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Social Capital and Health

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Medical Sociology on the Move

Abstract

“The real nature of man is the totality of social relations” (Marx 1963: 83). All individuals dwell in a network of social relationships. Their health conditions can be contingent on structural attributes of their network contexts. Since Durkheim’s classic study on suicide ([1897] 1951), there has been a long research tradition on diverse aspects of social relationships and health in sociology and other social sciences (for reviews see Berkman et al. 2000; House et al. 1988; Pescosolido and Levy 2002; Smith and Christakis 2008; Song et al. 2011; Umberson and Montez 2010). In the last two decades social capital has grown into one of the most popular but controversial relationship-based theoretical tools in the multidisciplinary health literature.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The division of schools is controversial. For example, Adam and Rončević (2003) distinguish three schools: Bourdieu’s approach, Lin’s utilitarian network-based approach, and the normative approach of Coleman and Putnam. Moore et al. (2005) discern two schools: the network approach of Coleman and Bourdieu, and the communitarian approach of Putnam. Kawachi et al. (2008) seem to classify two approaches: the social cohesion school of Coleman and Putnam, and the network school of Bourdieu and Lin.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Center for Medicine, Health, and Society, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

    Lijun Song

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    William C. Cockerham

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Song, L. (2013). Social Capital and Health. In: Cockerham, W. (eds) Medical Sociology on the Move. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6193-3_12

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