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| == '''[[The Social Capital Foundation]]''' ==
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| ''by [[User:Koen Demol|Koen Demol]]
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| | ==Footnotes== |
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| '''The Social Capital Foundation''' (TSCF) is a non-profit, [[non-governmental organization]] (NGO) that pursues the promotion of [[social capital]] and [[social cohesion]]. Created in late 2002 by Dr [[Patrick Hunout]], it is based in [[Brussels]]. TSCF is international and focuses particularly on the current developments in the industrial countries. The profiles of its members are extremely diverse. Funded with membership, conference and expertise fees, it is an independent [[operating foundation]]. It is a not a [[grant-making foundation]].
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| Social capital is a key concept in [[political science]], [[sociology]], [[social psychology]], [[economics]], and organizational behavior. It has been theorized about by a long list of scholars, from Emile Durkheim to Ferdinand Tönnies, Pierre Bourdieu, Robert Putnam, Robert Bellah, Francis Fukuyama, Patrick Hunout and others. (See the entry on [[social capital]] for more detailed discussion).
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| === The Foundation's approach to social capital === | |
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| TSCF's approach to "social capital" is distinct from other, more socio-economic approaches in which the term "capital" approaches some of its conventional economic meanings. TSCF promotes social capital defined as a set of mental dispositions and attitudes favoring cooperative behaviors within society.
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| The first assumption on which this definition is based is that social capital must not be mixed up with its manifestations.
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| Thus, social capital does not consist primarily in the possession of social networks, but in a disposition to generate, maintain and develop congenial relationships. It is not good neighborhood, but the openness to pacific coexistence and reciprocity based on a concept of belonging. It does not consist in running negotiations, but in the shared compromise-readiness and sense of the common good that make them succeed. It is not solely observable trust, but the predictability and the good faith necessary to produce it. It is not reductible to factual civic engagement, but resides in the sense of community that gives you lust to get involved in public life. All these downstream manifestations cannot be fully and consistently explained without reference to the upstream mental patterns that make them possible, or not.
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| The second assumption is that this disposition is collectivistic. It is not my individual capacity to build networks that is the most important for creating social capital but a collective, shared and reciprocal disposition to welcome, create and maintain social connections - without which my individual efforts to create such connections may well remain vain.
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| In that sense, The Social Capital Foundation's definition of social capital can be regarded as a semantic equivalent to the spirit of community. TSCF's approach is close to the one developed by [[Amitai Etzioni]] and the [[Communitarian Network]], although the concerns raised by the erosion of the community trace back to diverse figures in early modern sociology such as [[Ferdinand Tönnies]], [[Georg Simmel]], [[Emile Durkheim]] or the [[Chicago School of Sociology]], while [[European ethnology]], [[culturalism]] and [[jungism]] also insisted on the existence of a common soul.
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| TSCF promotes social capital through socio-economic research, publications, and events. The Foundation sets up international conferences on a regular basis. While research and knowledge add verified facts to the debate, social interaction contributes to further dissemination and awareness around the Foundation's approach.
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| === Hunout and the tripartite model of societal change ===
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| [[Patrick Hunout]], a Franco-Belgian researcher and policymaker, created in 1999 The International Scope Review and in 2002 The Social Capital Foundation. His theoretical filiation is both in the sociology of [[Emile Durkheim]] and [[Ferdinand Tönnies]] and in the more recent contribution of [[social psychology]] and [[cognitive psychology]] research. A former stage of his work had shown that judicial decisionmaking is only possible to the extent where judges use, beyond the formal legal provisions, impersonal and universal values as decision principles -to name these, he coined the term of "global axiological space" (1985, 1990).
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| ''[[The Social Capital Foundation|.... (read more)]]''
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| ! style="text-align: center;" | [[The Social Capital Foundation#Bibliography|notes]]
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Paramhansa Yogananda circa 1920.
Paramhansa Yogananda (5 Jan 1893–7 Mar 1952) was one of the first Indian teachers from the Hindu spiritual tradition to reside permanently in the West, and in particular, he was the first to teach yoga to Americans. He emphasized the universality of the great religions, and ceaselessly taught that all religions, especially Hinduism and Christianity, were essentially the same in their essence. The primary message of Yogananda was to practice the scientific technique of kriya yoga to be released from all human suffering.
He emigrated from India to the United States in 1920 and eventually founded the Self-Realization Fellowship there in Los Angeles, California. He published his own life story in a book called Autobiography of a Yogi, first published in 1946. In the book, Yogananda provided some details of his personal life, an introduction to yoga, meditation, and philosophy, and accounts of his world travels and encounters with a wide variety of saints and colorful personalities, including Therese Neumann, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Luther Burbank, and Jagadis C. Bose.
Paramhamsa, also spelled Paramahamsa, is a Sanskrit title used for Hindu spiritual teachers who have become enlightened. The title of Paramhansa originates from the legend of the swan. The swan (hansa) is said to have a mythical ability to sip only the milk from a water-and-milk mixture, separating out the more watery part. The spiritual master is likewise said to be able to live in a world like a supreme (param) swan, and only see the divine, instead of all the evil mixed in there too, which the worldly person sees.
Yogananda is considered by his followers and many religious scholars to be a modern avatar.
In 1946, Yogananda published his Autobiography of a Yogi. It has since been translated into 45 languages, and in 1999 was designated one of the "100 Most Important Spiritual Books of the 20th Century" by a panel of spiritual authors convened by Philip Zaleski and HarperCollins publishers.
Awake: The Life of Yogananda is a 2014 documentary about Paramhansa Yogananda, in English with subtitles in seventeen languages. The documentary includes commentary by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar, among others.[1][2]
