Abstract
This article aims 1) to discuss whether social capital fostered by member of cooperatives affects community activities, and 2) to indicate complementarities between cooperative activities and community ties. Discourses on social capital influence our understanding about social and human relationships or community ties, which are global perspectives or local ones. Barry, W. (1979) tries to answer Community Question dealing with data of 845 adult residents of East Yorker, Toronto, Canada. He argues that intimate networks are found to be prevalent in not only minorities but also suburban residents, and that they are available in dealing with both emergencies and everyday matters from all intimate networks. Svendsen et, al. (2005) demonstrates that "the cooperative movement continued to play a crucial role in the success of agriculture. The Danish cooperative movement created a 'strong pillar' for various framing activities. Thus, a range of horizontal and vertical links between people satisfying their different needs in particular social groups existed in democratic societies." The article demonstrates cooperative movements affect their members' consciousness of participation in community activities, dealing with data of questionnaires for the members of the Cooperative Pal System Chiba, Funabashi, Chiba, Japan ("Pal Chiba"). As analyses indicate, the Pal Chiba movement clearly influences its members' consciousness and behavior for community or civil activities. The more positive attitude toward the Pal Chiba movement the members have, the deeper commitment to community or civil activities they have. And the more positive consciousness or practices of participation in community or civil activities they have, the deeper commitment to the Pal Chiba movement they have. Putnam, R.D., a political scientist known as an advocator of social capital, says that recent non profit or cooperative organizations diminish grass-rooted movements though they utilize social capital stored by community based ties as a resource in order to increase their newsletter readers (e.g. Putnam (1993, 2000)). But the analyses of this article lead us to deny Putnam's above arguments. The Pal Chiba's members foster grass-rooted movement and participation in community or civil activities with utilizing social capital stored by the cooperative movement, though the core enterprise of the Pal Chiba movement is individual delivery systems, not traditional joint purchase systems. Thus, social capital is available for the members of the Pal Chiba to improve or solve their problems of their daily life. And it plays a complementary role of diminished community ties for them.
