Linking Indigenous Social Capital to a Global Economy

elimination of patronage and ward-based politics also eliminated the source of selective
incentives that the immigrant political entrepreneurs had used to create bridging ties. ³⁸

On a broader level, the political struggle over institutional arrangements that will favor
the social capital of one group vis-à-vis another is very much connected to what appears to be
purely marketplace institutional issues. Joseph Stiglitz's critique of the IMF and World Bank
policies (especially the former) toward emerging economies contains considerable anecdotal
information on the insensitivity of the Western-trained economists about ways that their policy
recommendations would impact on the social fabric of the countries they were supposedly trying
to help. "Shock therapy" policies that were supposed to generate open markets, for example,
often reduced the competitiveness of a social capital relationship, grounded on kinship and
village, that provided the social basis for traditional economic organization in many of these
countries. Moreover, using the rationale of "opening up markets" to eliminate controls on
criminal elements, the IMF planners often provided a fertile ground for Mafia gangs that had
considerable social capital advantages over ordinary citizens. ³⁹

Survey Research & Building Indigenous Social Capital

In this section we will examine the role of survey research in identifying ways to more
effectively utilize indigenous social capital in linking traditional communities to the global
economy. Examples from the Russian Village surveys of household adaptations to post-Soviet
reforms and a social network analysis of the role of Tribal Colleges and Universities in the
development of social capital on Indian Reservations in the United States will be used as
illustrations.

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