The Insignificance of Weak Social ties and the Uselessness of Strong Ones

Insignificance ok Weak The chapter subscribes to the view that social capital is a general concept as well as an ambivalent one that is made concrete in specific acts and social situation. It therefore can assume contradictory shapes. Accordingly the author opts for a selective use of the social capital notion and focuses on how it operates at the micro-level, the aim being to ascertain its role in a social context of endemic poverty. To do so she explores by means of the biographical method two low-class families in the area of Naples that are steeped in intragenerational unemployment and poverty. The author takes up Granovetter’s thesis on strong and weak ties to argue that its usefulness lies in recognising the importance of the social context for deciphering the relationship between information and choice in a specific context.