SOCIAL CAPITAL AS A CONJUNCTIVE CONDITION UNDER FRAGILITY: TRUST, RECIPROCITY, AND COLLECTIVE POSSIBILITY IN MALI

Social capital is widely invoked to explain collective capacity and resilience in crisis-affected settings, yet it is most often treated as an additive stock measured through trust or cohesion indices. This paper advances an alternative conceptualisation by treating social capital as a conjunctive condition: a relational alignment that exists only when trust, inclusive norms, and expectations of reciprocity are jointly present. Drawing on original population-level survey data collected across Kayes, Ségou, and Sikasso in Mali (N = 1,876), the analysis applies a configurational logic to examine whether social capital is present as a lived condition under fragility. The findings reveal a systematic misalignment. While trust and normative cohesion are widespread, expectations of generalised reciprocity are sharply constrained. Only 13.5 percent of respondents meet the strong conjunctive condition, not because social relations are absent, but because reciprocity pessimism functions as a binding constraint. A large “near-miss” group combines trust and cohesion with scepticism about reliance on others, indicating latent but fragile social capital. By distinguishing alignment from accumulation, the paper clarifies why trust-based proxies overstate cooperative capacity in fragile contexts. Methodologically, it demonstrates the value of conjunctive measurement and the analytical importance of pessimism items and scoping questions. Substantively, it reframes social capital as conditional, uneven, and precarious—coexisting with insecurity and material constraint rather than insulating communities from them.