Social capital and social identity: trust and conflict

Abstract

This chapter applies social identity analysis to social capital theory in order to explain trust and conflict in social networks. It reformulates Putnam's bridging-bonding social capital distinction in terms of the relational social identities-categorical social identities distinction, and represents individuals as socially embedded by explaining them in social identity terms. The goal of the argument is to show how an individual-social group dynamic which social identity theory examines interacts with a conflict-trust dynamic which social capital theory examines. Different types of individual motivation are linked to different social capital-social identity forms. Social group conflict is explained in connection with social psychology's stigma identity-threat model. Individual response to identity conflict is explained in terms of cognitive dissonance reduction.