Neighborhood Sense of Community and Social Capital

Abstract

(from the chapter) Examines the sense of community (SOC) within neighborhoods and the dimensions of social capital (SC). We have four main goals for this chapter. One is to inform researchers and program planners in community development, urban policy, and social services that many concepts thoroughly studied by community psychologists (sense of community, collective efficacy/empowerment, citizen participation, neighboring) are part of SC. Our second goal is to introduce more community psychologists to SC. Third, to both audiences, we expect to show that residential neighborhood SOC is at least as strongly related to other SC dimensions as are demographics and other widely studied community-focused cognitions (place attachment, community satisfaction, community confidence, and communitarianism--or community values). In addition to those interdisciplinary aims, our fourth goal is to explore SOC and its relationships to SC using multi-level analysis. The relationship between SOC and SC--whether they operate together, separately, or nested one within the other--and on what level(s) they operate are critical to our understanding of both concepts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).