Kapitał społeczny i ludzki jako niematerialny zasób rozwoju lokalnego w świetle badań ankietowych mieszkańców wsi województwa pomorskiego

Abstract

The article is to complement data on territorially diversified social and human capital in rural areas. The study concentrated on rural areas of Pomorskie Province, broken down by suburban and other rural communes, and broken down by historical regions. The subject of the study is human and social capital. The term ‘human capital’ is understood as a collection of knowledge, skills and competencies of given persons, used for the purpose of economic activity. Social capital, on the other hand, is the ability of cooperative interrelations between people in a group or organisation to achieve common benefits. Both types of capital are significant, intangible resources necessary for the local development. The article focuses on selected aspects of both types of capital which are neglected in most studies relying on secondary data, due to measurement difficulties. Therefore, primary data was used from polls conducted on a group of 7,100 individuals (including 2,300 rural residents). The analysis covered the following issues: the value of life, trusting people and institutions, identification and relation with the work place, attitude towards work. The results consisted in three categories of conclusions. Firstly, as indicated by the most common indicators of social activity and entrepreneurship, the analysed characteristics do not differ between the city inhabitants and those in rural areas. Data on entrepreneurship and social activeness are easily accessible at every level of spatial integration and are commonly applied. Nevertheless, they should be interpreted with greater caution as the value of these indicators results directly from defined features of particular individuals and their community constituting human and social capital. The individuals’ and communities’ environment has a considerable impact on their functioning in society. On the other hand, polls indicate that they also cannot be interpreted directly. Smaller differences in issues meaningful for the development of social and human capital result partially from the way in which they are formulated in the social context. The reference framework is rather the situation of people in the closer and further environment than abstract indicators. This leads to flattening the spectrum of formulated assessments. Secondly, a lower level of studied features was generally not observed in rural suburbs with the exception of its components which are directly dependent on the agglomeration economies. Thirdly, in terms of historical regions, responses formulated by the respondents of the western part of the Province showed certain distinctive features. However, it seems that this might be attributed to the transition crises rather than long-term conditions.