It is our everyday interactions with each other, then, that form the basis of the term 'social capital'. And these everyday interactions are certainly interesting. But social capital goes beyond mere observation. This grandiose term transforms what was previously the stuff of literature and commentary into the backbone of politics and social policy. This is where Jane Austen leaves the building, and the therapeutic state creeps in. Rebuilding our relationships with one another has become the big political project of our times.
In this sense, an institutional crisis with a deep social cause is collapsed together with an individual activity and the attitude presumed to be behind it. The end of the politics of left and right, and the allegiances that went with that, represented the end of a belief in social change. It represented the acceptance of the market as a way of running society, and a reduction of politics to choices based on issues of personality and management.
The 'Third Way', in this sense, was about transforming politics into best-practice ways of getting society to cope with its problems, on the grounds that those problems could never be solved.
Theories of social capital embody the same sentiment - only applied not to politics, but to individuals. Social capital is a philosophy for people who have given up on changing the world. Its emphasis on individuals and their networks is about getting people to cope with the circumstances in which they find themselves; and political participation, far from being a way of changing these circumstances, is presented as a coping strategy for everyday life.
