High-Connectedness in Three Barrios of Caracas: Empirical Findings on Social Network Density

Abstract

Venezuela’s macrostructure of rent-cum-marginality did not increase the susceptibility to violence in the barrios of Caracas during the twenty-first century. However, during this time violence in the barrios of Caracas was significantly high, and thus this undesirable social outcome behaved pro-cyclically (see Chap. 1). This chapter begins the analyses of social capital’s moderating effect between the politico-economic macrostructure and urban violence to explain this pro-cyclical behavior of urban violence rates in relation to the macroeconomic indicators. To this end, this chapter focuses on analyzing social network density in the three studied barrios of Caracas: Catia/23 de Enero (henceforth, Catia) located in the east, Petare in the west, and Santa Cruz del Este and Minas de Baruta (henceforth, Baruta) in the center-south of Caracas. After a qualitative comparative analysis of barrio inhabitants’ relational data in the barrios mentioned above, this chapter explains that in these barrios social network density was high in all of them. High social network density means that overall barrio inhabitants possessed multiple social connections beyond nuclear family and close friends. This finding points to a particular composition of social capital, as this factor is a necessary one for such substructural variable to be present.