Educate~ (Dec 2006)
Accessing and activating social capital resources in Buffalo's public high schools
Abstract
The contents of this paper were presented by the author in June 2006 at the University of Cambridge’s 3rd Annual Postgraduate Symposium in Education. The paper summarises and presents conclusions from a dissertation completed shortly thereafter. The paper first examines the distribution of social capital both across and within a representative sample of six public high schools in Buffalo, New York, an industrial city that has suffered massive urban decline and is characterised by high rates of social dislocation. Though SPSS analyses indicate social capital’s positive relationship to academic achievement, individual levels of social capital are shown to be mediated most prominently by socio-economic status and, the higher a student’s household income, the greater their social capital resources tend to be. While quantitative analysis suggests that some actors are constrained in their access to social capital (based especially on socio-economic status) as a result of structural forces, it does not conclude that they are controlled by them. Many disadvantaged students make use of social capital resources and achieve ‘against the odds’. Qualitative techniques explore the processes behind Buffalo students’ access to, and activation of, social capital resources. These processes are revealed to vary according to students’ school and social contexts.
