Jamie Gough thanks his housemates, friends, and comrades in the 400-strong neighbourhood of Tolmers Square, central London, in 1973–9. Squatting in an area threatened with demolition, we carried out all manner of associationalist initiatives combined with campaigning against property speculation and for social housing. (For an entertaining view, see tolmers.net.) This experience and its many discussions and debates underlies my contribution to this book.
A large part of Raju Das’s social capital work was conducted during his tenure in Dundee University, Scotland, where he had arrived shortly after his PhD. He would like to record his gratitude to his former colleagues in Dundee, especially, Allan Findlay, Hester Parr, Fiona Smith, Nick Fyfe, Carlo Morelli and Alan Werritty, who provided a stimulating and comradely intellectual environment to him.
Raju would like to gratefully acknowledge support from the United Kingdom’s Economic and Social Research Council (esrc). A grant from esrc made it possible for him to collect empirical evidence on social capital reported in the book which is utilized to illustrate the theoretical arguments about the concept. He is grateful to his respondents who freely shared their thoughts about their social lives. He is also grateful to his many research assistants for their invaluable assistance, and especially, Mr. Debadutta Sahu.
All three of us are immensely grateful to Professor David Fasenfest, the editor of Brill’s Studies in Critical Social Sciences book series, for his encouragement and editorial feedback.