Social Capital and Social Transformation in Russia

Zusammenfassung

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Social capital is a valuable resource that can be raised and destroyed, and its level in society is path dependent and related to society's "collective memory" of experience with power structures. Social capital is found both on the network as well as society levels, and a relation between these exists. Fragmented societies with strong, exclusive network ties among the segments and clear-cut dual (inner and outer) moralities often lack strong inherent social capital. Informal norms of action superimpose formal ones and make the functioning of newly implemented institutions dysfunctional. They change very slowly. Russia seems to have performed the transition to a market economy but on at market and civil society, because social capital on the societal level is rather weak, while it has remained rather strong on the personal network level. The structure of social space of personal relations is opposed to the structure of societal space as solidary civil "community."

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Auszug

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Social Capital and Social Transformation in Russia

Introduction

Market societies of Western Europe, their rationally acting institutions and organizations, and the politico-economic framework in which they can function efficiently emerged in a process of longue durée (Braudel) of economic and social change and modernization (Goetze 1997). Modernization theory assumed that this historical process was a blueprint, occurring with a time lag in non-Western societies, which would eventually catch up with the West. With the collapse of the planned economies of Eastern Europe it was assumed that a short-term institutional systemic change - a transition - would lead the former socialist societies back to Europe (Olson 1995; Poznanski 1995; Zloch-Christy 1998). Based on a development strategy of structural adjustment, institutions should be implemented according to the Western example, constituting the basis for a self-adjusting market. The keywords here are the model-transfer concept and designer capitalism (Kollmorgen/Schrader 2003)

Such an orthodox perspective of transformation implies a relatively short and difficult transitional period of structural adjustment (topics such as 'shock therapy' were applied), followed by incorporation into the world market and positive effects for economy and society. The author of this paper takes a different stance. He argues that transformation is not a short-term project of transition, but a long-term process of modernization. This process in Eastern Europe has certain unique characteristics, which engendered a particular low-trust culture in the public realm as opposed to a high-trust culture in the private realm. The long-term nature of transformation is closely related to slow change in patterns of action, attitudes and opinions, and norms and values, which engender institutions and their functioning.

In the first part of this paper I shall argue in favour of a transformation research that considers transformation as path dependent from the specific, socio-structurally embedded typical patterns of meaning, action and behaviour that emerged during, if not even before, the Socia...

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