A Tale of Two Cities: Local Patterns of Social Capital

Abstract

An outsider entering the village of Asten in the south of the Netherlands has a good chance of not being treated with suspicion. The majority of the local population believe that “in general, most people can be trusted.” By contrast, a visitor traveling to the districts of Wielwijk or Crabbehof in the town of Dordrecht (to the south of Rotterdam) will have to overcome more in the way of social barriers. Two-thirds of the inhabitants of these districts have formed the opinion that “you can’t be too careful in dealing with other people.” And there are other differences between Asten and these Dordrecht districts. In Asten, for example, people seek contact with other local residents easily and generally regard them as helpful. In Dordrecht this is true for only a minority of the inhabitants. Two-thirds of the inhabitants of Asten are members of an association, compared with just one-third of Dordrecht inhabitants. Attitudes to politics differ as well: In Asten the government is regarded as a reliable source of information on important social and political issues by half of the population, compared with a quarter of the population of Dordrecht. According to the survey from which we take these data, 16 percent of the citizens of Asten and 38 percent of those of Dordrecht think that whatever decisions the government makes, they are of no use for everyday life.