Linking Indigenous Social Capital to a Global Economy

however, is that social incentives are important mainly only in the small group, and play
a role in the large group only when the large group is a federation of smaller groups.²⁷

The federal group strategy is especially relevant to our concern with identifying ways of
building bridging social capital when a group's dominant social capital is a highly exclusive
bonding type. Examples of its successful development can be found in the development of
highly successful ethnic enterprises in which the basic moral economy of the household,²⁸ a type
of bonding social capital, is linked to other households through quasi-kin connections that create
bridging bonds of trust. This is found, for example, in the rotating credit associations that
provided the capital for the development of small business enterprises in a variety of ethnic
communities.²⁹ Japanese immigrants in California used a federal strategy, based on quasi-kin
relations to develop an integrated system of production, storage and marketing in the Central
Valley.³⁰

Path Alternatives to Building Bridging Social Ties

Mark Granovetter's often cited article, "The Strength of Weak Ties,"³¹ argues that less
intense (i. e., "weak") relationships with others is a source of strength because they provide
access to new information or other kinds of resources that are unavailable to those who are
locked into highly dense self-contained networks. One of the central findings of the research
reported in the article was that highly familistic, strong bonding tie groups, like the Italian
Villagers in the North End of Boston were politically ineffective because they lacked weak
bridging ties with which to form coalitions among themselves.

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