Digital Commons Network^™

Revisiting The Question Of Social Capital In Public Policy: Exploring New Directions For Community Informatics Research, William Tibben

Dr William Tibben

The paper sets out to analyse the concept of social capital and its utility for Community Informatics (CI) research and practice in public policy. The paper begins by noting that the concept seems to have lost some “currency” in contemporary public policy debates. The rise and fall and social capital as a public policy concept is traced through published government reports in Australia. It then moves onto critical economic discourse to indicate a number of barriers to its adoption within public policy within Australia at the time. The paper then considers whether such criticisms are addressed from a CI perspective …