“I Have Nowt, But I Have Me Mates”: Ties That Bind and Blind—Bonding to Dark Social Capital in a Deindustrialized English Village

Based on an ethnography with White working-class youth in a deindustrialized English village, this paper interweaves street-level observations and conversations with Robert Putnam’s social capital theory. In particular, it explores the deployment of “dark” bonding social capital, building on Alejandro Portes’s identification of potential negative consequences of close-knit ties. The analysis reveals that while bonding social capital mobilizes strong ties of trust and reciprocity to provide a vital emotional and economic safety net, these same ties manifest in exclusionary and xenophobic understandings. Consequently, participants perceive “outsiders” antagonistically and blame them for their disadvantage. The paper contends that for these young people, the social capital ties that “bind” them together for support also “blind” them to a systemic understanding of their disadvantage.