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 Information on a publication and research |
| autor> Zdenka Vajdová
(zdenka.vajdova@soc.cas.cz)
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Socioweb 07-08/2011, rubrika Teorie pro všechny
Zich, František, editor, 2010. ‘Sociální potenciál v sociologické reflexi. Sociální potenciál starého průmyslového regionu – případ Mostecka.’ (Social Potential in Sociological Reflection: The Social Potential of an Old Industrial Region – the Case of the Most Region) Acta Universitatis Purkynianae 162, Studia Sociologica, Ústí nad Labem: UJEP
In 2008–2010 a research project was conducted at the Faculty of Social and Economic Studies at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem. The project was titled ‘The State and Activation of the Social Potential of Old Industrial Regions’ and it was supported by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, and the project’s principal investigator was František Zich, currently also the editor of the majority of publications that have emerged out of the project. The most important such publication is an edited monograph, which is the subject of this text. Both the project and the publication are noteworthy for the findings resulting from the analytical stage of the project and for the innovative conceptual approach used. It compares the old industrial region of Most, specifically the districts of Most and Chomutov, to the South Bohemian region of Tábor, specifically the districts of Písek and Tábor. The data for the research are drawn from a questionnaire survey conducted among the populations of these two regions.
The innovative conceptual approach applied in the project was developed out of the project investigators’ critical reflections on the concept of ‘social capital’ and a comparison of empirical findings and social capital. They concluded that it is necessary to distinguish between possibility and the fulfilment of possibility: potential and capital. Here I shall quote from the first, theoretical chapter of the publication (p. 18), which substantiates the distinction and defines these two concepts: ‘Capital is associated with action, potential is the precondition for its realisation. Making this distinction between potential and capital we can say that it applies to all forms of capital, i.e. every form of capital, human, cultural, economic, regional, and so on, has its potential (in this sense each potential is broader than capital). Potential and capital are in a complementary relationship.’ The concept of social capital can take as many different forms as there are ambitions lodged in it. The distinction between potential and capital reveals an effort to give more specific use to the concept. I believe, alongside others for whom the concept of social capital represented the promise of surmounting the dilemma of individual vs. society, that choosing the term ‘social capital’ for the social phenomenon it is supposed to represent was not a good choice. I am not sure that the distinction between possibility and its fulfilment, potential and social capital, is a starting point.
The results of the research are presented in several chapters. Social potential and its related aspects – social networks, trust, social responsibility, and solidarity – are the subject of two chapters. The issue of social work, understood as institutionally providing for socially deprived individuals, is the subject of the next chapter. Space is devoted to the problem of job opportunities and employment in the North Bohemian region. The final subject in the book is the innovative behaviour of populations and institutions in both of the studied regions.
The publication certainly presents interesting findings based on good empirical research and the provocative use of the concept of social capital in the interpretations warrants attention. However, I cannot help but recall another publication, Petr Pavlínek’s doctoral study, which, using the example and thorough knowledge of the old industrial region of the district of Most, attempted to interpret the complex changes that occurred in Central Europe after 1990. Pavlínek’s book (Pavlínek, P., 1997. Economic Restructuring and Local Environmental Management in the Czech Republic. New York, The Edwin Mellen Press) perhaps ought not to have been absent from the list of references, because there are not after all too many works focusing on the Most region.
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