دانلود رایگان ترجمه مقاله ارتباط بین مسافرت روزانه و سرمایه اجتماعی (نشریه Sage 2014)

روابط بین مسافرت روزانه و سرمایه اجتماعی در بین مردان و زنان در جنوب سوئد

Relationships Between Commuting and Social Capital Among Men and Women in Southern Sweden

Abstract

The societal need for a mobile workforce increases time spent commuting and thus also the total workday. How this affects individual well-being and social life is, however, surprisingly little known. We investigated the relation between commuting time and mode, and social participation and general trust in other people as measures of social capital, using data from public health surveys conducted in 2004 and 2008 in Scania, Sweden: in all, 21,088 persons ages 18 to 65 and working at least 30 hr per week. Commuting by car was significantly associated with a higher prevalence of low social participation and low general trust compared with active commuting, and the association increased with the duration of commuting time. In contrast, public commuting was not significantly associated with decreased social capital measures except among long-duration commuters, who reported lower social participation. The overall pattern was similar for men and for women.

It has been claimed that commuting, traveling from the home to the workplace, increases material wealth (Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, 2009; Swedish Government Official Report, 2007). Enlarged job regions create more opportunities for work and strengthen the economy for both individuals and society. A more flexible and accessible labor market for companies is created by making the workforce available over larger geographical areas. Individuals are given increased opportunities to find jobs and select places to live. For these reasons, there is political will in many countries to expand labor market areas, resulting in an increase in overall commuting (European Policy Brief, 2008; Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, 2009). In Sweden, the average commuting distance has increased from 10 km in 1970 to 15.6 km in 2005 (The Swedish Board of Housing, Building, and Planning, 2005).

There is a concern among researchers that increased mobility in society is increasing the geographical spread of individuals’ social networks, reducing their engagement in neighborhoods and thereby threatening social welfare by lowering the sense of security and belonging on a local level (Bergström, 2010). However, there are surprisingly few data from population-based epidemiological studies exploring the individual and community effects of everyday commuting.

Social capital is a resource emerging from social relations in a society that can be used to solve problems of an individual or a collective nature (Bourdieu, 1986; Ferlander, 2007; Kawachi, Kennedy, & Glass, 1999; Putnam, 2000). “Social capital is the glue that holds societies together and without which there can be no economic growth or human well-being” (World Bank Social Capital Initiative, 1998, p. iii); it is often defined as a social network that creates benefits from the interaction between the individuals in the network (Bourdieu, 1986; Cullen & Whiteford, 2001).

According to Bourdieu (1986) and Coleman (1988), social capital exists in the structure of the social network—in contrast to economic capital, which exists in the bank, and human capital, which exists in the mind. Thus, social capital exists not in the person who possesses the resource but in that individual’s relations to other persons (Portes, 1998). Through civic participation, norms of reciprocity and trust are established, and cooperation leads to mutual benefits (Kawachi, Kennedy, Lochner, & Prothrow-Stith, 1997). Lower levels of social capital can be associated with consequences for the individual and society, such as tax evasion, low levels of political engagement, bad health, and poor educational performance (Coleman, 1988; Feng & Boyle, 2013; Putnam, 2000)