Article
Spanish
ID: <
10670/1.mw6wxj>
Abstract
Social media are not static structures; they are resources for the achievement of various purposes by the actors. These resources have generally been covered by the term ‘share capital’. More than a quarter of a century ago, the theory of this term arose in the course of studies on education and the hand of Bourdieu and Coleman. The purpose of this article is to review one of the central assumptions on this theory, formulated by Coleman, namely that social capital is associated with lower school desertion and, more generally, educational attainment. We consider the main studies that provide evidence in favour and against the hypothesis in three respects: single-parent households, number of siblings and intergenerational closure. Despite broad support, we conclude that the scenario is not yet fully verified and requires a finer disaggregation of variables; the causal mechanisms involved are unclear and, in particular, it needs to be tested in other contexts and cultures than the American ones.