Electronic Networks - Building Community, 2002

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The power of "Place": Framing IT's role in social capital formation

Laxmi Ramasubramanian, , University of Illinois, Chicago

Geography is back! Since the early days of the Internet, the death of distance and the associated devaluation of geo-location have continued to be popular themes. However, as technologies, and our understandings of cyberspace have grown and matured, it is becoming evident that geography continues to exert its influence.

In this paper, I will discuss the enduring power of place in the formation of social capital, conceptualized as a bundle of networks of trust and reciprocity (after Putnam, 1993). Drawing on literature from geography and environment-behavior research, I expect to reveal how place/places are essential to support and sustain community networks. Cyber-utopians tend to argue that social interaction can occur in cyberspace, negating the need for real-life interaction. While this may hold true in the development of individual relationships and the formation of some specialized on-line communities, civil society organizations (nonprofits, community development groups, etc) rely on face to face contact and conventional community networking to extend their outreach and continue their work.

I will review research literature and case study material from the United States and Australia in order to develop an organizing framework that will assist in linking seemingly divergent bodies of literature (IT theory, social capital theory, and meaning of place). The goal of this endeavor is to reveal the fact that community groups use information technologies and social capital to complement, rather than to replace other forms of capital such as physical, human, and financial capital.