Cities, civicness, and social capital. Problems, actors, and processes

It has become commonplace to maintain that “it takes a village to raise a child”1, and even more so when it comes to those aspects of education which have more to do with civicness and civility than with academic success. In a sense, I’ve always thought this proverb is undoubtedly wise, but it also takes it for granted that the village will be a “good” village. Indeed, one might ask: what kind of village does it take, and where is it to be found? These questions are particularly poignant, since a semantic inversion seems to be characterizing the social representation of the “city” – at least in Europe. What was once regarded as the spearhead of civilization now is often conceived of as a frightening environment, a place where one would not want to live or raise one’s children. On the other hand, interest for civicness and civil society has a longstanding tradition in sociology, where it often plays the double role of responding to the best hopes and to the most pessimistic interpretations of the contemporary Zeitgeist. The concept of social capital, of its accumulation and loss, has served both lines of thought in many fields of theory and empirical research.