Social capital is a core concept in business, economics, organizational behaviour, political science, and sociology, defined as the advantage created by a person's location in a structure of relationships. "By analogy with physical capital and human capital - tools and training that enhance human productivity - the core idea of social capital theory is that social networks have value. Just as a screwdriver (physical capital) or a college education (human capital) can increase productivity (both individual and collective), so too social contacts affect the productivity of individuals and groups". It explains how some people gain more success in a particular setting through their superior connections to other people. There are in fact a variety of inter-related definitions of this term, in popular literature, which has been described as "something of a cure-all" (Portes, 1998) for all the problems afflicting communities and societies today.
While various aspects of the concept have been approached by all social science fields, some trace the modern usage of the term to Jane Jacobs in the 1960s. However, she did not explicitly define a term social capital but used it in an article with a reference to the value of networks. The first cohesive exposition of the term was by Pierre Bourdieu in 1972 (though clear formulation in his work can be traced to 1984). James Coleman adopted Glenn Loury's 1977 definition in developing and popularizing the concept. In the late 1990s, the concept became respectable, with the World Bank devoting a research programme to it and its use in Robert Putnam's 2000 book, Bowling Alone.