Perspectives on human and social capital theories and the role of education: An approach from Mediterranean thought

Abstract

Current discussions about education suggest that a transformative pedagogy that goes beyond the acquisition of knowledge and skills is needed. However, there is no agreement as to the inputs needed for a correct development of the educational model. In this sense, we can identify the presence of two different approaches to human and social capital which embody distinct educational worldviews. On the one hand, the ‘Marketable Human Capital’ or ‘Personal Culture’ approach, and on the other hand, the ‘Non-Marketable Human Capital’ or ‘Civic Culture’ approach. The first, which is linked to mainstream economic theory, sees education as any stock of knowledge that contributes to an improvement in the productivity of the worker and individual well-being. The second, which is rooted in the Mediterranean tradition of political thought, highlights the role of civic virtues, reciprocity, and public action within the educational process and its influence on public happiness. In this article, we analyse these connections in order to introduce the eighteenth-century Mediterranean tradition of economic thought into discussions about human and social capital theories and the role of education in them. Focusing on education through these prisms, national and international agendas must be reoriented towards the integral development of people to include broader global debates.

Keywords:

• Human capital
• social capital
• education
• interdisciplinary research
• public happiness

Acknowledgment

We would like to express our gratitude to the editorial coordinator, and the referees of the article. Their careful reading and insightful comments have greatly helped to improve the quality of our contribution.

Notes

1. The term ‘values’ in this article is used to broadly refer to matters that are valuable to an individual and determine agency goals rather than a specific set of ethical values or behaviour.

2. In this work, the acronym MHC (Olson, 2007) and other terms, such as ‘economic growth approach’ and ‘economic development growth paradigm’ (Nussbaum, 2010), are used to refer to the mainstream economics interpretation on human and social capital represented by neoclassical economics theory, where the general equilibrium approach is the point of reference of every theoretical development. On the other hand, beyond that literature, we can distinguish another kind of approach that is based on frequently ignored literature whose roots date back to the intellectual legacy of Mediterranean tradition of political economy. We use the acronym NMHC (Olson, 2007) and other expressions such as ‘civic culture’, ‘civic community’, ‘vivire civile’, and ‘civil economy’ to refer to social capital understood as civic culture that is connected not only with Putnam´s argument (1993) that successful outcomes are more likely in civically engaged communities, but also with the Mediterranean tradition of economic thought in the eighteenth century.

3. It is important to note that this approximation assumes some obviously too simple premises as a starting point such as rational action (see Coleman, 1988) or rational self-interest (Olson, 1993).

4. During the eighteenth century, Naples was one of the largest cultural centres, which went through a phase of substantial social changes. Coinciding with the end of Spanish domination and the start of an era of peace and stability, a great intellectual debate arose. The debate covered all topics: the economic problem, the role of the state, wealth and economics as a science. In this context, the new science, economics, was born as a science of public happiness; an epithet that expresses the social nature of happiness because it has to do with the common good, the government’s goal and the ‘science of administration’ (Bruni, 2002; Bruni & Porta, 2003).

5. Although we do not focus on the philosophical discussion in this article, we are aware that both MHC and NMHC are based on a Western framework of philosophy. We also believe, but do not have the space to elaborate upon the idea, that power structures, technologies, knowledge, social and ethical conventions, conflicts of interest, and class differences, among other aspects, have an enormous importance in educational and economic theories, policies, motivations, and behaviours.

6. For a critique of the MHC approach from an economics perspective, see Amsden (2010) and Vally and Motala (2014). Also see Blaug (1976) for a methodological critique.

7. This critique can be extended to the interpretation of NMHC presented in this paper. Alternative approaches are needed to reveal the faults and inconsistencies in orthodox discourses and to support new research and actions. The philosophical proposals of Hegel and Marx, brought to the economic field by Thorstein Veblen, and critical institutionalism could help us to go further in our analysis (for a specific study of this interpretation see García-Quero & Ollero, 2015).

8. According to Jan Nederveen Pieterse (cited in Peters & Besley, 2014, p. 852), global studies should be ‘multicentric’ (i.e. critique Eurocentrism and the deconstruction of the West) and ‘multilevel thinking’. ‘Multilevel thinking’ holds two meanings: viewing global relations at macro, meso, and micro scales of interaction and viewing them across the spectrum of class and status.