IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Spring 2014 - 33

Forms of Social Capital
Design
Contractualism
Computational
Justice
Dynamic Social
Networks

Collective
Awareness

Collective Action

Trust and
Forgiveness
Self-Organizing
Institutions

Contextual
Variables

Institution Science
Fig. 3. the reinvention of social capital.

by trust and forgiveness, computational justice,
and collective awareness.
In conclusion, we believe that the reinvention of
social capital is crucial for the development of the
next generation of socio-technical systems, not only to
address systemic problems that threaten the sustainability of institutions and physical infrastructure, but also
to understand and explain the processes through which
socially resilient and sustainable institutions emerge and
adapt. By providing the foundations for a new type of
intrinsically beneficial adaptive institution, we believe
the reinvention of social capital can enhance community
resilience, social innovation, and sustainability properties of an institutions for socio-technical systems:
■

■

Community resilience as the property of an institution whereby its structure, function, or processes can self-organize to react positively to
change or adverse conditions to maintain social
cohesion and protect community welfare;
Social innovation as the property of an institution which facilitates, encourages, and empowers
grassroots participation as a force for change in
synthesizing or creating new structures, functions, and processes, having a specific social purpose and/or intended social benefit; and
Sustainability as the property of an institution
whereby its rule-set can self-adapt to ensure proactively that a common-pool resource is maintained (not depleted), and distributed fairly.

The reinvention of social capital is therefore fundamental to achieving successful collective action to
meet pressing social challenges, and can have a significant transformative impact on society.
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

SprING 2014

Author Information
Jeremy pitt is a reader in Intelligent Systems in the
Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering at
Imperial College London.
Andrzej Nowak is Director of the Centre for Complex Systems at the University of Warsaw, and holds
a faculty position in the Department of psychology at
Florida Atlantic University.

Acknowledgment
The first author was partially supported by the UK EpSrC
Grand Challenge project Autonomic power System and
the EU Coordination Actions AWArE and FoCAS.

References

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