About the Author

Tristan Claridge
BA MNatResSt

Tristan Claridge completed a Masters thesis on social capital theory in 2004 at the University of Queensland. Although Tristan originally wanted to apply social capital theory to natural resource management outcomes in Australia, he found that the current understanding of social capital was not sufficiently conceptualised to allow this application. This site is the result of extensive investigation into social capital from various perspectives, sociology, political science, economics and psycology. Where the majority of authors on the subject seem to approach social capital from a uni-disciplinary point, Tristan has cross cut these disciplines in this study.

The most important finding in this study is the steps towards a new conceptualisation of social capital. Tristan feels that this process is far from complete and will require extensive broad investigation into the underlying processes - particularly the direction of causality involved in many of the determinants of social capital. It should be highlighted that Tristan does not feel that this conceptualisation of social capital is sufficiently rigorous to be applied and further work is still required by questioning academics.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any points of clarification or if you would like to discuss issues (email me).