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Resumen
El tema de “la sociedad civil” en Venezuela cobra, cada día, mayor repercusión en los medios de comunicación y en el debate político, a tal punto que el término es de uso permanente en el espacio mediático venezolano. La participación política de actores de la sociedad civil, y su intervención en lo público, se hace desde lo mediático, pasando a ser los medios y estrategias de comunicación un espacio desde donde se construye la acción política, y no solamente un recurso para fortalecerla. Este fenómeno coloca en debate aspectos como representación y ciudadanía, asimismo interpela sobre la construcción del espacio público y el papel del Estado.

What business entrepreneurs are to the economy, social entrepreneurs are to social change. They are, writes David Bornstein, the driven, creative individuals who question the status quo, exploit new opportunities, refuse to give up--and remake the world for the better.

How to Change the World tells the fascinating stories of these remarkable individuals--many in the United States, others in countries from Brazil to Hungary--providing an In Search of Excellence for the social sector. In America, one man, J.B. Schramm, has helped thousands of low-income high school students get into college. In South Africa, one woman, Veronica Khosa, developed a home-based care model for AIDS patients that changed government health policy. In Brazil, Fabio Rosa helped bring electricity to hundreds of thousands of remote rural residents. Another American, James Grant, is credited with saving 25 million lives by leading and "marketing" a global campaign for immunization. Yet another, Bill Drayton, created a pioneering foundation, Ashoka, that has funded and supported these social entrepreneurs and over a thousand like them, leveraging the power of their ideas across the globe.

These extraordinary stories highlight a massive transformation that is going largely unreported by the media: Around the world, the fastest-growing segment of society is the nonprofit sector, as millions of ordinary people--social entrepreneurs--are increasingly stepping in to solve the problems where governments and bureaucracies have failed. How to Change the World shows, as its title suggests, that with determination and innovation, even a single person can make a surprising difference. For anyone seeking to make a positive mark on the world, this will be both an inspiring read and an invaluable handbook. It will change the way you see the world.

Putnam's concept of social capital has three components: moral obligations and norms, social values (especially trust) and social networks (especially voluntary associations).

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Bourdieu’s concept is connected with his
theoretical ideas on class. He identifies three dimensions of capital each with its own relationship to class: economic, cultural and social capital. These three resources become socially effective, and their ownership is legitimized through the mediation
of symbolic capital (see p. 13). Bourdieu’s concept of social capital puts the emphasis on conflicts and the power function (social relations that increase the ability of an actor to advance her/his interests). Social positions and the division of economic,
cultural and social resources in general are legitimized with the help of symbolic capital. From the Bourdieuan perspective, social capital becomes a resource in the social struggles that are carried out in different social arenas or fields.

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Putnam: "In the North [of Italy] people were citizens, in the South [of Italy] they were subjects"
(op.cit. 121).

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When we speak about trust in modern societies we speak about "generalized trust". Individual actors do something for the general good not because they know other interactors but because they trust that their own action will be "rewarded" via the positive development of communal relations (see Newton 1999, 8-).

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Choices in micro-level interactions produce, first, mutual reciprocity and trust; and second, as a nonintended
consequence of these choices, trust on a higher (macro) level, and thereby
integrative values (or their absence) (cf. Coleman 1988). This is the basis of social consensus.

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The circle is ready: trust creates reciprocity and voluntary associations, reciprocity and associations strengthen and produce trust (see Putnam 1993, 163-185). The more social capital is
used, the more it grows (Coleman 1988). The forms of social capital are selfreinforcing and cumulative by natu

Abstract

Since the debate about the importance of social capital and civil society for the quality of democracy began, Scandinavia has caused problems. Observers have been bewildered by an allegedly paradoxical coexistence of a wealth of social capital and extensive welfare-state arrangements.
Some theorize that large welfare states make engagement in voluntary associations unnecessary, making the production of social capital more difficult. However, empirical research shows Scandinavia to have comparatively high levels of social capital. To solve this paradox, the authors address how the causal mechanism between variation in the design of welfare-state institutions and social capitalworks. The empirical analysis, based on Swedish survey data, suggests that the specific design of welfare-state policies matters for the production of social capital. Contacts with universal welfare-state institutions tend to increase social trust, whereas experiences with needs-testing social programs undermine it. The policy implication is that governments, by designing welfare-state institutions, can invest in social capital.

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