Exploring Social Capital Debates at the World Bank

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Abstract
This article explores the ways in which discussions of social capital have emerged within the World Bank, and how they interacted both with project practices and with larger debates in the institution. These debates are understood as a ‘battlefield of knowledge’, whose form and outcomes are structured but not determined by the political economy of the Bank. Understanding the debates this way has implications for research on the ways in which development discourses are produced and enacted, as well as for more specific discussions of the place of social capital in development studies. The article concludes with a reflection on implications of these debates for future research, policy, and practice.