What Is Social Capital?

Achieving Maine is a community group dedicated to restoring and deepening the social capital of communities in Maine. We define social capital as the "whole" that is greater than the sum of a community's social norms of reciprocity, networks of trust, the values and beliefs that citizens share in their everyday dealings, and the shared knowledge, understandings, norms, rules, and expectations about patterns of behavior that govern the interactions of community members.