By Margi O'Connell Hood

I wish to talk about the role of housing cooperatives in building a civil society. Firstly I will talk about social capital and housing cooperatives then look at the social capital provided by being a member of a cooperative, not just by being housed. Finally I would like to share some thoughts about what type of participation builds a civil society.

Civil society is a very topical subject in Australia. As we dismantle our welfare state, communities are being asked to take the place of government intervention in solving social problems. New strategies based on concepts of community sustainability and capacity building are being implemented to build new forms of social capital. Social capital is the intangible wealth that comes with good social networks, extended families, clubs and societies, and a healthy community life. It is the wealth generated by participation.

Academics studying social capital in the USA (Robert Putnam) and Australia (Eva Cox) have identified a number of characteristics of social capital that are relevant to us as cooperators, two of which I would like to raise with you. Firstly, social capital can be bonding capital or bridging capital.

Bonding capital ties people to each other in families, friendships, religious groups, cultures and nations. Bonding capital supports our intimate relationships but it is excluding. A person belongs to this family not that one, this religion or nation but not that one.

Bridging capital is strategic linking. Bridging capital is the social capital cooperatives build through the international cooperative principles of open membership, cooperation between cooperatives and participation in the community.

As we enter the era of the global village, bonding capital is being eroded and people are becoming isolated as Professor Munkner highlighted yesterday - families are smaller and children move away; secular society replaces religious ones, etc. There are many small reasons but one of the most powerful, discovered by American researchers after controlling for age, religion, mobility, and working hours, among other things, was ?. television. People are watching television rather than participating in their communities. And when the researchers looked at the people who watched a lot of television they found them more depressed and less trusting than other people - and 'trust', they believe, is the currency of social capital.

People participate in cooperatives not primarily for social capital but because, through cooperatives, they can acquire something tangible that they cannot otherwise achieve. This provides a motive to participate in cooperatives that is not found in other forms of social groupings. And the international cooperative principle of participation means you must interact to keep your membership. This way cooperatives are very powerful tools for building the social capital needed for a rich civil society - people are motivated and tangibly rewarded for their participation.

My second point is about the two forms of social capital generated by housing cooperatives. Much of what I heard yesterday was about the social capital generated by providing housing. In Australian we do this in a number of ways so it is possible to separate the social capital of housing from the social capital of cooperative participation.

Safe, secure and affordable housing, by any means, increases employment and educational opportunities for individuals, and enriches communities. But cooperative participation in housing also teaches success through solidarity. In cooperative housing a person, who may previously have been socially excluded, used the system successfully to provide for a very important need. They personally succeed. (Albeit with a little help from their friends.) This is an experience that changes and empowers them. They realize that they, personally, can change other things in their own lives and in their communities.

But not all forms of cooperative participation do this. The second important discovery about social capital is that it grows better in horizontal decision-making structures rather than in vertical, or hierarchical, structures; that is, where members are actively involved in decisions at the policy level.

The international cooperative principle of democratic decision-making highlights this but there are two forms of democracy - representative and participative. Participative democracy builds the social capital needed for a civil society. Participative democracy means involvement in the policy-making decisions of the organisation not just the design of your own house.

This raises the questions of size and complexity in our cooperative models. Studies in altruism, (that is, people's willingness to care for each other), show that the more people there are involved in something, the less responsible an individual person feels. This is a contributing factor to social isolation in cities. It also works in organisations where there are so many people that 'fairness' is not transparent. When a person thinks someone is benefiting more than they deserve from their level of participation, trust is eroded and they, themselves, begin to participate less. So we need human-sized groupings that stop people 'free-riding' without contributing fairly. We also need transparency in our decision-making processes so that our leaders are accountable and trust is maintained.

To achieve good policies though participation however, the international principle of education becomes critical, as a number of speakers have pointed out. A good education system helps build a strong organisation because, when people understand why decisions are made and take responsibility for those decisions, they are more willing to cooperate - as members and as citizens in a civil society.