Basic Report

  
  
   Following the researches of Bourdieu (1986), Putnam (1993) and Coleman(1995), there have been considerably increasing consequential studies and fieldworkings in abroad and in Korea alike. But until now, it is likely that there's noclearly set and commonly agreed definition on social capital. According to them,social capital relates to the value of social networks, bonding similar people andbridging between diverse people, with reciprocal trust and it serves as a resource thatactors derive from specific social structures and then use to pursue their interests; it iscreated by changes in the relationship among actors (Baker 1990, p. 619).Though existing studies and researches in Korea have suggested that socialcapital has considerable benefits for a range of economic and sociological outcomes,the definition and determinants are variously depending on whether they focus on thesubstance, the sources, or the effects of social capital. So, our research interest startsfrom the appeal of the concept as it integrates social network theory andadministrative culture, and combines a number of ideas including civic tradition, civicparticipation and involvement in the local community, and social cohesion. From thebeginning, the main interest of the research lies in analyzing what the determinantfactors are to influence social capital formation in a local community and how tomeasure them to be tangible.To analyze influential factors and their relation, this research fixed Trust as theaxis of the research object to get understanding of the relationship between Trust andthe other factors like civic involvement, reciprocity, networking activities within a localcommunity. And the local community is categorized into 5 types such as metropolitancities with the local residents of 500,000 up to and middle-sized cities with less than500,000 population, autonomous urban districts within upper-level of metropolitan localgovernment, rural basic and urban-rural local governments. This categorization of localgovernment is based on to the population size and urban and rural boundaries.Anyhow, this research survey focused primarily on the relations an actor maintainswith other actors in a local community, the structure of relations among actors withina collective activities and involvement in local politics, both types of linkages andnetworking tools.The results of the survey on the measuring social capital factors existing withinthe Korean local government community reveal some characteristics in the followings.First of all, the survey identified a wide range of determinants that have been linkedto social capital including history and culture, social structures, family, education,environment, mobility, economics, social class, civil society, consumption, values,networks, associations, political society, institutions, policy, and social norms at variouslevels. Clearly the factors listed here play an important role in determining thecharacteristics of the social capital structure however the causal factors and functionalrelationships are largely unknown. Specifically within Korean local society, the mainactors, especially local people, manifest negative opinions in involving into theongoing issues inside local government, which shows in turn to some degree ofdistrust of local residents to the local government where they live in.In concluding, the research suggest that the concrete ways of enhancing socialcapital boosting social cohesion within local government are to help local actors fosterutmost self-confident capability and organize networked governance operational systemin the community activities. The meaning of the real implementation by way ofgovernance-networked process puts here more emphasis on the local government’sliberal decision-making will than on hierarchical, top-down and unilateral procedures,in exerting their programs for local residents and in inviting them to participate andvoluntarily involve in its affairs directly related to forming social cohesion and trustamong the members of local society.