A Multilevel Approach to Social Capital

The concept of social capital serves as a structural hole in the landscape of scholarly disciplines in social science. This article argues that the unifying strength of the concept is based mainly upon the semantics of trust and networks and is, therefore, superficial, and that various levels of analysis may yield fundamental differences in its applications. Micro and macro levels are used to analyze the concepts of trust and networks, and their measurement, and the acquired insights are used to offer avenues for future multilevel research of social capital.