Research on Humanities and Social Sciences www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1719 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2863 (Online) Vol.3, No.4, 2013 82 Social Capital and The Empowerment of Poor Society Ari Wahyudi 1* 1. Students of Doctoral Program of Airlangga University and Lecture State University of Surabaya, Indonesia x E-mail of the coresponding author: ari_plb65@yahoo.com Abstract This article deeply examines the PNPM (National program of the empowerment of urban) which is related to the way to make social capitals, such as bonding, bridging, and linking of the poor people. The specific research problems here are :1) are there social capital such as bonding, bridging, and linking, in the poor people?; (2) can the PNPM (National program of the empowerment of urban) make social capitals such as bonding, bridging, and linking in the poor society?. The perspective of this study is the sociology development. This research is conducted in five sub-districts Mojosari, Mojokerto. The five sub-districts are Sarirejo, Mojosari, Wonokusumo, Sawahan, and Kauman. The data are collected through depth interview and analyzed by flow analysis model through explanation. The result shows that; (1) social capital bonding, bridging, and linking stay on the poor people if their commitment can become the element of social capital. (2) if the government still use their basic project and fund form the abroad in developing poor people, the government’s position will be very weak. It will give effect to the society’s low trust to the government. Finally, social capital such as bonding, bridging, and linking cannot be created in the poor people. Keywords: social capital, bonding, bridging, linking and society development 1. Introduction This article examines the social capital and poor people development in conducting PNPM (National program of the empowerment of urban). The focus of this study is to examine bonding, bridging, and linking as social capitals in poor people which are handled by the PNPM (National program of the empowerment of urban). Bonding is an adhesive between social capitals which create an internal family relation, family and friends, and families and neighbor. Bridging is a bridge of social capitals in the form of relationship between family and environment, stand up for the right and duty equality, deliver the freedom of speech, idea of life, and interest to help another people. Linking is a link of social capital in the form of applying the policy which has been agreed and become the rule (Woolcock, 1998). All of them must be developed fir the empowerment. Unfortunately, there are still many things which are left or less to be considered in making the policy about development. The point of view of this article is the sociology of development, because it places law, policy, and government programs, as the important tools in improving the quality of social capital which will be useful for the national development. This point of view is different from economics point of view which has talked about capital for long time, especially about financial capital. Financial capital is the money which can be used to buy facilities and company production tools now (such as, factory, machine, official tools, and vehicles) or money which can be collected and saved to be an infestation for the future. This financial capital is relatively easy to be understood, even by layman. It is because spending or investing money is part of human daily life and involves the thought and clearer indicators. The financial capital is easily measured (Suharto, 2006). Poverty problems have been stayed in our country since our republic born. Almost in every era (old era until reformation era), the government put the poverty problems as the priority program to be solved. Poverty can mislead us if it is only understood as the reality or objective situation, independent, because poverty cannot only be measured by mastering indicators or materials owner. This statement is strengthened by the poverty rate which cannot be used similarly for all people. It is stated by Ariel Heryanto (Kompas, 21 st April 1994), “Poverty” cannot be discussed absolutely, but relatively in its dichotomy with the “rich” one. The term of poverty always states and is very popular in the developing society. This term is easily spoken but is not easily to be decided how the poverty is, and who included in the poor people is. The writer’s analysis is related to many kinds of poverty dependence programs. There are IDT (President’s instruction of lagged village) in 1994-1998, social group prosperity with Prokesos KUBE KMM (independent young family), Takesra (Society Savings Prosperity), Kukesra Society (Prosperity Business Credit), Middle Class Business Credit, JPS (Social Safety), Developing Food stocks (P2KP), PNPM (National program of the empowerment of urban), etc, still shows many problems and weaknesses in their implementation. The result of the evaluation of many kinds of government programs which are related to poverty dependences are: