Unraveling the relational mechanisms of poverty

Abstract

Unraveling the Relational Mechanisms of Poverty(MARQUES, Eduardo. Opportunities and Deprivation in the Urban South. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2012)The book Opportunities and Deprivation in the Urban South by Eduardo Cesar Leao Marques explores and analyzes a dimension which is traditionally con- sidered secondary (and frequently ignored) in poverty studies: the relationship between sociability configurations and the (re)production of diverse conditions of poverty.Based on a robust and rigorous empirical research with 209 individuals living in poverty situations and 30 middle-class individuals from the Metropolitan Region of Sao Paulo, the book is organized into seven chapters structured in the following way. The first chapter revisits a generous amount of literature devoted to the topics of poverty, segrega- tion and social networks and seeks to build an analytical perspective that aims to show the central argument of the book in conceptual terms, namely, the importance of socia- bility relations to explain the (re) production of poverty. The second chapter has a more descriptive character as it presents the urban structure of the Metropolitan Region of Sao Paulo and the locations and methodological procedures of the research. The third chapter characterizes the networks of poor individuals and their relation with various attributes, revealing their heterogeneity, and an analysis of the existing similarities but especially the differences in comparison to the social networks of middle-class individuals. The fourth chapter furthers the understanding of heterogeneity concerning the sociability of poor individuals by constructing two typologies (one based on network characteristics and the other on individual's sociability patterns). The fifth chapter discusses the role that net- works and sociability play on the social situation of individuals, focusing on how networks mediate the access of individuals to various markets (goods, services, labor etc.). The sixth chapter continues the analysis of the role of networks and sociability, but now focusing on the access to goods and services by non-market means, which operate within the re- lational webs in which individuals are embedded. The seventh chapter, at last, identifies and analyzes the relational mechanisms that explain the relations observed in previous chapters between the different configurations of individual's social networks (and their changes over time) and poverty conditions marked by significant heterogeneity.Despite the focus of Eduardo Marques's book being the relationship among poverty, segregation and social networks, the analytical contributions transcend these thematic limits as it is important for the social sciences as a whole. In this sense, what stands out is its theoretical contribution by adopting a relational approach within an academic field where attributes and individual characteristics are still hegemonically understood as cen- tral elements (and sometimes the only ones) to construct explanatory models. Without ig- noring the importance of such attributes and characteristics, Marques' analysis highlights the importance of the relational position of individuals for the (re)production of situations of poverty from the argument that access to the structures of opportunities that lead to social conditions in general, and situations of poverty in particular, are me- diated by the relational patterns these individuals have with other individuals and with various kinds of organization (pp.3I).The analytical treatment of this relational dimension of poverty, however, goes be- yond the general statement about the importance of social relations for the definition of individuals' life conditions, which characterizes much of the literature on social capital (especially those adopting a more normative perspective). On the contrary, the author analyzes how different configurations of individuals' networks (in terms of diameter, ho- mophily, localism etc) form quite heterogeneous structures of opportunities, while also highlighting individual agency and the contingencies, or the diverse uses of those oppor- tunities by individuals. …