The English government is currently exercised by a breakdown in social cohesion, which is evidenced in the number of citizens who find themselves at risk of social exclusion, that is, disconnected from those networks which bind people into socially beneficial systems. One strand of the policy response is aimed at enhancing local social capital in order to support the participation of individuals in opportunities to be made available to them. This policy line is a sophisticated and complex response. It aims to intervene in the lives of individuals, their families, and their communities in order to disrupt patterns of social exclusion and to offer new pathways of participation, while helping to develop the wherewithal of individuals to engage with these opportunities. The argument therefore runs that if one is to change lives, one needs to change the environments that shape and are shaped by those lives.

This approach therefore appears to have much in common with sociocultural and activity theory (SAT) interpretations of the extent to which the social and cultural are incorporated in the individual. However, SAT analyses are usually strong in their drive from the social or cultural to the individual (Chaiklin, 2001; Engeström, 1987, 1999), but are arguably less well-developed when focussing on how individuals interpret and act in their social worlds. The individual, for example, appears curiously absent in the following accounts.