellectual capital, to be a neuter noun in general, only showing its positiveness and negativeness when it being on different levels and being acted on different subjects; thirdly, demonstrating that it is necessary to hold back social capital negativity and take some of basic measures to construct Chinese-charactered modern social capital. The paper also refines several new wordings: transforming China, axle-centred public power, institutional justice; traditional social capital—modern social capital, social capital positiveness—social capital negativeness, ethical contract—legal contract, traditional trust—modern trust, purposive reciprocity—purposeless reciprocity, etc.