Interpersonal Violence and Social Networks in the Neoliberal Era: Exploring the Argentinean Case

Abstract

During the 1990s and up to the initial years of the 21st century Neoliberal policies in Latin America produced growing levels of poverty and unemployment associated with growing crime rates. By combining an historical perspective with social disorganization theory this paper aims at analyzing how neighborhood social networks in deprived urban areas intervened in this process. The combination of an historical perspective with the social disorganization approach (diachronic and synchronic perspectives that have usually been treated separately), brings new insights. Firstly, it allows dimensioning the changes in forms of internal cohesion in relegated urban enclaves and their association with interpersonal violence that have seldom been measured in the Latin American context. Secondly, locating social networks and their association with delinquent behavior as part of historical process constitutes a revealing test to the traditional tenets of social disorganization theory