Reading Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone (2000), my lessons are what he refers to a physical capital, a human capital, and a social capital.  You can find a summary page of this influential book too.

The way I see it, a development plan would theoretically  cover these three areas.

Physical capital is a development that produces a physical product.  This can be a bridge, a road, a building, a computer, or anything that takes a physical form of a product.  A society produces a physical capital so that they can use for their benefits.

Human capital is a development that improves the quality of individuals.  Education has been the primary means for this purpose, whether it is formal or informal.  The goal is to offer new knowledge so that an individual can think analytically and creatively when addressing a problem.

Lastly, social capital is a development that enhances the quality of individual’s relationship.  That is, it is a development that focuses on how individuals voluntarily engage each other by embracing the values of respect,  honesty, and trust.

Of these three aspects, Putnam suggests that the social capital has been unintentionally unaddressed.  In the context of the Unites States, he claims that the US’ social capital has been declining the past few decades.

My take, to many problems that our society has, we often act on the assumption of knowledge deficit.  Therefore, education has been among the primary tools of the attempt in solving a problem.  Not only is that knowledge deficit inaccurate, the approach of education has been fraud by its way of assessing on what is knowledge.  The questions can go beyond that too: whose knowledge, who is responsible to assess knowledge and its use.  All of these has taken us away from the actual problem that needs solving, the one that is  identified by a group of people (or community).

Putnam suggests, our community has become less engaged.  The tie of civic groups is weak.  As a result, the desire to solve community problems are not strong enough.  The attempt to address community problems is not the responsibility of individuals.   It is collective responsibility that can be achieved through a strong and mutual civic engagement.  When our we are fully engaged, Putnam believes, and I have been acting under the same belief as well, that we can solve ANY problems.

dh