Since one and a half week or so a student from the University of Concepcion in Chile, Diego Solsona, has been with us — my colleague Karen Lucas and myself — at the Transport Studies Unit. Diego will be with us for three months in the context of the project ‘Transport and Social Exclusion: New Directions and National Comparisons’ (Transendance), in which we collaborate with the University of Concepcion, Chile (Juan-Antonio Carrasco) and Ghent University, Belgium (Tijs Neutens) and which is financed by the Marie Curie International Research Exchange Scheme under the Seventh Framework Programme of the EU.

Diego is the first student to come to us and he is working on a literature review about the concept of social capital. He is currently focusing on the question how social capital is conceptualised, understood and defined across a range of disciplines, including geography, social, public health and urban studies. The idea behind this exercise is that the concept is used (and abused?) in a wide variety of ways, and that this has made the concept even more fuzzy and elusive — in much the same way as has happened with wellbeing. It may seem, then, that people are talking about one and the same thing but in practice are talking about a range of different things. This obviously has significant ramifications for researchers interested in mobilities and transport who want to understand who mobility is related to social capital. The overarching goal of the work Diego is currently undertaking, therefore, is to arrive to at:

• A robust definition or set of definitions of social capital (which goes beyond the obvious ones propounded by Bourdieu, Coleman and Putnam); and
• A deeper understanding of, and a series of hypotheses regarding, how social capital is related to the everyday mobility of people across geographical space.

After just a week’s work we already see some interesting patterns in how the concept of social capital is used and developed within human geography. I am sure Diego’s work will result in many very interesting insights and I will report on these on this blog in due course.