For all the criticism that has surrounding it, social capital nonetheless remains unambiguously one of social science's most successful export, and should be recognized as such. For this initial success to reach its full potential, however, the challenge remains to deploy a secondary set of tools and concepts that are better suited to enabling a more nuanced and sophisticated conversation on the wide range of specific issues that merit attention. There will always be a place for a term that can convey the essence of social science to larger audiences. but that term should not be expected to carry a load it cannot bear. Social Capital is destined to be as controversial as the broader theoretical,empirical,and epistemological debates in which it necessarily contested concept. It is to the substantive issues to which the social capital literature draws attention - and the accompanying debates that is facilitated - to which we should be directing our energies in the years ahead, simultaneously encouraging broad participation using terms that are amenable, and greater refinement in more specialized circles using the more precise terms, theories, tools, and evidence that serve that purpose.
Civil society organizations have been a key beneficiary of the emergence of social capital as the terminology of choice for facilitating dialogue and debate across diverse constituencies. Whether in public forums, corporate board rooms, the mass media, or the college classroom, social capital as enabled such organizations to be able to argue for and demonstrate the veracity of their concerns in ways that other terms have not. Even so, the core promise of this chapter still holds, namely that further advancements will require civil society organizations to deploy a dual discursive task: continuing to reach out to and engage an ever-widening spectrum of group, while simultaneously refining their theoretical mooring, evidence base and policy prescription - a task for which more specific concepts will be more useful