Let’s take our discussion of social capital one step further by imagining the life of a person who is born into a modest family, grows up on the outskirts of a less-developed region, and, despite having personal abilities, education, and ambition, spends his entire life dealing with a social network that is much weaker than the one other people inherit.
Let’s say his family isn’t completely without assets. Perhaps they are a family of small property owners, people who own a home and maybe a few other modest assets, but who have never built a particularly strong social network. And the problem isn’t necessarily that they don’t know anyone. The real problem is that those relationships are not necessarily made available to everyone in the family.
Inside the extended family, there may be intense competition, but there can also be something subtler and perhaps even more common: the tendency to keep useful contacts for oneself.
An uncle might know an influential person, have a valuable professional connection, know an executive, a business owner, a politician, or someone who could provide access to an opportunity. Yet that connection is used for his own children, his daughter-in-law, or his son-in-law. When it comes to helping the child of a brother or sister, a niece, or a nephew, suddenly the family relationship seems to lose all its value.
It is almost as if, within the same family, there are several smaller families, each one concerned with protecting and advancing only its own branch.
Our protagonist therefore grows up in a situation where the family name and bloodline give him a sense of belonging, but not necessarily access to opportunities.
And that distinction is crucial.
Because a family can be large and, at the same time, possess very little shared social capital.
Eventually, this person studies, acquires skills, develops expertise, and tries to build a better life. But when he starts looking around, he realizes that something doesn’t add up. He discovers that talent does not automatically translate into social mobility. He understands that there is a gap between being capable and being able to turn your abilities into opportunities.
And this is precisely where marriage enters the picture.
Not, however, in the way we normally think about social climbing.
Our protagonist does not use marriage as a social elevator.
He does not look for a wife from a wealthier family. He does not look for a husband from a higher social class. He does not choose a partner because of the family name, wealth, connections, or social access that person might bring into his life.
Instead, imagine that he falls in love and marries someone who actually comes from an even more modest background than his own.
If he comes from a family of small property owners, she might come from a family of renters. If his family owns at least a home, hers might have spent their entire lives renting. If he inherits a few modest assets, she may bring virtually nothing into the marriage in terms of wealth or social connections.
From the standpoint of social mobility, therefore, this marriage does not represent a move upward.
And that matters because it shows that not everyone experiences marriage as a strategy for social advancement.
For our protagonist, marriage is simply marriage. It is the decision to build a life with someone he loves, not a strategy for entering a more powerful family.
But precisely because of this, he gives up—consciously or unconsciously—one of the ways in which people have historically expanded their social capital.
He does not acquire a wealthier family.
He does not inherit new connections.
He does not automatically enter a higher professional environment.
He does not suddenly find himself surrounded by people who can open doors for him.
His marriage may be perfectly happy and, at the same time, completely neutral from the standpoint of social mobility.
And that distinction is worth emphasizing, because it allows us to separate two things that are often confused: the success of a life and the success of a social-mobility strategy are not necessarily the same thing.
At this point, our protagonist may try to compensate for this lack through other avenues.
He might turn to politics.
But even there, he may encounter a particular problem. Imagine that he lives in a region where the major institutions are controlled by a political camp completely different from his own.
He might be a person on the political left living in a region governed by the right—or, conversely, someone on the right living in an area governed by the left.
If he wants to participate in politics because he genuinely believes in its ideas, of course he can support the opposition. But if his goal is also to build a network capable of generating professional or institutional opportunities, the situation becomes more complicated.
Not because people in the opposition are incapable of helping anyone. They certainly can. But when someone is looking for opportunities that depend, directly or indirectly, on institutions, proximity to those who actually hold power can become an important resource.
And this is where a very particular temptation can emerge: pretending to belong to an environment in which you do not actually recognize yourself.
He might join a political party, spend time in its circles, build relationships with people in that political camp—not because he has changed his beliefs, but because he hopes that proximity will eventually lead to a recommendation or an opportunity.
At that point, however, the issue is no longer simply social.
It becomes a question of identity.
How much is a person willing to sacrifice in order to build social capital?
Is he willing to pretend to be someone he is not?
And above all, if he has to give up his convictions in order to obtain an opportunity, what has he really gained when that opportunity finally arrives?
It is possible that this contradiction will convince him not to use politics as his primary vehicle for advancement.
He may decide that he does not want to be anyone’s client.
He does not want to spend his entire life owing something to a politician.
He does not want someone to be able to remind him forever that his success came through their favor.
And so another, much harder path remains: building an independent network.
Not entering someone else’s network, but creating his own.
Here too, however, he may run into a problem.
He can try joining associations, clubs, organizations, communities, and established groups. He may even look toward much more closed organizations, including those commonly associated in the public imagination with Freemasonry, paramasonic groups, or restricted forms of membership.
But even then, there is no guarantee that the organization exists to advance his goals.
An established structure already has its own hierarchy, its own history, and, above all, people who arrived before him.
And so something apparently paradoxical can happen: he joins an organization because he hopes to receive help, only to discover that before he can receive anything, he has to help those above him.
He has to work for the group.
He has to prove his loyalty.
He has to contribute to the prestige of the people occupying higher positions.
And perhaps, after years have passed, he discovers that the social capital he has accumulated is not really his own. It belongs to the leader, the senior figure, the president, the mentor, or whoever happened to occupy the top of the hierarchy when he arrived.
He entered thinking he would use the network and discovers that he has become one of the network’s resources.
There is no need to imagine conspiracies to understand this dynamic. It is enough to observe how human hierarchies normally work.
And so our protagonist may reach a conclusion: perhaps he needs to build a network that is entirely his own.
The problem is that this is the slowest path.
Social capital cannot be built at the same speed as money. Trust takes time because people first have to get to know you, then understand how you behave, and finally have reasons to trust you and introduce you to other people.
You can decide today to build a network, but you cannot expect to have a community of fifty people willing to support you tomorrow.
Social capital grows slowly, through years of encounters, cooperation, reliability, and reciprocity.
And this creates a particularly difficult situation for someone who starts late.
A person may realize at forty that he needs a stronger network, but he cannot immediately make up for the twenty years of relationships that someone else inherited from their family.
At that point, he may begin thinking about changing his environment.
He may start thinking about geographic mobility.
If opportunities are scarce where he grew up, perhaps he can go somewhere where there are more of them. If the region he lives in is characterized by narrow networks heavily shaped by family ties, perhaps he can look for an environment where relationships are more numerous and the possibilities for building a new reputation are greater.
In a small community, everyone may know who you are, yet nobody may really need what you can do.
In a larger environment, the opposite may happen: nobody knows you, but someone may need exactly the skills you possess.
And this is where moving can become a form of social mobility.
Not because changing cities automatically makes someone richer or more important, but because it changes the environment in which their abilities are tested.
The problem is that even this option may be unavailable.
Imagine that our protagonist has elderly family members who depend on him.
This is not simply an emotional bond. It is a concrete responsibility. If there is no one else available to take care of them, moving to another region may become practically impossible.
And so a paradox emerges.
He knows that he might have more opportunities elsewhere, but he cannot leave.
He knows he needs to build a network, but building one will take years.
He does not want to use marriage as a way into a higher social class.
He does not want to turn his political beliefs into a bargaining chip.
He does not want to surrender himself to an existing organization.
And he cannot simply pack a suitcase and start over somewhere else.
At this point, we are no longer talking about someone who is simply “not trying hard enough.”
We are looking at someone who begins from a position in which many of the conventional paths to social mobility are simultaneously weak or closed.
And perhaps this is precisely where the concept of social capital reveals its real importance.
Because inequality is not only about what you own.
It is also about who you know, who knows you, who is willing to introduce you to someone else, and how large the social world is in which you are able to move.
Our protagonist did not inherit a strong network. He did not acquire one through marriage. He does not want to obtain it through political or organizational affiliation, and he cannot easily change his geographic environment.
So he is left with a much slower, but also much freer, path: building his own network.
And this is where the question becomes genuinely interesting.
The issue is no longer simply how to advance professionally.
It is how a person can build a social environment in which their abilities finally have the chance to produce opportunities.
Perhaps they will have to build that network through their work, culture, the internet, personal projects, writing, and random encounters that, over the years, become friendships, collaborations, and new connections.
They may have to do something nobody ever taught them to do: stop waiting for someone to introduce them into someone else’s world and start building a small world of their own—one that, eventually, other people will want to enter.
Because in the end, the problem is not simply escaping your social class.
The problem is escaping the social network you were assigned at birth when that network is not strong enough to accompany you toward the life you want to build.
And perhaps real emancipation begins at the moment a person realizes that they do not necessarily have to become part of someone else’s network.
They can try to become, slowly, the point from which a new network begins to form.
It will not be easy.
It will not be fast.
And there is no guarantee that it will work.
But at least, for the first time, that person will no longer be looking for someone to open a door for them.
They will be building a house with doors they can eventually open for other people, too.
