Social Capital: Bonding Capital vs Bridging Capital

Bonding capital is a form of capital associated with people who share common demographics such as age, religion, race, or political beliefs.

Bonding capital allows the formation of deep trust - the type of trust you have for a wife or child. This sort of trust is needed to get people campaigning for a political candidate, or for getting friends to being willing to loan you a lot of money on a promise.

Social networks consist of tight clusters of people with commonalities and people who bridge such groups to bring people together.

Bridging capital is the form of social capital which connects people from different clusters together.