Making Informal Social Control Happen: Empirical Findings on Collective Efficacy

Abstract

Chapter 3 analyzed social network density in three barrios of Caracas: Catia/23 de Enero (henceforth, Catia), Petare, and Santa Cruz del Este/Minas de Baruta (henceforth, Baruta). It found that social network density was high in all three studied barrios. Such findings point toward some structural composition of social capital present in all the studied barrios. This factor of social capital is necessary for social capital to exist, as it lowers transaction costs of organization-building toward goals like imparting informal social control. The present chapter contributes to the discussion on social capital’s structural composition, and its moderating role of urban violence, by analyzing its second structural factor, collective efficacy, in these three studied barrios. However, two sub-factors compose collective efficacy: Social disorganization and collective action within the institutional context. This chapter shows that high social disorganization does not correspond with high violence rates. Hence, it is an irrelevant sub-factor of social capital. Regarding collective action within the institutional context, the chapter shows that in all the barrios attempts at collective action were not sustainable, likely because of rent-seeking organizations’ presence. This chapter found that only in the barrio of Baruta was there evidence of sustainable collective action. However, the evidence presented has some limitations.