%A E. Meij
%T The Time and Place of Local Social Life: an Ethnographic Study of Local Social Interactional Mechanisms in Relation to Social Capital Formation
%D 2017
%X Social capital is understood as those features of social relations that harness the capacity to derive benefit for the individual and/or the group that possesses it. In this ethnographic case study of a disadvantaged residential area in Groningen, The Netherlands, dynamics of local social structure and agency in relation to principal preconditions for social capital formation are explored through everyday social interactional mechanisms. In recent years the area was targeted by a social mixing strategy, introducing new renters with a higher socioeconomic status to the area. Results indicate that social interactional mechanisms can be highly ambiguous and sometimes conflicting between and among groups, harming preconditions for social capital such as familiarity and trust, which prevents the socially mixed to socially mingle. Structurally, social mixing potentially amounts to a spatially diluting process of problematized notions of poverty and ‘social deviance’, which calls for a critical re-examination of the aims as well as the consequences of social capital in policy.
%L theses_frw712