Resource Assessment

Introduction

We have identified mapping a community as one of the core tasks undertaken by a community builder. Not unlike someone trying to navigate a city or a forest, it only gets easier once the traveler has a map of the terrain. This makes perfect sense, but how does one map a community? We suggested that community builders should start by identifying the core players in their community. To that end we outlined a set of these core players, such as innovators, institutions, network access points and so on. These named categories attempt to describe their dominant role in the community; this is what they do.

But we rarely do things in the world without any tools or skills or resources of other kinds. I can hardly be a writer without a pen and paper or a computer. I can’t be a pastor without Bibles and a congregation. And I can’t be a community builder without a community and a few skills. So once the core players have been preliminarily identified in the community, the next step is to begin assessing their skills, their resources, and so on. In this way we can get a better picture not only of what they do – their role – but also of their ability to get things done in that role.

Of course in many ways this step of assessing resources is hardly new. Business people of many stripes are quite facile at assessing financial capital holdings. Human resource managers specialize in figuring out what skills people have that may be relevant to their work. Community organizers, in frameworks such as Block and McKnight’s, are skilled at asking community members what gifts they have so that they can be more widely shared. And ambitious professionals are very good at assessing who possesses the necessary social capital to make it further up the career ladder. All of these activities are types of resource assessment, and all are valuable. But can we go one step further?

Historically, and continuing unto this day, there has been a kind of selective myopia, whereby individuals are quite aware of other types of resources and of the fact that they have mutual effects on one another, but nonetheless remain focused on just one of their choosing. (Social scientists have also been guilty of this and attempts to correct it can be found prominently in Bertrand Russell’s work in the 1930s, Gary Becker’s in the 60s, Pierre Bourdieu’s work in the 70s and 80s, and, of course, Robert Putnam’s later work.) What is missing, as far as we can see, is a holistic assessment that encompasses all different forms into one.

Therefore, in this section we present a description of capital/resources which is sufficiently abstract to allow all different types thereof to be placed on one playing field. We describe six different forms of capital and give examples. With this framework we hope that community builders will be able to expand their community maps to include capital. Finally, with this understanding in hand they should be better able to move their community as a whole toward greater health and vibrancy by matching up stores of resources with needs for the same.

What is a resource/form of capital?

Capital, at its most basic, is a store of some kind of power that can be converted to get something done. Understanding the different forms of capital, being able to identify and discuss them, is an essential tool in understanding communities and the dynamics of the groups within them. For this reason, we here provide a brief description of the various forms of capital most relevant to community building. Beyond those described here there are also other forms of non-economic capital, such as religious, state, and moral capital. For the general purpose of creating a framework for community building, these other forms currently seem less important. We should remain open to the possibility, however, that certain social systems (or pure myopia) will make them essential to our future understanding.

Capital – as we’ve said – is the ability to get something done. Capital can come in many forms – skills, connections, know-how, money, tools, votes, etc. In different systems different kinds of capital are important and the rules for exchange between forms of capital varies. It is essential for community builders to understand where capital is located, how it can be exchanged, and where connections can lead to greater use of existing reserves. (synonym: assets, resources)

Six Forms of Capital

Economic capital (EC)

What we normally think of as capital. Until recently capital was primarily used to describe liquid and illiquid stores of economic power. Money, factories, bonds, machinery and so on all constituted stored forms of labor and profit holdings. In many communities economic capital will be of vital importance in getting things done. Money will be used to pay for projects and staff members, illiquid forms of economic capital – buildings, physical resources, and so on – will be used to make many versions of the future a reality.

Human capital (HC)

Human capital encompasses the knowledge and skills a person possesses relevant to accomplishing tasks. Skills can be very general and have wide applicability, such as the ability to read or organize a team, or they can be very specific, such the ability to make crème brûlée. Knowledge can likewise range from the very general to the very specific. Of course it is essential for community builders to learn about the skills and areas of expertise that community members possess, for this in combination with other forms of capital, will always be key to getting anything done. This is the core of what Block and McKnight call “finding the gifts” that people have to offer. It’s clear from them and from numerous other examples that one central dynamic that community builders can facilitate is the use of strengthened social capital – stronger and more numerous connections between community members – in addition to open knowledge about their human capital as a way to find previously underutilized capacity within a community. Maximizing this dynamic, however, requires that the community builder first uncover and make open those stores of human capital.

The flip side of this is that the human capital stores of any one person or institution can be extremely broad. At one level this is wonderful, but only if one knows precisely what needs to be done and therefore what skills and knowledge are needed. Often this is not the case, and thus human capital that could be useful remains hidden. In general, for the community builder, this means that one should maintain a very open ear for skills and expertise. You may not think that something is relevant or useful, but you never know.

Social capital (SoC)

Social capital is the value of social relations between persons, colloquially referred to as “connections”. Like economic capital, social capital is a store of power that can be called upon to achieve certain ends and which operates according to certain local rules of exchange. For example, the social capital between a child and a parent is usually very high and can be exchanged for all sorts of assistance, from moving apartments to buying a new car. Even in much weaker examples of social capital it has been demonstrated that individuals are much more willing to help people that they know through some social connection than those they don’t know at all (see Granovetter 1973). But, again, the stores of social capital and the rules of market exchange vary highly from one group to another. For this reason, fostering healthy, vibrant communities will be easier if stakeholders have a good grasp on the local conditions of social capital in their community.

Of course social capital has come into the spotlight recently because people are increasingly realizing the central role it plays in the markets of social systems. In other words, it’s important. But, in contrast to economic capital for which the market provides a relatively clear value and human capital for which one can often determine the level of skill in an area, social capital is very hard to measure. In addition, the market for it is, one could say, explicitly hidden. That is to say, although we all acknowledge its importance, we also all agree not to talk about it directly. Together these two facts – difficulty in measurement and the code of silence – make evaluating social capital a challenge. Nonetheless, social capital is used to get a great deal done in all communities, and the deeper the community builder’s understanding, the more effective they will be.

Symbolic capital (SyC)

Symbolic capital is the ability to affect discourse. It is the power of a symbol to get something done and the power of certain people and organizations to create such symbols. The largest concentrated holdings of symbolic capital have traditionally been in the hands of governments, media organizations, “taste makers”, religious leaders and other people and institutions with extensive access to mass discourse and high levels of trust. In our activity, symbolic capital will be essential in creating common frameworks and is one of the forms of capital which media organizations still possess. More specifically, their holdings of symbolic capital allow them to make something an issue which heretofore had gone unnoticed. The power to “shape the debate” can be very powerful in building community.

It should also be noted that concentrated symbolic capital is often localized within certain fields of discourse. For instance, one news outlet may have great influence among one subgroup of a community and almost none in another. Think of Fox News, for instance. Therefore the community builder needs to be sensitive to both the stores of social capital but also the fields in which they have influence.

Cultural capital (CC)

Cultural capital refers to the set of ingrained skills and dispositions that a person possesses which allow them to navigate certain cultural fields. In a sense these are a combination of human capital – skills regarding how to behave in certain situations, how to dress, how to speak, bodily comportment, dining skills, rules of grammar and pronunciation, etc. – and knowledge about the practices, customs, and reference works within a given cultural field. What makes them unique is that they are generally not acknowledged as skills or knowledge as such, but recognized simply as “familiarity” with a social sphere. In reality, cultural capital can be essential in navigating a community, for it is precisely these skills and this knowledge that are used to define an insider, and are therefore needed to build trusting relationships.

Spiritual capital (SpC)

Spiritual capital is the ability of a person or place to put people in deeper touch with the spiritual level of reality. Spiritual reality can be understood in a number of different ways – many of which seem either obscure or incompatible with one another – but the essence of it is quite clear. Stephen Covey, who speaks of spiritual intelligence, boils it down to three characteristics: integrity, meaning, and voice. Integrity is knowing one’s deepest values and remaining true to them. Meaning refers to understanding how all of one’s actions contribute toward a worthwhile future. Voice, finally, is about understanding one’s individual gifts and aligning one’s work with them. People and places who are conducive to this understanding of spirituality are usually respected and admired, but their value is often overlooked.

In fact such people and places can be highly effective in a number of roles, and their seems to be a growing awareness of this missing dimension in leadership and community work, at the very least. Above all they are unusually effective in creating an atmosphere of trust and openness – both with individuals and groups – that can allow them to:

• uncover their own deepest intentions,
• move as a group toward authentic shared purpose
• give others the courage to live in alignment with their values, and
• resolve unyielding conflicts both in individuals and groups.

At the most basic level spiritual capital is a powerful resource for getting things done for the simple reason that people find amazing internal motivation and maximum effectiveness when they are engaged in what they most deeply care about. You want bad performance – give someone a task they don’t want to do. You want excellence – let them play their favorite game. Spiritual capital moves people and groups beyond sticks and carrots. They do because that is who they truly are.

The potential for self-sabotage: a word of warning about this form of thinking.
Talking about the various forms of capital and the market for them, the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu – who has arguably done the most to expand thinking in this area – has noted an important paradox. Namely, while non-economic forms of capital do have very real functions in the market, it is an almost unbreakable rule that one mustn’t explicitly express it.

“No one is really unaware of the logic of exchange (it surfaces constantly in explicit form, when for example someone wonders whether a present will be judged sufficient), but no one fails to comply with the rule of the game, which is to act as if one did not know the rule. We might coin the term common miscognition to designate this game in which everyone knows – and does not want to know – that everyone knows – and does not want to know – the true nature of the exchange. (2000: 192)”

The consequence of this simple fact about the non-economic forms of capital is that their free exchange, and the very real exchange of value that that entails, is fundamentally based on a collective game of make-believe in which we deny the obvious fact that they have real value. To do otherwise spoils the game and the possibility for future exchange. For instance, if I want to make a good impression on someone who I know has the necessary social capital to get me a job, I very clearly cannot offer an explicit exchange: I’ll laugh at your jokes and tell you how much I like your tie, if you’ll hook me up with said person. The exchange only works if we all pretend that it wasn’t happening at all.

This has very important repercussions for community builders. It means that they must diligently pursue their understanding of these resource stocks and of how the market for non-economic forms of capital function in their particular community. But they must choose very carefully the circles in which they expose this thinking or talk about it openly, for fear of self-sabotage. At its simplest: do it, but don’t talk about it.

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