Skip Navigation


American Journal of Epidemiology Advance Access originally published online on August 20, 2008
American Journal of Epidemiology 2008 168(11):1340-1342; doi:10.1093/aje/kwn256
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
168/11/1340    most recent
kwn256v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Disclaimer
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Diez Roux, A. V.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by Diez Roux, A. V.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

American Journal of Epidemiology © The Author 2008. Published by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

BOOK REVIEWS

Social Capital and Health

Edited By Ichiro Kawachi, S. V. Subramanian, and Daniel Kim

Ana V. Diez Roux

Department of Epidemiology, University of Michigan School of Public Health, 109 Observatory Street, SPH Tower Room 3671, Ann Arbor, MI 48104

(e-mail: adiezrou@umich.edu)

ISBN-10: 0387713107, ISBN-13: 978-0387713106, Springer Publishing Company, New York, New York (Telephone: 877-687-7476, Fax: 212-941-7842, E-mail: cs@springerpub.com, World Wide Web: http://www.springerpub.com), 2007, 294 pp., $69.95 Hardcover

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The concept of "social capital" made its entrance into epidemiologic research over 10 years ago, championed among others by editors of this volume. To many of us, this was a welcome sign. Despite debate over its precise definition, social capital is inherently a social construct. As initially defined, at least, it is a relational construct that refers to groups or, more precisely, to how individuals are related to each other within groups. The notion that these group-level, ecologic, or macro-relational properties could be relevant to health, and moreover could be examined in studies that tightly controlled for individual-level characteristics, was an exciting new development and appeared to be a signal of new directions in the field.

Regardless of important challenges in identifying health effects of these social constructs, the advent of studies of social capital, together with studies of income inequality, neighborhood characteristics, and other "group-level" attributes, has signaled a . . . [Full Text of this Article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?