Despite a long tradition of debate over adult education and citizenship, research into the influence of social capital on lifelong learning is still a relative newcomer. This is not simply a matter of changing terminology, though the emerging influence of the concepts of lifelong learning and social capital since the 1990s has certainly played an important role in breathing new life into a well-established line of inquiry. It is also true that the mainstream debate over adult education and active citizenship has been highly normative. For many of the participants, the collection and analysis of empirical evidence took second place to the critique of policy and development of practice. Although some researchers noted the empirical association between participation in learning and involvement in the wider society, the dominant voices in the debate were much more concerned with the restatement of adult education’s social and political purpose, a concern that was often accompanied by anguished analyses of the decline of workers’ education and political education.

Such passions and anxieties may now appear somewhat arcane. Yet an interest in the wider social contexts of lifelong learning is surely not confined to the ranks of aging adult educators like myself. Nor, despite my classical training in social and economic research methods, can I bring myself to eject values and social purpose from the analysis of education and training. My own work has long been marked by an interest in which adults get to participate in learning, and of what kinds; and which adults get to be marginalised and excluded. My initial interest in social capital was partly inspired by a concern to explain patterns of participation in adult learning in Northern Ireland, and partly by a continuing curiosity over the historical and contemporary relations between adult education and active citizenship.

In an early paper on the connections between social capital and lifelong learning, Tom Schuller and I argued that the concept not only offered a potential counterbalance to what we saw as the overemphasis on human capital in the dominant literature (Schuller and Field, 1998). We also suggested ways in which the idea of social capital might help pinpoint some of those social relationships and practices that appeared to promote participation in adult learning (Schuller and Field, 1998).