Well-being in Society

Motivation

Social media are touted as “a good thing” in that they bring people together, promote sharing, and generally provide convenient means of facilitating online interaction. They are thus considered a public benefit that fosters well-being. Numerous scholarly studies investigating the effects of their systems on people’s lives appear largely to support this claim. And while a substantial body of literature has come from research teams employed by Big Tech companies like Meta (formerly Facebook), the general tone among the wider academic community seems to resonate similarly.

Yet it has been readily apparent for a long time — to anyone with common sense — that these systems have also fostered many ills such as increased social divisiveness, reduced cognitive functioning, addiction and general restlessness. So why have the evaluations been so lop-sided?

Social Capital

The evaluation of social media with respect to well-being is often expressed in terms of social capital. Having studied this for a few years now, I think we need to be asking more keenly the following questions.

• Where does this term come from?
• What does or did it really mean to those who originated it?
• What were the contexts in which the term was applied? What made the term valid?
• Is it valid and helpful to apply it the present contexts with particular attention to online engagement?
• Are more recent uses and application of the term in conformance with the original meaning of the term? If not, what are these new senses and are they more or less helpful?

The answer to the first part would appear to be straightforward because it is very frequently and widely quoted definition of social capital as:

the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalised relationships of mutual acquaintance or recognition – or in other words, to membership in a group…

Pierre Bourdieu (1986) The Forms of Capital, page 21, or page 247 in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (Richardson JG, editor)

But Bourdieu developed his ideas and theories in French and it was typically several years before they appeared in English. Thus, le capital social had been defined in 1980:

Le capital social est l’ensemble des ressources actuelles ou potentielles qui sont liées à la possession d’un réseau durable de relations plus ou moins institutionnalisées d’interconnaissance et d’inter-reconnaissance, ou, en d’autres termes, à l’appartenance à un groupe …

Pierre Bourdieu (1980) Le capital social: notes provisoires (Social Capital: Provisional Notes), which appeared in Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales. 1980; 31(1): pp. 2–3.

But what was the background context in which Bourdieu originated these theories? It was his initial fieldwork in Algeria in the late 1950s that proved pivotal and one of the key methods his used to help his reflexive approach (which, seems largely lost in SNS studies), is the deliberate use of photography. By spending time with people and examining closely the images he took of them going about their daily lives he could discern a great deal about the society and culture. The metrics-laden methods used to analyze online social networking sites are very shallow in comparison.

One of the main observations Bourdieu made was that colonisation had uprooted people socially and culturally. I’d argue that the Internet, in providing a very lean environment in which to interact is a phenomenon that uproots us all from our cultural backgrounds. Bourdieu talked a lot about le déracinement (uprooting) of peoples in Algeria.

Blog post, 15 January 2022: Bourdieu and Social Capital: Methodological Challenges.

It was also bound up with the term le capital culturel (cultural capital), which is not so prevalent in these analyses, though it has risen to prominence in mainstream education since being included in Ofsted’s inspection framework:

32. As part of making the judgement about quality of education, inspectors will consider the extent to which schools are equipping pupils with the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life. Ofsted’s understanding of this knowledge and cultural capital matches the understanding set out in the aims of the national curriculum. [i.e.,] It is the essential knowledge that pupils need to be educated citizens, introducing them to the best that has been thought and said, and helping to engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement.

School Inspection Update: Education Inspection Framework, Ofsted, January 2019

The last sentence is quoted from the statutory guidance on the National curriculum in England: framework for key stages 1 to 4.

I’ve highlighted in bold the basic rationale. Whilst ‘success in life’ is a very broad term and the quote from the national curriculum would appear to support that, there are inevitable suggestions of the ‘knowledge economy’, from which cultural capital may be seen as instrumental for economic capital. Indeed, if we look at some commentarial literature, we see discussions around how the transmission of culture from generation to generation among the well-to-do gives their offspring a certain advantage that leads to positions of power and wealth. The reflection on culture as a good in and of itself can get neglected.

Hence, the achievement of material outcomes is implicitly the key driver for well-being. Yet, being replete in economic capital merely provides assurance of not suffering deprivation and doesn’t provide assurance of well-being, as made abundantly clear in Avner Offer’s The Challenge of Affluence.

Buddhist capital: meritorious deeds

None of economic, social or cultural capital are guarantees of well-being, but the Buddha taught that happiness can surely follow from good deeds, which generate their own store of capital called merit (Pali: puñña). The generation of such capital arises through wholesome actions.

There is in fact a whole body of teachings on this kind of capital in the context of social relationships, which is the subject of research for the Sigala project.

This page was published on 12 June 2022 and last updated on February 12, 2024 .