“Everybody has stories of social capital,” writes history professor Pamela Walker Laird, “whether they call it favoritism, nepotism, office politics, connections, or pull.” Her book is an in-depth look at the power of social capital through time, neatly separating the romantic myth of the “self-made man” from the realities of social networking that have prevailed in recorded history since ancient Greece.
Though the approach is scholarly, with chapters such as “Organizing and Synthesizing Social Capital,” readers will find telling examples of well known titans such as Andrew Carnegie and Bill Gates. The “patron saint of self-made men,” Benjamin Franklin, is also brought down to size: Laird explains how the artisan, entrepreneur, inventor, and diplomat enjoyed and benefited from important social circles, even in his youth.
The dark side of social networks, of course, is their tendency to exclude and marginalize. Pull outlines workplace discrimination and stereotypes that have held back African Americans and other minority groups, but also highlights the positive effects of mentoring. The author concludes with a chapter on “Social Tools for Self-Help,” which posits that class, rather than ethnicity and gender, may become a more intractable career barrier in the future.
Social capital is a fact we all must grapple with in order to succeed, she concludes. By describing the experiences of people and their networks, Walker Laird hopes in the end to “foster hope and nurture ambition through helping people understand what they can do for themselves and what networks make possible.”