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Brightening the dark side of “linking social capital”? Negotiating conflicting visions of post-Morakot reconstruction in Taiwan

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Abstract

Elite domination is recognized as a significant downside of “linking social capital,” but its remedies are under-theorized and scarcely documented. Addressing this gap, we argue that bonding or bridging ties characterized by strong reflexivity, awareness of the state’s symbolic violence, and rich cultural resources for cross-fertilization serve as countervailing mechanisms against unresponsive linking ties. If bonding and bridging ties lack these characteristics, even when those ties are numerous, they are unlikely to challenge unresponsive linking ties. Our theoretical argument is substantiated through a three-village comparison in Taiwan during the post-Typhoon Morakot reconstruction period, where linking ties among most disaster areas, state agencies, and large NGOs were deployed to promote elite agendas. Based on forty-five in-depth interviews, our findings suggest that in Namaxia, where all three features identified in our framework were absent in bonding and bridging ties, grassroots resistance against unresponsive linking ties largely failed. In Jialan, bonding networks displayed strong social reflexivity, but neither bonding nor bridging ties cultivated awareness of the state’s symbolic violence or cultural resources for cross-fertilization. The village only partially succeeded in challenging unresponsive linking ties. In Ali, where local bonding and bridging networks developed all three features mentioned above, the village successfully transformed unresponsive linking ties. The conceptual delinking of network homogeneity/heterogeneity and exclusivity/inclusivity in this study bears broader implications for social capital theories.

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Notes

  1. As we mentioned earlier, the downside of bridging social capital is under-addressed in the existing literature. But some studies have begun to document this aspect of bridging social capital. Vervisch (2011, p. 32) examines a project of livestock credit rotation in Burundi, which was designed to “unite and reconcile different groups of people.” Due to various factors, this well-intentioned project failed. Instead of nurturing inclusive bridging ties, the project ended up brewing ethnic tensions within the “solidarity chain.” Although not a key concern for Vervisch’s (2011) study, this observation urges us to distinguish better the absence of bridging ties (e.g., no inter-ethnic networks) from its dark side (e.g., inter-ethnic networks featuring infighting).

  2. Bourdieu’s discussion of reflexivity focuses on individuals rather than groups or networks. For the dominated, reflexivity may be triggered by crises that disrupt the “immediate fit between the subjective structures and the objective structures” (Bourdieu 1977: 168–169). Bourdieu’s discussion of reflexivity as a sustained practice centers on intellectual examinations of biased assumptions in knowledge systems, such as his own project of reflexive sociology (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992).

  3. Recently, scholars have debated the political implications of the omnivore. As Wright (2019) has suggested, “If the early claims for the omnivore positioned it as a harbinger for new forms of tolerance (Erickson 1996), more recent reflections are as likely to imagine it as emblematic of new forms of distinction” (Wright 2019, p. 209). In temporarily bracketing this important debate, our key point is that omnivorous tastes and knowledges facilitate social brokerage, whether it enhances the distinction of its possessors or not.

  4. In 2018, based on Chen’s research team’s efforts in Ali and other tribes, Chen’s university was granted membership in the International Partnership for the Satoyama Initiative (IPSI).

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the financial support provided by the University of California Pacific Rim Research Program (Grant # 444084). Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Social Science History Association annual meetings, Indiana University-Bloomington, and the Centre of Taiwan Studies at SOAS University of London. We thank Dafydd Fell, Yea-Fen Chen, Andrew Littlejohn, Bin Xu, Tom Beamish, Zeke Baker, Nick Wilson, and other participants at these events for their comments and suggestions.

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Lo, MC., Fan, Y. Brightening the dark side of “linking social capital”? Negotiating conflicting visions of post-Morakot reconstruction in Taiwan. Theor Soc 49, 23–48 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-020-09376-3

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