From Economic Meltdown to Social Crunch – Impact of the Global Economic Recession on Social Capital Building in Developing Countries and What We still Don't Know!

This paper draws on the experiences of the Far East Economic Crisis in 1998 and argues that: (1) the poor depended heavily on bonding social capital during the Crisis, but the crunch-point beyond which they felt no longer able to rely on this is less certain; (2) bridging social capital could both be created and destroyed during the Crisis; (3) the impact of the Crisis affected men and women differently, but how different groups of men and women were affected by the Crisis is less clear; (4) NGOs could help build social capital with the poor, but their role could be restricted by financial difficulties. URL:[http://www.devstud.org.uk/aqadmin/media/uploads/4ab77d15a6783_2-wong-dsa09.pdf].