Title:	Sociability, Social Capital, and Community Development
Authors:	Ian Gillespie Cook • Jamie P. Halsall Paresh Wankhade
Keywords:	Sociability
Issue Date:	2015
Publisher:	Springer
Description:	In these early years of the twenty-first century, it can often seem that across the globe we are living in a world of crisis. When we began this book, there were bombings at the end of the Boston Marathon of 2013, an army coup in Egypt that overthrew the first democratically elected government, an armed conflict in Syria, the President of North Korea made bellicose threats against South Korea and the USA, and the shrinking of the Arctic ice sheet that was implicated in the extreme winter weather that the UK has faced in 2012–2013. ‘The war on terror’, the age of austerity, global warming and consequent climatic instability, disparities in wealth, and other issues add to the sense that social institutions are unable to cope with the major problems that the world faces. It is certainly the case, on the one hand, that states around the world are under enormous fiscal pressure, in large part brought about by the banking failures of 2008, which heralded the end of a long period of conspicuous consumption and an era of deregulation. On the other hand, the private sector, too, is under pressure, losing once-certain markets to new competitors, and ‘fat cat’ directors facing angry shareholders and governments seeking to curb their excess salaries and the bonus culture of those in charge of large corporations. Certainly at the moment there is much to be concerned about. However, while we do not seek to minimize the threats which humanity currently has to face, even in a time of crisis we feel that there is much about which to be optimistic. In this, we echo Bill Gates in his 2013 Reith Lecture to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), who also took an optimistic view of the world. Optimism lies in the following situations. People across the world, for example, are living longer and more productive lives than in the past. Most countries now having increased longevity and pass the 7% level at which they can be said to have an aging society, as Cook and Halsall (2011), for example, noted. Further, despite or even because of the competitiveness that is a key feature of capitalist society, ‘sociability’ is a concept that has considerable currency in contemporary society. This is evidenced by the role of the voluntary sector, for instance, and the way in which community groups are increasingly willing and able to fill the gap between the private sector provision on the one hand, and the public sector provision on the other (Andrews 2012; Cusack 1999). There is a palpable growth in ‘social capital’ that is being developed by social entrepreneurs who offer a ‘Third Way’ to capitalism on the one hand or the state on the other. In this book, we draw upon our diverse and rich experience of different societies in order to explore these concepts and discuss the extent to which this sense of optimism is indeed appropriate for today and ‘our’ tomorrow.
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/53747
ISBN:	978-3-319-11484-2
Appears in Collections:	Population Studies

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