10: Enhancing rural prosperity through social capital

Abstract

The link between social capital and economic development has received much attention in recent decades. While economic development is proven to have positive effects on social inclusion and quality of life, this happens mostly at the expense of environmental sustainability. Research should thus not only focus on the link between social capital and economic development but also prosperity, understood as ecological sustainability, social inclusion, and quality of life at large. Typically, the term prosperity has been associated almost exclusively with economic growth, but evidence has shown that this could only be achieved at the expense of environmental sustainability and that GDP as an indicator falls short in accounting for the general well-being of all humans. Prosperity should include factors such as social cohesion and engagement, achieved through cooperation and trust, environmental sustainability, and knowledge, which increases the ability people have to increase their resilience, and quality of life. All these factors are supported by, powered by, and geared towards social capital, which is one of the key building blocks of the “social web”. With our contribution, we aim at expanding the focus from the link of social capital and economic development to the impact of social capital on prosperity. We do so by providing theoretical and practical information about eight illustrative case studies from Austria, Portugal, Spain and Türkiye that serve as best practice examples for increasing the prosperity of rural regions through the building of social capital. The empirical analysis of these best practice examples shows that in all cases, social, economic, and environmental sustainability are core elements. Thus, future research must look beyond the impact of social capital on economic development, by integrating indicators that show if social capital is a valuable tool to reach this new form of prosperity, incorporating all three dimensions of sustainability.