Coleman Revisited

The late James Coleman's concept of social capital has been misused in the current debate about the alleged decline of civic and ethical concern in America. Social capital, as Coleman defined it, is a potentiality that inheres in social structures and is not a dependent variable. It is a resource, available in social structures, that facilitates actors who wish to seek certain goals and as such is neither good nor bad. Coleman's concept is a useful and even brilliant analytic tool that has been perverted in the present discussion, thus blinding us to the importance of examining social structural resources for and influences on human behavior. This article, then, uses Coleman's meaning of the term to explore the influence of religious structures on one kind of civic participation in America and finds that such structures affect not only religious projects but secular ones also.