Social Capital and Political Culture

Among the most successful recent efforts at political engagement among low-income Americans have been those led by church-based community organizations (CCOs). This article discusses the strengths and limitations of Putnam's social capital framework for understanding the CCO success. A brief case study of community organizing among low-income, ethnically diverse residents of Oakland, California, shows how participants build a culture of political engagement. Three years of participant observation in Oakland and 65 interviews there and in 5 other U.S. cities generated the primary data. The article argues that social capital, as conceptualized by Putnam, contributes substantially toward explaining how CCOs project power into the political arena. However, understanding the success requires broader insight into political capacity. Attention must be paid to a “second face of culture”: shared values, symbol systems, and assumptions about the world. Here, political and religious culture cannot be reduced to social capital.