A sociological concept I am indeed interested in is the concept of"social capita"l. You might have seen me use it a couple of times in my posts. I find it fascinating for so many reasons, for one, social capital is something we all possess and can potentially leverage to improve the quality of our lives and businesses.
So what is social capital?
According to Pierre Bourdieu, social capital is “the collection of resources or potential resources that our durable network of relationships connects us to.”
A very retable example of how this concept applies to the leofinance community can be seen in the recent launch of cubfinance. By the virtue of our involvement with leofinance, we were able to leverage on the cubfinance defi project, becoming the first set of adopters/investors and possibly amongst those who benefited from the insane APR during its initial launch.
Those who weren’t privileged to have the information about the launch of cubfinance had to join in on a later date. This is one of the ways we have profited from being part of this community.
Also, unlike outside investors, we are better positioned to leverage on projects because we trust them. Trust is an important element of social capital. It allows for peaceful and profitable coexistence within a social network.
Social capital is a sociological concept that refers to the intangible/invisible resources and assets that emerge from our social interaction/relationships.
One of such intangible resources is information. Having quality social capital grants you access to information that is not available to those outside your network.
The other day I argued with a fellow community member about the relevance of social media. He failed to acknowledge the intangible resources people accumulate via social interactions and placed more emphasis on the economic gains social media platforms gain from the activities of their users.
On hive, we often talk about how people aren’t making money from their social activities as opposed to us here on hive and leofinance. However, we forget that not all value is tangible--not initially.
For example, getting a job might be easy if you engage with people from your industry on LinkedIn. Also, TikTok might be ideal for someone hoping to grow their social influence due to its large user base.
These are the ways people leverage their social activities. It doesn't have to be direct in terms of economic rewards. However, on hive/leofinance we are privileged to have both-tangible and intangible resources to leverage.
So I hope with these few points you can see the importance of social capital and how you can leverage it to improve the quality of your life (even financially).