The Strength of Family Ties and Community Social Capital: A Mixed-Methods Examination of Zadar, Croatia

Abstract Research has amply documented how the strong orientation toward the well-being of one’s own family can negatively affect an individual’s concern for issues within their broader community and the formation of civic social capital. The research presented in this article examines the relationship between the strength of family ties and civic social capital in the Croatian coastal city of Zadar using a mixed-methods approach. The results, explained in detail using common sociodemographic variables, reveal that the strength of family ties here does not have a substantial effect on most of the indicators of civic social capital. Such findings provide important insights regarding the intricate nature of the relationship between ties to family members and ties to the broader society within a postsocialist context, but also regarding the methodological problems with some of the common indicators of civic social capital.