The Local Path to Sustainable Development: Social Capital in Naples

When the analyses and conclusions which now inform this chapter were first presented as preliminary findings of an ongoing research project in 20071 the world was a very different place indeed than it is today. Yet, the introduction to the 2007 paper is still valid in the way in which it profiled the transformative trends of the world economy over the previous two decades and, at the same time, cautioned about them. Thus, it was pointed out, that driven by accelerating technological and communication innovations the rapidity and scale of economic development and social change around the world had been and still were astounding. Developed as well as developing countries were profoundly affected, as their economies and cities were pulled directly into multiple and denser networks of external relationships which defined this phase of globalization, fuelled by its aim of achieving ever higher levels of growth (Lechner and Boli 2004; Sassen 1998; Streeten 2001; Taylor 2006). Only marginalized countries, it was said, were left partially unscathed by this process of change, although they too often had to pay a high cost of dependency, particularly in terms of increased outflows of human capital and natural resources toward the world’s core areas (Brecher and Costello 1994; Clark 1996; Przeworski 1992; Smith 1984).