Joe Campbell - Building Social Capital 101 [Bonus Episode]

[00:00:00] Adam: Hello and welcome to this bonus episode of Green Champions.

[00:00:13] Dominique: Thank you for joining us in conversations with real people, making real environmental change in the work that they do. I'm here with Adam, the social enterprise extraordinaire.

[00:00:21] Adam: And I am so glad to be here alongside Dominique, the sustainability expert. We bring you guests who saw the potential for impact in their job or community and did something about it.

[00:00:29] Dominique: From entrepreneurs to artists, scientists, to activists. This podcast is a platform for green champions to share their stories and plant some new ideas. And today we're gonna focus on swinging back to our guest, Joe Campbell and some of the, information we weren't able to squeeze in to our two episodes with Joe.

[00:00:48] Adam: We wanted to share some additional ideas around social capital. Joe Campbell is a senior lecturer at Ohio State's School of Environmental and Natural Resources, and he's the director of the Environmental Professional Network. Check out those episodes to learn more about the impact that he's making there. But Joe, welcome back on.

[00:01:06] Joe: Thank you so much, Adam and Dominique. It's great to be here.

[00:01:09] Dominique: I think it's still sticking with me that you just really focused on like listening. It's so easy to be like, "Here's what I do in this space and here's how like my superpowers create positivity and creates change."

And you're like, I listen. Like other people know what they're doing. Other people have things to share and I am there to be an asset to those around me. And I think that just speaks a lot to your deep understanding and care for the idea of really knowing who is around you to work with. And I think that also connects to a topic they did wanna bring up, which is social capital.

And you know, 'cause I've told you like a bunch of times that you've shared your perspective on this topic and it sat with me since I first heard you share it at a presentation. 

And I was hoping you could share with our audience, I know you could probably do an hour long presentation about it, but if you could share with us just your perspective on the power of social capital and explain that concept to our audience 'cause I think that also kind of really encapsulates what you've shared is what you focus on when you think about going into a community or building a project or empowering a student, it's all around the people.

[00:02:16] Joe: Yeah. The notion of social capital, I think it's been around forever, but in the academic world that I'm often operating in, I think in the 1990s, it really came to the forefront. And many students who are educated since the late 90s or so, in a university setting, like at Ohio State, they're gonna have at least some exposure through a sociology course or economics or political science, geography somewhere.

And what social capital generally refers to is essentially the value of relationships. And it can be measured through trust, it can be measured through things like civic participation or engagement, volunteerism. There's lots of ways to try to measure. It's not quite like financial capital, which is kind of by definition it's measured in financial terms and there's ways in which an asset can be spent or utilized to grow more wealth or vice versa, you can have a decline in your asset from a financial perspective. It's sometimes useful to take that same analogy and compare it to social relationships, but other times I think it really isn't the right metaphor. 

But in terms of what I, when I try to talk about social capital, I build upon what others have identified in their research, which are three general types of social capital: bonding, bridging, and linking social capital.

And there's many ways to organize all these thoughts, but I like those three types because I think for all of us, we can kind of make them either within our individual lives or in organizations that we work for or volunteer with. It can kind of, I think, crystallize a little easier.

When we talk about bonding social capital, we're talking about relationships that almost exist without us wanting them or not. Like they're there on the good days, the bad, 24/7, 365. So often that for many people, that's their immediate family or really close friends that have these very durable relationships that even when there is, I don't know, toxic attitudes between members of that bonding social capital, they're still gonna pick up the phone or they're still gonna show up to pick them up from work or school or whatever. It's a emotional bond between individuals and groups. And that's one important type of social capital and that matters oftentimes for people. It's just survival and living in the world. And we all need a healthy amount of bonding social capital. And it's something that I usually kind of leave there and then I move over to bridging and linking social capital if we're gonna talk about it in the community development or sustainable development space.

So bridging social capital. Some people call these like horizontal ties. They are usually, you know someone through kind of one dimension. So Adam, Dominique, we know each other through essentially both working in similar, like sustainable development type circles and through a university or through other professional networks. Some people call them instrumental ties. So the way that a musician might play an instrument, I might use my tie for some purpose. So if I'm a guitar player, I pick up the guitar, I play these notes. Because I'm in charge of the guitar and I'm gonna make these notes happen. I can pick up my laptop or phone or whatever and message one of you and talk about something professional, but it probably like, it kind of ends there, you know what I mean? Like, if Adam, if you were in a tough spot and you had my number for whatever reason, and you needed me to come and pick you up off the highway, I would 'cause, you know, you're a great guy. You know, and I li I like listening to your podcast. And Dominique the same to you, I would be there to support you if you needed it, but you're probably not gonna think of me, honestly, in this situation. And probably vice versa in a way. Like we kind of know each other in these one dimensional ways. And that's really important especially in today's society because so often we are in like communities that are, so the term might be used heterogeneous. So there's a lot of difference in our communities like you mentioned a little bit of your backstory of where you've lived and places you've been, and Dominique, same to you. 

We didn't evolve in the same immediate neighborhood and then within that neighborhood participated in the same organizations or whatever. We don't have bonding social capital really. I mean, we could make it over time, but really we're here

[00:06:10] Adam: Didn't grow up with it.

[00:06:11] Joe: Yeah, we didn't grow up with it. So I think that's valuable for two reasons. One is, in society it's really important as a healthy lifestyle practice, to try to build your bridging social capital. It exposes you to new ideas. It helps to kind of integrate when you have sometimes conflicting ideas, you can better work through those challenges, those conflicts, and in sustainable development or the things that we need to accomplish to kind of get our planetary boundaries somewhat in control, and our human systems somewhat in alignment with those planetary boundaries in a sustainable way.

We really need to work through some points of conflict. And so finding some common ground understanding is gonna be facilitated in a large part through bridging social capital. And then the third type. I'm sorry if this is way too

[00:06:56] Adam: I'm loving this.

[00:06:57] Joe: Academic expose. Okay.

[00:06:59] Dominique: Interesting. This is what sat with me after you shared it. 

[00:07:01] Joe: I bore like 90 students a night with this kind of stuff, so I really appreciate you being engaged in it. 

[00:07:07] Dominique: I haven't had someone explain to me before you like these different kinds of relationships. Frankly, I think as like a young person, like if anyone's listening in the podcast that wants to like get into this space, we know that our audience is some folks like that. Like they tell you to like, "Go network". 

Or they tell you to like go meet people or like build identity capital. That's like a big piece of advice for like during your twenties. And like I think what you're helping to do is like parse out what it really means and why and how relationships develop, and it's not always explained to us even though we are all encountering all the time.

[00:07:37] Adam: Yep. 

And selfishly, one of my goals for starting this podcast with Dominique is to build some connections between the social enterprise community which is very strong, and the sustainability community, which is also very strong, but doesn't have a lot of overlap.

[00:07:51] Joe: Great point.

I remember somebody once explaining to me like, in order for networking not to feel like all icky, to turn it around and look at it as how can you contribute to those around you. And that's where the real power lies of like, how can you support the people that you meet in accomplishing what they wanna do?

Some of the most, and I have a, my job professionally for like eight years has been facilitating networking, and I think the most effective networkers are more introverted people. And I don't think that has to do with their personalities of not saying a lot or saying a lot if it's an extrovert.

And I don't wanna read too much into personality types. But why I say that is many people who lean a little more towards being introverted, meaning like they feel a little more energized when they're alone rather than out and amongst a group of people. Introverted folks are often paying really close attention and when they're talking to someone, in some cases, they're not just thinking about what they're gonna say next, they're actually like listening to what the person is saying or picking up on the signals that are being sent. So what I find is those listeners who are paying attention and not always talking actually have a lot more information and knowledge because they've absorbed more and they've probably, if they're practicing some responsible mindfulness behavior, you know, just like letting stuff process like we all need to do. Then you can ring them up four days later and say, "Hey, what did you think of this?" And the response you get is anchored in a bit more, I would say accuracy and authenticity. But I think, as someone who's worked in a university setting with, you mentioned college students and being encouraged to network, I think we scare people off with that word.

[00:09:29] Dominique: Mm-Hmm. It freaked me out.

[00:09:30] Joe: Yeah.

[00:09:31] Dominique: I graduated college and was just off to build a business and I was trained as an engineer. I remember getting off calls because I was like, put in a paper, so I was getting emails of like, "We should chat." And I was like, "Okay." And then I would get on the call and I would share what I was doing and I'd hear what they're doing and then I'd hang up and I was like, did I do that right? I was an introvert in college in that way.

[00:09:49] Joe: Well, Dominique, I was one of those people. I remember when you won that award as a, you were like a fourth year or like graduating senior and won that award. I was one of those people that read that article and thought, Oh, it'd be really great to feature Dominique's work somehow with through EPN or just to learn more 'cause that's just my nature. I'm like, in social sciences, I facilitate networking. I'm an extroverted person. That's how I'm gonna approach that situation. But I've known from working with lots of people, they don't really want that. Like they may not wanna receive that kind of invitation. So I think it's been important for me to realize that, what do you say, it's like when you're really passionate about something and my friends make fun of me about this 'cause I am very clearly, I'm passionate about a lot of things that I do.

[00:10:30] Dominique: Hey, join the 

[00:10:31] Joe: crew. ... and I do they're like, Joe, can you please just like calm it down a little bit?

Like, we got other things in life here. I've had to learn and practice that a bit too. It's just like, know a little bit of your audience and know that just because someone isn't lighting up because you're onto the, you know me, I'm onto the newest cool idea or something. It hasn't really, may have little to do with the idea, maybe 

even little to do with me, it's just people have different ways of receiving and sharing information. 

Was there anything you wanted to just tie up around social capital?

So the third type of social capital that is often discussed is linking social capital. It's kind of hard to explain, just audio without a visual, is that linking social capital assumes there's basically distributions of power in society where whether that power is through resources like political resources, meaning I can make a decision happen, or financial resources, I have the wealth or capital to sort of drive an outcome.

Either way, there's some sort of power that exists in society that is not equally distributed. And that could mean that some organizations are in possession of more resources or more power, or some individuals. But we must acknowledge in linking social capital that there is this kind of like vertical plane.

You know, I might have $5 and Adam might have $20, and Dominique might have $40. And if we're just talking about a scale of financial capital then well, there's a vertical, we can measure 40 to 15 to 5 or whatever. The same goes in politics, and the same goes in social influence. So the US Department of Agriculture is an agency I work with. The USDA has more political and other capital influence than does, you know, a small organization that I support that does regenerative agriculture and soil testing. It's just kind of there, it's a quantitative thing that we can measure and it's qualitative too that we can just say the USDA can kind of tell us what to do.

We don't really get to tell the US Department of Agriculture what we want them to do. Except when we're drawing on our linking social capital. So if I, as the supporter of a small benefit corporation trying to support regenerative agriculture, if I work through a colleague that has had time and invested some of their talent to the USDA over the years and connects me to someone high up and influential in the US Department of Agriculture.

Or maybe there's a state office, field office representative here in Ohio who I can grab a coffee with and talk through a complex issue. I'm now taking this major power imbalance, which is still there and it's still gonna be there, and I'm starting to equalize it a little bit. So now I'm sitting across from someone who can tell me information that can help me and my community. I might even be able to tell them information that can help them take the resource base and access they have and make quality of life a little bit better for us and our community. That's starting to draw into linking social capital. It means I'm building a relationship, maybe even some trust, maybe some use the term norms of reciprocity, meaning I know what to expect of them, they know what to expect of me. 

And it's across this vertical or this power plane. So, someone in who does a lot of work and say, Champaign County, Ohio now knows somebody in Washington DC that cares about the improvements of agriculture and they can put a real face and actually a personality and a degree of trust in someone who's advancing agriculture in Champaign County, in the state of Ohio.

So we need to be able to draw upon linking social capital to help organize our places, our ecosystems, our communities with some type of direction, and that might be a financial direction, it might be a infrastructural direction, it might be intellectual, it might be knowledge. Either way we need to be aware of that.

It's sometimes hidden and we don't often talk about it, but linking social capital is a critical ingredient. So to round that out with social capital, what I tell people is bonding social capital is absolutely critical for the quality of your life, for the quality of the immediate people that look to you to support them. So always nurture and do the best you can in your bonding social capital. And exercise and grow your bridging social capital. Get to know different people, including people who might have difference from you. And I don't mean just difference in terms of what job they have or where they live. It's lots of forms of difference.

And one way you can practice this is just kind of describe yourself. You know, you can just take out a piece of paper and a pen or a phone and text and just describe yourself and then think about, okay, well what's different from that? And that includes like cultural, it includes political ideology, it includes all of these thoughts that we might have 'cause most of us, you know, our thoughts matter a lot in addition to our, you know, material description and then start to just like meet people that are different. 

The more you diversify and expand and grow your social capital, the more you're gonna have pathways up and down or side to side on that linking social capital gradient, which is really going to be critical and will matter if you're in this world of sustainable development or being a green champion.

Well, thank you so much today for coming out and giving us a masterclass on building social capital, especially as it relates to the world of sustainability. Joe, How can people connect with you and be an advocate for the work that you're doing?

Well, thank you both for the platform that you create. At the current moment, with my Ohio State role, I support the Environmental Professionals Network. And what we exist to do is to connect the community of those that are passionate, interested, wanting to learn more about our environment or to do more, to improve our natural resources, both here locally in the state of Ohio and beyond.

We also wanna help people grow into their careers and also grow who they know. So it's a place to both learn and to expand who you know. And then the last thing we wanna do is inspire. And I think you all do a really great job of this at Green Champions and the episodes that I've listened to, it's like, wow, I've seen this person's name. I didn't know they did this every day. And this is like, whether it's the grind of how they just keep the work moving or the innovative idea they had and follow through on, or just like the space they make for others, we wanna inspire at EPN. So that's the third reason why we exist.

And where do people find that?

They can go to epn.osu.edu. That's epn.osu.edu. We have a YouTube channel also, which features all of our programs going back to I think 2018. And then we also have our online, kind of a whole archive of programs going back to 2012 when we were first started. That's all at epn.osu.edu. And we have a great set of programs for this upcoming academic year.

And all of our events are open to the public. We host them in person from September through April and Columbus at our Ohio State campus area. 

And our events are always live streamed and people can join for free wherever they might be through our live stream as well.

I love that.

Thanks for sharing your wisdom with us today. 

 And as always, our guests have found a unique way to champion sustainability. We're here to put real names and stories behind the idea that no matter your background, career or interests, you really can contribute in the fight against climate change You can find our episodes at thegreenchampions.com. If you wanna stay in the loop, give us a review and follow us on your favorite podcast platform. You got questions about climate change or sustainability. You can read us on our website at thegreenchampions.com. Our music is by the Zayn Dweik. Thanks for listening to Green Champions.

We'll dig into another sustainability success story in our next episode.