Abstract:

In recent years, social capital has gained relevance as an explanatory category for socio-territorial and socio-productive processes in rural areas. However, it presents a series of conceptual and methodological limitations, reflected in its excessive versatility and indiscriminate application. In this context, the objective of this text was to deconstruct the concept of social capital in its components, dimensions and categories; to join the effort to incorporate the social capital approach in the understanding of the social and productive phenomena that currently define the dynamics of family life strategies in rural environments, through an integrative literature review. This made it possible to formulate a theoretical-methodological proposal organized around the three forms of social capital: bonding, bridging and linking. These can be identified and measured through the combination of qualitative and quantitative techniques, such as: Social Network Analysis and Categorical Principal Component Analysis.

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