Leveraging Social Capital to Build Local Leadership for Sustainable Coastal Communities: Grassroots Models Grant uri icon

abstract

  • Recent challenges to coastal communities across North Carolina and the other coastal states have led to efforts to develop leadership in communities heavily dependent on fisheries, seafood, and other coastal and marine resources. Leaders have emerged, for example, around community-based fisheries, catch groups, working waterfronts and cultural heritage, and engaging new initiatives to promote heritage- and eco-tourism. Many such efforts benefit from marshaling a community?s social capital?or the network ties and group memberships that can facilitate the development of leadership, civic engagement, political action, entrepreneurship, and other beneficial outcomes. Effective leadership styles, as well as how much leaders are considered legitimate to a variety of constituents, vary by nationality, region, and other factors. Standardized, top-down approaches to leadership may be effective among groups with similar training (e.g. middle-class college students), but less effective among people not used to classroom settings, interactions structured by hierarchy, or the organizational styles of government agencies or corporations. Social scientists have documented a wide variety of leadership styles around the world, ranging from the more democratic forms among hunting and gathering groups to the extreme hierarchy of military regimes. Differing styles of leadership derive from different organizational forms, social networks, group membership, levels of trust, and other factors that comprise social capital. Communities across North Carolina?s coast and coastal plain vary in terms of social networks, group membership, and other dimensions we use to measure social capital. Some communities have, for example, participated in an initiative known as Saltwater Connections to address coastal problem, while other communities have been less successful at banding together. These differences are, in part, a reflection of different levels of social capital in the communities, influencing their abilities to foster local leadership and work as a community in identifying and encouraging development that is sustainable in light of the many challenges facing coastal regions today. Comparing communities across North Carolina?s coast and coastal plain in terms of social capital can reveal the benefits and the limits of social capital in sustaining coastal communities and fostering leadership. In short, North Carolina?s complex coastal and estuarine system, and its associated communities, constitute an important natural laboratory for addressing two of the priority areas in the NC Sea Grant strategic plan, enabling the development of: 1) sustainable coastal development; and 2) a safe and sustainable seafood supply. While we are not arguing that social capital is the only mechanism by which coastal communities achieve these goals, we do propose that it can be central to organizing community involvement in concrete projects that achieve sustainability objectives. Special attention will be given to bridging social capital, or social capital that facilitates effective political-economic connections among different social groups. We anticipate the following outcomes: 1) We will determine the organizational basis of social capital in the fishing and seafood sectors of coastal and coastal plain communities; 2) We will document how social capital has been instrumental in fostering leadership and addressing issues related to sustainable coastal development and the development of a safe and sustainable seafood supply; 3) We will demonstrate how social capital varies among communities; and 4) We will disseminate project findings in two workshops (facilitated by Sara Mirabilio) oriented toward fostering leadership among younger members of coastal communities. The workshops will be formatted similar to the Alaska Young Fishermen?s Summit organized by Ala

date/time interval

  • February 2016 - June 2018