Social capital is an elusive term with many ideas floating about concerning its definition. Giddens (2000) said that

“Social Capital refers to trust networks that individuals can draw on for social support, just as financial capital can be drawn upon to be used for investment. Like financial capital, social capital can be expanded-invested and reinvested”.

Loosely put in my words, the definition of social capital can be summarised as the value, and intangible currency of trust. To be more specific, social capital can be considered the attributed value something has in creating and using social connections for personal application.

For those of us with little social capital there is the notion of borrowing someone else’s capital to use for your own purposes.  Just like in Giddens explanation, social capital can be borrowed in the same way you may borrow money to buy something. An individual seeking to gain something yet lacking the social capital to achieve this will borrow a willing persons social capital to get what they want.

As an example of this we can take the case of borrowed social capital used by Nia Roberts. Nia Roberts is interested in her music becoming famous. Due to her age this is very difficult and getting people to listen to her creations is hard.

On the other hand a famous celebrity like Stephen Fry has great social capital and through his Twitter account reaches over 832,000 people. By contacting Fry and asking him to talk about her music on his twitter account, Nia hoped to borrow Fry’s social capital to help promote herself.

The economic links with this are obvious as Nia can reach a great many more people through use of Fry’s social capital and this in return can grant possible economic capital gains if people then buy her music.

Social capital as a theory is very interesting but it’s hard to prove that any capital exchange went on in this case. Obviously Nia borrowed Fry’s influence here, but no exchange of capital is immediately obvious between the two. Possibly the concept of reinvested capital can be applied, in that Fry may actually benefit by supporting an artist he likes in the long run. As Nia gains capital, so does Fry as the investment of his social capital comes to maturity with Nia’s gains.