Pillar:
Social Development
Collection:
Development Futures
How to Cite This Record
Hanna Grace.
(2009).
Religion and Social Capital.
Egyptian Visions Digital Archive.
Religion and Social Capital
Dr. Hanna Grace July 2009
The concept of "social capital" dates back to the early twentieth century, but it was not until the 1970s that the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu used it when he combined it with the concepts of cultural capital and economic capital to form the trinity of resources that helps shape social classes. Since then, it has been circulating among Western sociologists. It was not until 1995 that the American sociologist Robert Putnam wrote an essay titled "Bowling Solitarily: The Decline of America's Social Capital" in which he noted the withdrawal of Americans from the public social sphere and the decline of their social and political participation in general, and recorded his belief that this posed a danger to American democracy. The article caught the attention of former US President Bill Clinton, and invited Putnam to Camp David for a dialogue, and then Putnam and the concept of social capital became at the forefront of news bulletins, and Putnam became a guest on television talk shows and political and social forums explaining his perception of the importance of social capital and the danger of its erosion on American society .
The concept of social capital became popular over the following years, and conferences and studies were conducted that discuss the theoretical framework of the concept, its relationship with civil society, and its role in social and economic development and democratic transformation. The concept of social capital thus provided an umbrella for a wide range of other social concepts such as social cohesion, social solidarity, and social norms and values, as well as a framework for trying to understand the complex relationship between all of these concepts.
On the other hand, the new concept has become an arena for studying how resources and material and moral possibilities flow through the various social networks that make up the general society, and to try to understand the impact of resource flow patterns on the democratic system and the role of civil society and official institutions in the rise or backwardness of societies.
Capital...... Social
The concept of "capital" has been used in sociology in the last four decades, from the concept of "human capital" to the concept of "cultural capital" to the concept that we are now exposed to "social capital", which raises the question of the use of the concept of "capital" in various social fields. In fact, the concept of "capital" invokes the image of Karl Marx in the mind of the researcher, regardless of his intellectual or ideological position. The classical Marxist theorizing associates economic capital as part of the surplus value resulting from the process of production controlled by the capitalists or the bourgeoisie, and also includes the process of investing surplus value by those who occupy it in the market of goods and services. The process can be understood and analyzed at the level of the structure of society or, in Marxist terms, at the class level. In this context, we can read what enthusiasts mean by the concept of social capital, where we have to identify the surplus value in social relations, and the opportunities and frameworks for investing in social capital resulting from social relations.
In order to study the relationship between the concept of social capital and religion, we will first begin with a brief presentation of the concept through its most important theorist in our view. In fact, we have several definitions of the concept of "social capital", the first of which is Bourdieu's, which sees it as the sum of the actual or potential resources that an individual or a group accumulates through the activation of their social relationship through the network, whether formal or social, through mutual acquaintance.
The second definition is found in Coleman, who believes that social capital is defined by its function, which is not a single entity, but rather a different set of forms of social capital, all of which have in common two elements, the first is that it facilitates the different activities of actors within the social network, whether they are individuals or representatives of institutions.
For Putnam, "social capital" describes the features of social life: social networks, social norms, and the concept of trust. Social networks form the public space that connects individuals to each other through their association with shared social norms and mutual trust. Putnam also makes a distinction between two types of social capital. The first type is bonding social capital. It is based on strengthening the internal relations of a group that is united by a single identity. The second type is bridging social capital, which connects individuals and groups from different social, cultural and class backgrounds. Both types of social capital perform a complementary function to the other in the general context, as interdependence helps to cohesion and alignment within the group, between crossings that help to connect different groups within society within a single framework.
On the other hand, there is general agreement among all those who have approached the concept with research and analysis on the centrality of the concept of "trust" in the theory of social capital, as in the early 1980s Coleman wrote about the importance of trust in economic life. Francis Fukuyama considered the concept of "trust" itself to be the basis of social capital
From the point of view of many, investing in social relationships certainly has a payoff, as individuals deal with each other through networks of relationships in order to obtain social and material benefits distributed through these networks and available to the members of the network in light of the rules of participation in the network, the location of each individual in it, and his ability to build his social capital within them. Lin identifies He is one of the most important researchers in the field of "social capital", four reasons that push individuals to interact within social networks to get their benefits, which are:
1) In societies governed by backward conditions, important information about the opportunities available to individuals remains in strategic locations of official and financial institutions, and is therefore withheld from the rest of the individuals. On the other hand, institutions can identify the potential of individuals through relationships within the network, and it is even possible to uncover the hidden potentials of some individuals within the network, which may not be undetectable. By normal methods of assessment and testing.
2) The ability to influence decision-makers within any economic or social institution and in multiple areas ranging from intra-institutional employment to mediation between different institutions and entities. In the last point, one of the parties to the network, whether an individual or an institution, may be given a strategic position that allows it to play a greater role than the other parties in mediating across the structural gaps that are distributed among social networks, as we will see later.
3) Obtaining social authorization , where the individual accumulates social credentials from the resources of social relations, making his social capital a mandate by which he deals with other parties within the social network and through other networks. With such a mandate, the individual can reassure the institutions behind him of his ability to make useful additions.
4) Strengthening the individual's identity, belonging to a group within the social network enhances the individual's social status, and perhaps in enhancing his individuality, which strengthens his position within the group, which means that he receives psychological support by publicly acknowledging it as part of a social system, and then also obtains social support by strengthening his ability to announce his claims in some of the resources available within the social network as part of his rights as an individual. Strengthening the individual in this way is important for the mental health of the individual and the group.
If these are the motives that lead the individual to enter into social networks, can it be said that the return of social capital belongs only to the individual? At this point Most researchers agree that the payoff is for both the individual and the group combined. With the institutionalization of social relations, the return to the community, which can be called the "common good", is at the collective level, there are enormous resources and benefits in all social, political, economic, and cultural processes without which a society cannot progress.
Religion and Social Capital
In the theory of social capital, the general society consists of a large social network that includes groups of small networks, all of which move in the context of a cultural and ethical pattern that is formed through the historical experience of society, and determines the mechanisms of acquaintance and interdependence between individuals and groups, who we know and how we know them.
Western societies have had a modern and post-modernist context and the individuality they have produced resulting from their cultural, philosophical heritage and their cultural-religious roots, while in our societies that have had some experience of modernity, their traditional cultural heritage, which is basically a religious heritage, has long since ceased or stopped, especially in some of the issues raised by the concept of social capital, such as the concept of "the common good", the "social network", and also the concept of "trust".
On the one hand, the owners of all religions dealing with the subject of social capital point to the positive dimension of religion over social capital, and they give realistic examples of the role of religious institutions as one of the largest entities that include voluntary social networks that contribute to the public good. The consequences of it.
All religions can rightly quote from religious texts that require and value doing good, and religions even present a utopian conception of social relations between individuals and societies as long as people adhere to their message in a holistic and pure manner. On the Islamic side, for example, researcher Omar Rashid writes, "The Islamic religion, which is a major vessel for values and morals in the Arab and Islamic regions, plays a major role in shaping social capital, as Islam, as a social and political force, has been able to provide educated, but frustrated Arab youth with social protection and hope." No one can doubt or doubt what Rashid wrote, but perhaps we can add to it. On the Christian side, Christianity is a religion of love that talks about doing good for everyone, even for enemies. This is evidenced by the size and quantity of Christian charitable projects, which vary between educational, health and social projects that are spread everywhere on the land of Egypt. Even globally, studies confirm that two-thirds of social activity in the United States is carried out by churches or social institutions with Christian moral references. The question is, is there a relationship between religious ideals and the reality of social life? And can these religious ideals, if ideally applied, produce social capital as envisioned by theory?
The question, then, is not whether religions carry the message of goodness, cooperation and social cohesion, because the answer to this question is certainly yes, but the question is: Does every society with a religious reference necessarily have the possibilities of producing and using social capital? In Egypt, for example, where religious culture is deeply rooted and the ritual commitment of its Muslims and Christians is the highest in the world , the question becomes, if this is the extent of religiosity and to what extent religious ethics is spreading, why don't we see a return on it at the level of the common good? Where is there trust between individuals and social violence prevails?
In order to answer these questions in the light of the theory of social capital, we have chosen to discuss three points:
1) The first point is the nature of the social relations between the individual and the group in the traditional religious society and its relationship to the building of social capital.
2) The second point on the concept of trust in the moral and religious heritage
3) The third point is about the internal bonds of the religious community and the possibilities of forming crossings with others.
The individual and the group in the traditional religious community
The theory of social capital in the West arose as part of the Western world's reaction to the excessive individualism of Western policymakers in the 1980s, specifically Thatcherism and Reaganism, which reached its peak in Margaret Thatcher's famous opinion "There is no such thing as society" and Putnam's work, which we referred to earlier as "Bowling Solitary", came as an attempt to revive the idea that modern society and its main social features, especially Western democracy, were made by social capital based on built social relations On trust.
In other words, the theory of social capital as we read it in its founders and legislators is based on the characteristics of social relations in modern society in terms of being the freedom of individuals to freely choose the social relations they wish to form and the social space within which they wish to move to achieve the common good.
Perhaps it was the talk of social relations as social capital that some people thought we had all the tools of social capital. We interpret the intensity of social relations and the overlap of individuals in strong bilateral and family relationships as the result of the movement of individuals when in fact they are the result of group domination. This is a result of the fact that our societies are mainly made up of the group and not the individual, and this is what Dr. Rafiq Habib emphasizes in his book The Revival of Arab Traditions in his field of comparison. of the Arab society with the Western society, where "the nation-state is the one who has authority over all individuals, and then the rights of individuals towards the state are determined....... In our civilization, we start with the first legal foundations, which are the system of values, as well as the religious and civilizational beliefs. Through these foundations, the basic formations are determined, as well as the applicable frameworks and binding rules. This binding general framework expresses people's faith and belief....... This framework governs all activities in the nation, that is, it is a framework that governs all groups and social components, and it is also a framework that governs individuals. This group is formed mainly on the blood bond of the family and clan. On the ground of grazing and agriculture, the tribe is reorganizing itself culturally and heritageally within the religious system. This is what makes Nabil Abdel Fattah talk about the difficult birth of the individual in our societies, as he says, "The awakening of traditional, fundamentalist and customs buildings contributes to the impasse of the difficult birth process of the individual in our culture and social life, which leads to the consecration of the social, patriarchal and political tyranny of the patriarchy and its traditional or new forms in the state, the family, the party, the school, the church and the mosque, and what makes the project of political and social modernity and human rights far from realization and achievement."
In traditional societies based on group power, social relations appear to be dense and strong, and although social relations serve as the assets on which social capital is built, not all social relationships produce social capital. In a study of bilateral relations in Chinese society within the framework of Confucian ethics and their relationship to the microcredit program for villagers, one researcher examined the project from the perspective of maximizing the common good by having farmers cooperate to repay the value of the loans they have received to ensure that they Continue to distribute the same resources as loans to others. However, the researcher discovered that the strong bilateral relations of the farmers prevented them from obliging each other to repay the loans, and even helped some of them to evade repayment, considering that the benefit of returning the money is in the interest of others they do not know, and the researcher concluded that the traditional Confucian cultural heritage, which contributed to the strengthening of bilateral social relations, led to the scarcity of social capital.
The researcher also concluded that the impact of the cultural factor on social capital has not been sufficiently studied, especially the religious factor in traditional religious societies, as in Chinese society based on Confucian traditions, individuals see themselves as the center of a large bonding block rather than their sense of being members of a group or community. Ahead of repairing roads in their village .
Such results can be easily reached on the streets of Cairo, where people pay great attention to cleaning their homes but throw garbage on the ladder of the giant building they live in, or on the street, and of course they have no joint effort to pressure the local authorities to take care of the cleanliness of the streets or the city. The difference between the modern society in which the theory of social capital originated and our traditional society seems clear to social researchers since the beginning of the last century, as Durkheim described it as the famous social scientist, where he described social relations in modern society and called them organic interdependence, which is in short the result of modernity and the resulting increase in specialization and division of labor, and thus the dependence of the members of society on each other, even if they differ culturally or ideologically.
In contrast , in Durkheim's pre-modern traditional societies, there is mechanical solidarity, and social cohesion here depends on cultural similarity and homogeneity where it depends on public rituals, customs, and socialization, where there is less precise specialization in the field of work, and it depends on automatic obedience to authority. In fact, in the stages of crisis, we try to make rituals, visual and auditory similarities, and adherence to religious formalism a force of self-defense. However, this traditional social structure cannot generate social capital, since we have personal and bilateral relationships that are strengthened by similar visual and linguistic cues, but we are not strong social capital.
The Concept of Commitment in the Religious Moral Heritage in the Future of the Concept of Trust in Social Capital
Social capital theory is based on individuals' use of their presence in a social network. In order to be able to do so, they need to get to know other people and organizations within it, and they need a degree of trust in each other that makes them anticipate the reactions of others so that they can be assured that no one will take advantage of them and that the regularity of the interconnection within the social network or system benefits them. Most theorists of social capital agree that the concept of trust is a key component of the theory. Francis Fukuyama even makes the concept of trust the primary source of social capital
The subject of trust can be understood in its public and private context to answer the question of how can an individual trust others? Whether it's when getting married, being somewhere with strangers, dealing with hospitals, restaurants, transportation, and others.
Francesco Hieroros divides trust into two types, the special trust that a person can experience as a product of direct social relationships , and the concept of social trust, which he considers to be the great achievement of social capital theory as it relates to institutions and people we do not know . Trust in this context means keeping promises and promises, and here Adam Seligman notes thatConfidence in this sense entered the philosophical and political lexicon in the mid-seventeenth century in the same period as the theory of probability in mathematics, the theory of rational man, and rationality in philosophy, and this is linked to the influence of Pascal and Western theologians in changing the traditional form of religious faith, which led to a shift towards evidentiary evidence in support of faith rather than ambiguous faith. These transformations and developments in the fields of science, philosophy, and religion led to a change in the concept of danger, which did not become as terrifying as it became A challenge that is met with "confidence". Hence, the concept of trust is a modern phenomenon that has arisen with the behavioral transformations that accompany the birth of modern society and modernity, and therefore without the modern individual as an active will, there can be no trust, where there is no danger, for which trust is a solution.
The word trust in the Arabic language has the same meaning as it appears in Seligman's narrative in the sense that it is what is beyond danger, to trust someone in the Arabic language means to trust him, to believe him, to make a covenant with him, and to associate yourself with him, but no one looks at the concept of trust in Arab culture in the social sense that Seligman referred to. In Arabic literature, you find talk about trust in God and self-confidence, but you do not find trust in those you do not know or trust in the general society. In Arabic literature, you find talk about trust in God and self-confidence, but you do not find trust in those you do not know or trust in the general society Or institutions, and then comes the question, how does the individual ward off the danger from himself? The answer in our society and religious culture is in the concept of "commitment." Rafiq Habib defines the role of commitment, saying, "In the Arab-Islamic culture, obedience to the system, the law and the state is achieved through what the system represents and the state represents, the realization of the highest values and religious beliefs....... Obedience, which is unconditional acceptance, is only for God in the Arab-Islamic culture, both Islamic and Christian, whereas in the West, obedience becomes the general legal system." Some argue that such a proposition not only hinders the birth of the individual but also hinders the concept of trust itself , because if there is a public system that will put in place all the actions required for obedience, then what is left to negotiate in order to gain trust, in other words, I need trust in others if the common law will determine all acceptable social actions and prevent others even if they are negotiable, (for example). The committed believer averts the danger from himself by resembling and symmetrically with the prevailing religious model, and the similarity and similarity here is in appearance and way of thinking together, which brings us back to Durkheim's concept of automatic interdependence, which means that the concept of trust in the modern sense, as the theory of social capital speaks, is not realized in the prevailing religious culture. On the other hand, how can we expect the concept of trust to spread in a society dominated by conspiracy theories?
The Dark Side of Social Capital is the Isolation or Isolation of the Minority
In the theory of social capital, society is formed in its broadest sense from a large network of relationships that contain within it qualitative social networks, whether functional, professional, social or religious, and that the internal relations that connect the parties to a network are what we have called internal links, while the relationships that exist between different networks represent the crossings between different qualitative networks and are formed as a result of the relationship between these networks. In the inter-spaces, between social networks, structural spaces are formed that isolate the social networks from each other, and the crossings represent the efforts of individuals and groups from different social networks to establish relations that cover these spaces and connect the social networks to each other.
In fact, the internal bonds in every social network are the easiest to form, as they depend on the bond of blood, cultural homogeneity, religion, class affiliation... etc. of primary social ties. While crossings between different networks require the perception of higher reasons for interaction between individuals than other social networks, reasons such as the general identity of the community or shared cultural heritage at a higher level than the level of direct cultural homogeneity, and also economic and social interests constitute real strong factors for the stabilization and consolidation of crossings between networks.
In complex social relations, most of the members of the society belong to more than one network of social relations and their investment in linking the various networks leads to the maximization of the crossings and fulcrums between the social networks. In other words, investing in crossings makes public social capital greater, while the focus on strengthening internal ties fragments the general society into isolated islands. It is clear that the formation of crossings between social networks of society requires a deeper cultural awareness, and it also depends on the conscious and deliberate efforts of political and cultural elites who are aware of the importance of social cohesion and cohesion, and the development of social capital.
On the other hand, individuals who have more and closer relationships with more than one social network, or in other words, who are aware of the importance of crossings and invest in them, are the centers of the flow of information and resources within the networks and between each other, and thus their accumulated social capital is greater. In doing so, they control in some way the decision to reserve resources or allow their flow, which affects the vitality of the society and the size and health of its social capital.. The behavior of those in control of vital areas in society and those who control the distribution of resources within social networks may lead to a form of inequality or imbalance of opportunities, which results in discrimination against some members of society, individuals or groups. If social equations are disrupted, the state performs poorly, or the consciousness of political and cultural elites deteriorates, society turns into isolated groups and islands that vary in power and power due to the imbalance in the flow of resources and capabilities within the general society. Thus, the social space based on relationships and affinities to obtain a share of the resources flowing within the social network turns into an arena of conflict between social networks, each seeking to capture as many resources as possible without regard for other parties and without much thought about the harms that affect the general society.
We now return to our Egyptian society and try to read the relationship between Muslims and Copts as two social networks within the framework of the larger network of Egyptian society. The fact that there is religious pluralism in Egypt dates back to the middle of the seventh century AD, and since that date there have been several changes in the internal ties in each of them, and in the social crossings between the two parties, the numerical and qualitative balance has changed several times but has left a legacy of coexistence that has accumulated over the years.
However, the biggest positive change in the relationship between Muslims and Copts occurred with the experience of the modern state, and we can monitor the tangible social changes in the course of the relationship from the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, as in the light of the project of the modern state, the majority pushed its national project that inspired the Egyptian culture with its history and all religions, and then laid the foundations for the possibility of building a social capital for the Egyptian society that was built on the dream of a modern independent homeland in which all its children participate, and this is precisely what Push the crossings forward.
When Egyptian society flourished and was filled with individual and collective initiatives to address the problems of society, the Copts formed Coptic civil associations that played non-sectarian social roles, especially in the fields of health and education, and these initiatives formed strong crossings between the Copts and the general society. If we add to this, the involvement of the Coptic aristocracy and the Coptic middle class, including professionals, politicians, and cultural elites, in the general national work, and the commitment of the clergy to their mission in the spiritual service of the Copts and non-interference in the public political sphereWe clearly see the conditions for the balanced growth of the links and crossings between Muslims and Copts and the reflection of this on the growth of the social capital of Egyptian society.
We are not in the field of studying the reasons for the decline of the modernization project in Egypt, but we are trying to explore the causes of the imbalance that has afflicted the links between Muslims and Copts. We have that the first of these reasons is related to the project of the Nasserist state, which nationalized the public social space in which the social crossings between the networks live, and at the same time, of course, could not eliminate the internal links of the small social networks, but on the contrary, these ties became stronger not only among the Copts but also among the MuslimsAlso, the Nasserist state and its aftermath until now removed the secular cultural and professional elites from their positions at the heads of social crossings and handed them over to the ecclesiastical institution, as over the last six decades, the state has identified the only mediator between the Copts and the general society to be the Pope of the Copts and the clergy behind him, and the clergy accepted the gift thankfully.
Since the state withdrew from the field of serious social services, it left the space for the general society to fill the gaps with acts of charity and charity of a religious nature, and the ecclesiastical institution presented its project to take care of its children socially, but this project was expanded to include other social services that Christian families could not do, such as religious tourism, musical, theatrical, cinematic and other recreational activities. One of the results of this was that the Internal ties between the Copts were unprecedentedly undermined at a time when social crossings were undermined and what was left was under the estimation and evaluation of the clergy.
At the beginning of the 1980s, a new factor was added, represented by the conflict between the state and the project of political Islam, and attempts to Islamize society as a prerequisite for the renaissance, according to the convictions of some. On the one hand, the conflict led to the religiosity of the public sphere and the change of the vocabulary of daily language and political language, the national struggle turned into a religious jihad and the talk about the majority and minority in the political sphere became based on religious and sectarian grounds.Islamic intellectuals, on the other hand, did not present a clear jurisprudential conception that would clarify their belief in the modern state, citizenship, and full equality. The group's internal ties on the basis of religious identity grew stronger, and the sub-social blocs, led by sectarianism, contracted on themselves to form social black holes.
With the entry of businessmen into the arena, the process of decline of social crossings has increased, especially in light of a climate in which some Muslim and Christian business owners insist on adopting a person's religion asone of the criteria for admission to jobs, even if it is customary, and Christian businessmen have been associated in one way or another with the state and the ecclesiastical institution for several reasons.
As a result of these political and social transformations, the heads of the social crossings through which material and social resources flow between Copts and Muslims became under the control of the state, businessmen and clerics. From the Coptic point of view, the cleric became the one who expressed them, and he reaped the surplus of trust through his religious position (perhaps through his symbolic form, dress, and religious language). Society. On the other hand, the flow of resources through the clergy does not necessarily serve the social and economic needs of the Copts.
Perhaps we need serious research to study the flow of resources in the Coptic network, but here we will only point out that the main concern of the cleric is to ensure that no one leaves the sect not only to another religion, but to another sect. It is logical that the owner of the religious project or the cleric should have an illusional interest, and his concern is his religious sect and his concern is to strengthen it to the highest levels of power. He first realizes that his project ultimately undermines the project of the homeland as the ancestral land of all who live It has the right to share its material and social resources as well. In the sect project, the official institution and its power are at the top of the list of priorities, while the concept of the development of individuals within the social system comes second, if it is any important. In the end, whether the Copts were isolated or isolated, the result is the same, but this isolation does not necessarily mean an increase in the social capital of the Copts, but it is certainly a deterioration of Egypt's social capital.
