poverty, culture and social capital in

8/3/2019 Poverty, Culture and Social Capital In

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C E N T R O JOURNALV O L U M E XX N U M B E R I

SPRING 2008

REVIEW ESSAY

Poverty, culture and social capital inPuerto Rican urban communities

FELIPE PIMENTEL

Und erstanding M ainland Puerto Rican PovertyBy Susan S. Bake r

Philadelphia: Tem ple U niversity Press, 2002235 pages; $24.95 [paper]

Grow ing Old in El BarrioBy Jud ith N oem i FreidenbergNew York: N Y U Press , 2000

310 pages; $22.00 [pap er]

Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos and the Neoliberal CityBy Arlen e DvilaBerkeley: University of California Press, 2004

260 pages; $21.95

Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston BarrioBy M ario Luis Small

Chicago: T he University of Chicago Press, 2004226 pages; $20.00 [paper]


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H igh poverty levels among Puerto Rican populations living in the mainlandand on th e island have been serious public issues and the subject of aconsiderable number of research publications and policy repo rts. Accordingto Census data, Puerto Ricans have one the highest rates of poverty and substandardliving cond itions among Latino residen ts in the United States. W hile in early 2000sthe poverty rate in Puerto Rico was about 45 percen t, that of Puerto R icans residingin the mainland was close to 26 percen t; and tha t of Puer to Rican children unde r 18years of age was about 33 percent. The poverty rate for this ethno-national minorityis only exceeded by the poverty rate for Dominicans (about 30 percent) togetherbo th groups are considered the poorest among Latino subgroups in this coun try.

Endem ic urban poverty among racial and ethn ic m inorities has been explainedfrom different theoretical perspectives in the social sciences. For instance,the so-called culture of poverty's approach became popular in the 1960s with thepublication of Oscar Lewis's books about Puerto Rican and Mexican families livingin deprived socioeconomic co nditions. According to this view, urban poverty amongPuerto Rican families reflects certain normative orientations and cultural values thatpredispose them to live in marginality, lacking essential social and cultural resou rcesneeded to break out from self-reproduced circles of poverty. During the 1970s andearly 1980s other approaches inspired by political economy and Marxist analysesbecame popular. These radical views focused on structural inequalities ra ther thancultural explanations and presented a different set of structural explanations toaccount for the material disadvantages of Puerto Ricans. Within that context,one can recall the dual labor market and under-class theories that have explainedsevere poverty and socioeconomic inequalities suffered by minority racial and ethnicgroups in America. These inequalities have occurred as an outcom e of structuraldiscriminatory mechanisms embedded in the labor market and reproduced in theclass structure of a capitalist economy. From that perspective, Puerto Rican workersare poor and earn lower wages because they have been concentrated in low-paid,unskilled jobs in a segmented labor market in which income and wage differentialsreproduce p attern s of structural socioeconomic inequalities. In recent years wehave seen a redefinition of these structural explanations and the em ergence ofinterdisciplinary analyses that address the conten tious q uestion of Pue rto Ricanurban poverty from new angles, grounding their analyses on bo th quantitative andqualitative data sources.

In this review essay, I examine four books that address, in one way or the other,the problem of urban poverty in Puerto Rican communities located in the UnitedStates. These books present thought-provoking ideas about socioeconomic issuesaffecting these com munities and advance exciting interpreta tions abou t social,economic and cultural questions that are vital for the critical understanding of thePuerto Rican populations residing in the United States.Understanding Puerto Rican Poverty analyzes the socioeconomic experiences of


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Mexicans and Cubans in the United States. To summarize Barker's point of view,let's po int o ut th at she disagrees with sociological analyses tha t have lumped toge therPuer to R icans and other L atinos without taking into consideration th e peculiaritiesand specificities of each grou p. In essence. Barker argues that significant differencesamong Latinos canno t be ignored when analyzing each group.While the first section of her book examines the Puerto Rican experience vis--vis other Latinos, and how Puerto Rican immigration processes have shaped theirearly integration and current socioeconomic stratification, the second part seeks tomap geographically th e P uerto Rican com munity. M apping data by regions, the b ookmakes an im portant contribution to th e sociological understanding of Puerto Ricansin the U .S. by highlighting how and why their situation varies across the Un itedStates. Groun ding her analysis on primary and secondary data, the au thor arguesthat, in general, the socioeconomic situation of Puerto Ricans in the South and theW est (the so-called Sun Belt) has been much b etter than th at of the comm unitieslocated in the Northeast region, where the strong Puerto Rican enclaves have beenhistorically rooted. In this part. Barker examines the distribution of median-incomefamily incom es and poverty rates tabu lated by regions. Using data from 1990,she argues that:The average median family incomes for Puerto Ricans in the Northe ast andMidwest (Rust Belt) are much lower than those in the South and West (Sun Belt).The N ortheast's average Puerto Rican family income was only $1 8,7 08 and theMidw est's was $1 9,7 40 . However, the South's was more than $ 2 3 ,0 0 0 and theWest 's was above $2 6, 50 0. (p. 75)

This sec tion of the book explains why regional and geographical differencesare imp ortan t variables for interp reting and analyzing aggregated statisticaldata. Th e author docum ents how the transformation and decline of traditionalmanufacturing industries located in the m etropolitan urban areas around New YorkCity, Philadelphia, Chicago and other urban economies of the N orth east and theMidwest are significant factors that explain the continuing deterioration of thesocioeconomic situation of Puerto Ricans living in those places. In addition. Barkerargues that local conditions are important elements that should be added to a soundstatistical analysis. Eor instance, regarding poverty rates the b ook shows how localcond itions c anno t be overlooked when trying to explain differences in poverty ratesin Puerto Rican comm unities. And in each one of the regions examined, the authorhas found significant variations. She stresses that, "...it has become increasingly clearthat Puerto Ricans fare quite differently from metropolitan area to metropolitanarea within the same region and even within the same state " (p. 80).

O ther questions examined by Baker are nativity or place of birth (mainland versusisland); English proficiency; educational attainment; patterns of internal migration;


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the rest of the country. Remarkably, Puerto Ricans moving out of New York City(and oth er central cities) have increased steadily during several decades. W hile thispat tern of geographical dispersion accelerated during the 1990s, Barker points outtha t many Puerto Ricans are moving to places like central Florida where a vibrantcom munity has almost tripled in a relatively short period of time.Another important finding of this study is how patterns of residential segregationfor the Puerto Rican population diverge depending of the region in question.Specifically, th e degree of residen tial segregation (called dissimilarity index) forPue rto R icans tends to be higher in the N orth east and the Midwest and less intensein the South and the West parts of the country. On this issue Barker says:...we conclude that the unexpected high levels of seg regation between Puerto Ricansand wh ites is con tinuing bu t is not uniform and it confined to the Rust Belt regions,(p. 112)

In th e last par t of the book. Baker focuses on th e dynamics of the labor m arketand on the structural position of Pu erto R icans in the U .S. economy. The authorexamines different theories of labor economics and segm entation of labor m arketsacross racial and ethnic lines. After a brief discussion of issues related to m odes ofincorpo ration and ethnic niches in the U.S. economy. Barker makes a historicalconnection between the current socioeconomic situation of Puerto Ricans and theirimmigration processes since the early 20'^ century. While chapter nine discussesthe analytical framework used to interpret the specific mode of incorporation ofLatino immigrants to th e U.S. economy, tha t m odel does not explain the specificcase of Puerto Rican imm igrants. Regretfully, the book does not articulate wellan adequate theoretical framework to account for the "uniqueness" of the PuertoRican experience. In th e following two cha pters . Baker looks at different pat tern s ofincorpo ration in other urban areas of the No rtheas t. She argues that relatively highpoverty rates for Pue rto Ricans should be explained in relation to th e kind of low-skill, low-wage jobs tha t have been disappearing in the N orthea st urban economies,where the majority of Puerto Rican workers have been concentrated.

Though this book lacks a well-developed theoretical framework, it offersimpo rtant information about the current socioeconomic situation of Puer to Ricanpopulations in the mainland. In general, the book is well organized and clearlywritten . And it makes ingenuous comparisons between Puerto Ricans and othe rLatino groups, highlighting the diversity of Puerto Rican populations across theUnited States. The author emphasizes that in order to fully understand why PuertoRicans have suffered from high pover ty levels vis--vis othe r racial and eth nicgroups in the U.S. any sound analysis should take into consideration the colonialsubordination of Puerto Rico and its political and economic dependency in regardsto the Un ited States.


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communities as inadequate. (The question of culture and Puerto Rican urbanpoverty tha t is a subject tackled by other books being discussed in this review essay.)

Judith Noemi Ereidenberg's Growing Old in El Barrio is an ethnographic researchabout the aging Latino residents of East Harlem, the historical Puerto Rican ethnicenclave in New York City. W hile the bo ok discussed previously examines povertyat the macro-level of analysis, presenting a quantitative analysis of aggregated data,Freiden berg looks at poverty at the micro-level and from the personal perspectives ofher informants. Methodo logically, this anth ropolog ist follows a qualitative approac htha t privileges th e ways people define their personal experiences and give meaning totheir life stories. Th e au thor believes that h er role is to let informants con struc t theirown definitions and cultural understandings rather than using standardized measuresof poverty or relying alone on "objective" socioeconomic indicators .

Th is is a fascinating book, relatively easy to read and coheren tly organized. In thebeginning F reidenberg frames her study historically, discussing some aspects relatedto th e way East H arlem has evolved during the 20' ' century. Thoug h the historicalintrod ucto ry cha pter lacks historical depth , it gives a basic framework to u nde rstandthe life stories of forty-six P uer to R ican elderly people who con stitu te the co re ofthe research.

Th is is a boo k abou t life stories and immigration experiences of aged Pue rto Ricanresidents of El Barrio. M ost informants interviewed were women; men representedabou t a third of the total sample. Inform ants migrated from different regionsof Pu erto Rico to Ne w Y ork C ity (NYC) between 1910 and 1969; the majority(two-thirds of the sample) arrived in NYC between 1940 and i960, a period of highPuerto Rican imm igration to the U nited States. According to informants' accounts,econom ic or family reasons were their m ain motivation s for leaving Puer to R ico andmoving to this country.

This is a bo ok abo ut life stories and imm igrationexperiences of aged Pu erto Rican residents of El Barrio.

A woman nam ed Em iliana M oreno is the principal character of this ethnography.Reading the book, you find her name mentioned throughou t th e entire work.Emiliana came to El Barrio in her forties at the end of the Second War World. Bornin 1902 in Rincn, a town located on th e west coast of Pue rto Rico, this woman tellsus her fascinating life story from childhood up to her living in old age in East Harlem.In a general sense, Emiliana became th e "central voice" of the study. Despi te theemphasis on Em iliana, other P uer to Rican elderly informants shared sociologicalcharacteristics and similar migratory experiences. According to Freidenberg:


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A close connection between the ethnographer and her informants can be stronglyfelt across the entire book. H er emotional connection to Em iliana is explicit, tothe po int where Freidenberg describes it as "friendship." N oticeably, the authorfeels a strong com mitmen t toward this com munity, and especially toward the oldpeople with w hom she has been involved as part of her study. She is concerned withtheir hea lth, general well-being and th e quality of their social and personal lives.Describing the research process, the author says:The people conversed wh ile developing a friendsh ip; responding to pho tographs ofthemselves, of the ir homes and the ne ighborhood; answ ering interview questionsabout specific dimensions of the ir lives in El Barrio. The informants also drew me intotheir daily lives and culture; reciting po etry, teaching me to pray, pointing out thejoys and dangers of the streets o f El Ba rrio, ins truc ting me on the meaning of valuedpossessions she ltered in their homes, and inv iting me to share their food. (p. 8}

Th e research took place during a period of rapid transforma tion of local urbaneconomy in El Barrio, after a decade in which crack-cocaine drug add iction amongyouth and crime were epidemic problems in this community. The elderly PuertoRicans interviewed by Ereidenberg expressed serious concerns about the dangerof living in East H arlem . Many were distrustful of othe r peope living in th eirneighborhood, and some informants had been victims of diverse types of crimes.Th e ethno graphy docum ents how aging people develop social strategies andcom mu nity networks th at serve as suppo rt systems helping them to cope withuncertainties and real or imaginary dangers. Though many of these elderly PuertoRicans suffered from different illnesses, in general the impression that you getreading numerous excerpts from interviews that are part ofthe book narrative isthat they have aged well and bave been able to keep a relatively active life evenduring their old age. As expe cted, religion plays a significant role in th e everydaylife of aging peop le. Attend ing religious services, participating in social gatherings,praying together and keeping religious artifacts and erecting small home altars aresome ofthe religious practices mentioned.

Though many informants complained about loneliness, lack of family support andrelative isolation, the detailed picture about their social life seems more complex.According to the author:...no one in the study population was found to be tota lly isolated: saying one livesalone is far fro m saying one lives unconnected. D observed various types of householdarrangements that disputed census data to wh ich 39 percent of the elderly in EastHarlem live alone, (p. 1166)

One of the m ost impo rtant findings of this ethnography is about the relationship


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that really take into account the needs of elderly residents and their particularcultural and social condition s.

At the end of Growing Old in El Barrio, Ereidenberg p resen ts a series of policyrecomm endations, intending to contribute to the development of a more complexunderstanding of the elderly Puerto Rican population residing in a rapidly changingurban space. W ith in that context, she stresses that this is a heterogeneous group ofpeople and that government policy-makers should "listen" to what Latino aged citizenshave to say. Regarding poverty and socioeconomic difficulties, the author says:Using cross-sectional and long itudina l nuethods, ttiis case study shows thatgeneralizing elderly Pueirto licans in El Barrio as un iform ly poor is m isleading. Thus,while we can safely state th at being Latino and elderly in a low-income urban enclave[resu lt i n] equal risks of being poor, we should note that im portant differencesamong subgroups by age, gender and living arrangements, which are s ignificantlyenough to qua lify the initia l statement to more accurately describe the subpopulationat highest risk of pov erty: elderly m inority females living alone, (pp . 262-3)

As indicated above, during the tim e in which this ethnograp hic study wasund ertoo k, El Barrio was in an intense process of demog raphic, econom ic andsociocultural change. Th e title of chap ter eleven, "Nad ie Sabe Dond e Va a Parar ElBarrio" (Nobody K nows W her e El Barrio Will End U p), suggests that this urbanenclave was facing vicissitudes and u ncerta inties tha t worried m any of its residents.Among recurrent social problems, decrepit housing, unemployment and lack ofeducation for the youth ranked high according to informants. Though Ereidenberg'sGrowing Old in El Barrio brings up these and other public issues, the book does notexpand enough on such themes. On the contrary, the book that I will examine next.Barrio D reams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos and the Neoliberal City, has analyzed superbly howthis urban ethn ic enclave has been transformed during the past twen ty years.

Arlene D vila's interdisciplinary analysis on th e dem ographic, socioeconom ic andcultural transformation of El Barrio presents a solid critical account a bout how thisurban enclave has undergone rapid structural changes th at have reshaped its multipleidentities while displacing its most vulnerable residents. The book has been built onethnographic research carried out during 2001-2002, a period in which the authorattended community board meetings; participated in activities organized by diversecultural and civic organizations; interviewed a rtists, activists and key informants;analyzed public murals and comm ercial advertisemen ts; and studied complexprocesses of gentrification and urban chang e.

Barrio Dreams is organized in six interco nne cted chap ters, in which Daviladiscusses the cultural significance of identity and th e m eaning of place for EastHa rlem's residents; social, econom ic and political issues related to housing andgentrification; intere thnic and interracial tensions among groups living in this


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contrad ictory and unexp ected effects on cultural dynamics and community life.Within this analytical framework the author indicates:I am specially concerned with the intersections between current developmen tinitia tives and people's dreams and aspirations to place. D suggest that veiled inculture and in tricate ly invested in issues of class and consumptionproposalsfor touris m , home-ownership program s, and even the EZ become implicated w ithpeople's ethnic and class identities in multip le and contradictory ways. (p. 3)

Arlene Dvila frames her analysis historically, linking ongoing struggles foraffordable housing and be tter living conditions in El Barrio with earlier mobilizationsand past m emories. This urban enclave in the early 2000s was no longer the onetha t F reidenberg's ethno graphy has described, yet was still suffering from the sameeconom ic disadvantages and inequalities that have affected East Harlem 's poo rresidents for a long time. Dvila stresses this point w hen she writes:Once known as a decaying neighborhood. East Marlem is no longer an overflow ofvacant lots and buildings. Nevertheless, poverty rates in the area have remainedhigh, at 36.9 percent in 20 0 0 , as opposed to 21 2 percent for the city, w ith 36.7percent of population in income support, as opposed to 119.3 percent for the entirecity, and unemployment at 11711 percent as opposed to 8.5 percent for th e city . (p. 7)

Regardless of deep econom ic d rawbacks, living in El Barrio has become less andless affordable for the kind of residents who traditionally have concen trated in thisneighbo rhood, especially poor Pue rto Ricans. Ironically, the arrival of a new waveof professional Latinos has accelerated the gentrification of the neighborhood.Given that rents are still low vis--vis what you pay in other p arts of M anhatta n manyartists, students and young urbanits have increasingly moved to this pa rt of town.In conjunction with other gentrifying processes, the result has been the continuingdisplacement of poor residents who canno t afford to live there any more. Dvila looksclosely at the relationship be tween culture and urban space and its use by competinggroups, from developers to resident organizations. These contending groups havereproduced similar cultural representations of East Harlem, which have encouragedthe ongoing dynamics of gentrification. The demographic changes described in chapterone and the arrival of a new wave of middle class Puerto Rican and Latino residentshave deepened social cleavages, supporting a project of urban renewal that in the longrun may exclude the poor L atino population from this enclave.

In the following section, "El Barrio es de Todo s," Dvila talks abou t what thehistorically rooted Puerto Rican popu lation is doing to keep alive claims for space andplace in East Harlem. This chapter examines thoroughly complex linkages betweenculture, space and gentrification. U sing informants' re prese ntation s of cultural and


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In this part of the study, Davila addresses questions such as the historicaldisadvantages of Puerto Rican and Latinos in housing, their subordinated status inlabor markets, limited access to social and cultural resources and the symbolic valuethat El Barrio has for them. This is one of the best constructed chapters of the book,one that articulates superbly the relationship between multiple material processthat produce increasing socioeconomic inequalities for Puerto Ricans and Latinosliving in urban areas and what Davila calls cultural repre senta tions of the "symboliceconomy" of contemporary cities.

Th e following two chap ters examine specific cultural projects tha t have beenattem pted in East Harlem. One is the "Cultural Industrial Investment Fund for th eUpper M anhattan"; th e othe r is the failed "Edison Project" tha t proposed to movethe M useum of African A rts from Soho to this area of N Y C . Davila discusses howthese culture-based initiatives have triggered racial and ethnic tensions by prom otinggentrification, local tourism and the marketing of culture for economic development.Th e autho r records the voices of those residents opposed to the E Z CulturalIndustry Investm ent Fund. In Dvila's words:Namely, the EZ business of culture represented a direct challenge to the dominantdefinitions and uses of culture in East Harlem, where cultural initiatives have beenrecurrent resources for struggles over rights, representations, and iden tity, andwhere most cultural institutions had been funded as part of such struggles, (p. 9 9 )

Afterward, th e author addresses issues and questions related to cultural politicsand the un intend ed effects of gentrification in social and cultural institutions.According to her analysis, traditionally defined Puerto Rican cultural institutions,like the M useo del Barrio, have been reconfigured to reflect class demands andsocial tastes of a different urban population. In that context, Davila discusses the"W e're W atchin g Y ou" campaign and other kinds of protests led by comm unity

Though Mexican residents account for a significantsegm ent of the local popu lation, the y have beenabsen t from local policy deba tes regarding urban andsocioeconom ic change in El Barrio.organizations concerned with the potential "expunging" of Puerto Rican historyand culture from these local institutio ns. Sum marizing, let's say that according tothis analysis the cultural projects and initiatives me ntione d before have sought toundermine local expression of Puerto Rican and Latino culture for the benefit of


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Barrio. In effect, th e emerging Mexican com m unity has sought the reaffirmationof its cultural and national identities establishing local organizations thatpursuit those objectives. The m ain mission of one of these local com mu nitygroups, named Cen tro Com unal Mexicano en Nueva York (CEC OM X), is theorganization of the Cinco de Mayo Festival in East Harlem. Dvila discussesthe role of this festival in the context of local cultural politics and in relationto the kind of transnational cultural identities tha t these local organizationsnurture and promote. In that context, the author looks at the clashing websof social relations that have unfolded between Mexicans and Puerto Ricans.In this regard, Dvila highlights how a contradictory dynamic of tension andcooperation shapes patterns of interethnic relations between the two groups.On this question the author says:Yet acknowledgements of coope ration in the past and continued collabo ration acrossgroups do not imply a lack of conflict or competition between Mexicans and PuertoRicans. Latino identity does not pervade the scope of identity of R/lexican groups in ElBarrio. After all, the context in which they operate is one of assertion and self-defin ition,processes tha t p arallel and even work against the everyday exchanges and personalrelationships across and among El Barrio's ethnic and racial groupings, (p . 1170)

Regarding the notion o Latinidad, Dvila shows why there is not such a thingas a "natural alliance" among Latinos, suggesting that any sound analysis shouldlook at bot h comm onalities and differences simultaneously. In a certain way,ongoing interethnic tensions between Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in East Harlemare a refiection of past and curren t confiicts between Pue rto Ricans and AfricanAm ericans. However, one cannot exclude the possibility of comm on strugglesfor better housing and other forms of political and social mobilization in favor ofthe poor East Harlem residents across ethnic and racial boundaries. And Dvilaacknowledges how important Puerto Rican participation has been in politicalcoalitions with blacks. Tho ugh Mexican local organizations lack the politicalresources that other groups have accumulated, one cannot discard that in the nearfuture this emerging ethnic group could play a stronger role in local urban politics.

Besides ethnic and racial differences, class and socioeconomic inequalities areimpor tant elements tha t Dvila underlines in her analysis. After all, this is a highlyheterogeneous urban commu nity and, sociologically, ethnic and racial groups arenot homogenous. In that sense, middle-class Puerto Ricans who have been movingto this neighborhood during the past two decades may share social tastes and classinteres ts with oth er new comers from similar social and cultural backgrounds.In th is gentrifying con text, characterized by an exclusionary model of econom icand urban development, local cultural institutions have sought ways to acc ommo datenew demands and expectations from new middle class residents. The emergence and


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The ma rketing and comm ercialization of urban space in El Barrio is not a contest overthe signification of outdoor surfaces, or of East Harlem's public identity as a Latinoneighborhood, as much as it is a confrontation over who is involved in the El barrio'sdefinit ion, and for what ends. (p. 1 83 )

Other questions discussed in tbis part of the book are popular expressions ofstre et art tba t have been used to encourage a comm ercial culture. Paradoxically,the same artistic expressions have been key elements in the process of reaffirmingethnic and national identities for the people living in East Harlem. An importantidea that Dvila seeks to convey is that no t all kinds of culture "are profitably oreconomically viable." In effect, she says tha t the ma rketability and ethnicity andculture "never come w ithout a cost" (p. 211); and tb e people paying tbe highestprice for the so-called urban revitalization and socioeconom ic transform ation ofEl Barrio are the impoverished Puerto Rican and Latino residents.As a final point, Arlene Dvila's Barrio Dreams is a timely contribu tion to theexisting literatu re on gentrification in urban L atino enclaves. By stressing bowurban and cultural processes cannot be com pletely understood w ithout takinginto co nsideration the wider political and economic c ontexts, the book makesa significant con tribu tion to th e field of urban studies. By linking the analysis ofPu erto Rican urban poverty to the dynamics of global markets and the effects ofneoliberalism as the ideological framework for ongoing processes of gentrification,Arlene Dvila has vtritten an outstanding account about the current transformationof El Barrio in New York C ity.While the two ethnographic studies reviewed before have focused on the PuertoRican comm unity of East Harlem, Villa Viuoria: The Transformation of SocialCapital in a Boston Barrio, examines a Puerto Rican urban community in a differentlocation in an urban center o fth e N orth east. Let's start saying that this work isneither a "traditional" ethnography nor a "comm unity study" but a theoreticallyamb itious research combining different sociological metho ds and analyticalperspectives. Sociologist Mario Luis Small describes his own w ork as a "historicallyinformed ethnography," stating that the following: "Readers expecting a traditiona l"ethnography" of Villa Victo ria are likely to be disappointed" (p. xvii).

Th e book is organized in an unusual way. Some chapters can be read indepe nden tlyfrom the others, and sometimes parts of the narrative are not clearly interconn ectedwith the rest o fthe study. Th e book 's focus is the complex and no t always wellunderstood relationship between con centrated poverty and social capital. Hence ,the case of Villa Victoria is used as the empirical setting to tes t new hypothesesand critical reformulations of current theories about the relationship betweenpoverty and the weakening and decline of social capital in urban communities.Small's analysis questions misconceived interpreta tions about the social and culturaldynamics characteristic of poor urban communities associated with the work of


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characteristics of each one. On th e o ther hand, the so-called particularist approachsearches for specific mechanisms that produce unique outcomes in particular cases.The theoretical assumption of this perspective is that one cannot generalize fromsingle case studies and that each poor neighborhoo d has unique local characteristicsthat cannot be overlooked when the researcher is seeking to explain social andcultural dynamics in that specific community. According to Small, both analyticalperspectives search for pa tterns and regularities across poor neighborhoods,withou t addressing which m echanisms play a greater role in each situation.Using the metaphor of a "black box," the author says that he intends to unpackthis "black box" by advocating a perspective that dismisses the erroneous idea ofa"typical poor neighborhood," considering such a notion as analytically unsound forthe critical unde rstanding of social capital in poor urban communities.

In one way or the other, th e so-called conditional app roach embraced by this studyrepresents a middle point between the other two. The author makes explicit thisassertion when he says:Dn common with the pa rticula rist p erspective, a cond itional approach focuses oncontext and interm ediary facto rs; however, it does not aim to explain all the factorsleading to a particular outcome in a given case. Rather, it tends to focus on thoseconditions at least theoretically capable of manifesting themselves in differentneighborhoods settings, (p. 184)

To understand theoretical criticisms vis--vis the existing scholarly literature inthis field (and Small's innovative ideas abou t key topics in urban sociology and thestudy of urban poverty and social capital), one should go back to the first part ofthe book, given tha t Small's theoretical scheme is grounded on data and m aterialspresented across the entire work.In the first two chapters, the author frames historically and sociologically thecommunity tha t he is studying. Before the construc tion of Villa Victoria in the late1970s, there was a vibrant Puerto Rican urban enclave in that part of Boston's SouthEnd. Poor P uer to R ican residents lived in what at that time was Parcel 19, an area thatSmall describes as an extremely deprived urban enclave with 70 percent of familiesliving on public assistance, high unemployment rates, 73 percent of family incomesunder 150 percent of the poverty line in 1970, and a high proportion of householdsheaded by single unmarried women. Boston's South End was an area that had alreadyexperienced waves of spatial ethnic successions, and Puerto Rican migrants who movedinto the neighborhood after W orld W ar II w ere the most recent wave of severalimmigrant cohorts who had been living there since the early 20 '^ century. The decayof the neighborhood accelerated during the 1950s and 1960s, according to Small:Several notable sections of th e neighbo rhood, once beau tiful landscapes accented


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Chapter two examines this process and how previously apathetic P uerto Ricanresidents joined grassroots organizations, gaining momentum with the support fromother constituencies such as college students and community and religious groups.A residen ts' group named Em ergency Ten ants ' Council (ETC), assisted by volunteerurban planners and architects , developed its own proposal for urban renewal tha t aftera while became a viable alternative to the official city plan. Th e alternative housingproject developed by ETC was conceived as a reconstructed comm unity evocative ofPue rto R ico's traditional ways of life. At the end, a new revitalized neighborhood waserected, with an appropriate architecture, green areas and a central plaza inspired onthe one of Aguadilla (ones of the islands' towns). This process of urban change occurredwitho ut displacing longtime Pue rto R ican residents, and a modern housing complexreplaced Parcel 19. After all. Villa Vic toria has been designed to prom ote convivialityand affordable housing for working class people. According to Small:Villa Victo ria was an overwhelming success. Mo st of the families tha t had beenmoved out for rehab ilitation and constiruciion of the neighborhood returned to iheVilla (as residents call it) after each phase of the neighborhood was finished. In theirnew apartm ents, most families paid 25 percent of their income (mo st families nowpay 30 percent of the ir income ). As a resu lt of the efforts of ETC, the Puerto Ricanresidents of Parcel 119 were among the few g roups of res idents of the S outh End whowere able to remain in the S outh End after urban renewal, (pp . 411-2)

Most of Small's book examines cu rrent social and cultural dynamics of VillaVicto ria. This subsidized housing complex has experienced significant changesduring the past decades while the surrounding urban area has undergone extensivegentrification, making South End one of the m ost expensive places to live inBoston. Ironically, since the mid-1980s after a period of high social involvement incom mu nity affairs and grassroots activism. Villa Vic toria res idents ' participation incommunity affairs declined, a process that accelerated in the 1990s. Furthermore,the re sidents of Villa Victoria becam e increasingly isolated and cutoff from thesocioeconomically affluent neighborhood surrounding their housing complex.

W ha t factors do explain the decline of social involvement and residents'particip ation in community affairs at the Villa? Tha t is one of the key questions tha tSmall has sought to answer in his book. N one theles s, he addresses the issue from adifferent angle, stating that the real question should be: could high levels of reside nts'partic ipation have lasted for a longer period of time? In essence, the answer(s) tothese questions constitute the focus of chapters three and four. At this point of hisnarrative. Small examines diverse sociological explanations making specific assertionstha t challenge established theoretica l paradigms. He rejects social disorganizationand structural theories by focusing on demographic and cultural variables that forhim seem to account better for what has taken place in the Villa. On the one hand,


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residents framed their neighborhood as a beautiful place to live (in comparison to theinfamies of living in decrepit buildings in Parcel 19), most of the new residents do no tsee things the same way. To explain those cognitive differences between cohorts ofresidents. Small introduces the concept of "neighborhood narrative frames" seekingto base his interpretation about the decline of social capital on different theore ticalgrounds. Addressing structural misconceptions about poverty, as the only significantvariables to account for lower social participation, he points ou t:Contrary to common assumptions about poor neighborhoods, residents do not merelysee and experience the characteristics of their neighborhood "as it is"; their perceptionsare filtered through cultural categories that highlight some aspects of the neighborhoodand ignore othe rs. Their perceptions become part of an often exp licit na rrative aboutthe neighborhood's role and significance in residents' lives . Stesidents' fram ing of theneighborhood wil l , in turn, affect how they act in or tow ard it. (p . 70)

Certainly, Small's faming perspective advances a different interpretation about thecomplex relationship between poverty and social capital in low-income neighborhoods.Largely, this approach seems to explain to a certain exten t why the first c oho rt of Villaresidents (with a positive perce ption of the place) had a higher degree of com munityparticipation than the new coho rt of residents who lacked the experience of living inthe old crime-ridden neighborhood composed of deteriorated brownstones, which,ironically, have became luxurious renovated buildings at the time of the study.

Though social capital has declined, some forms of community participa tion havesubsisted and Small discusses them. The ecological setting and physical organizationof the V illa, the proximity of green areas and public parks, etc., have created an urbanenvironment that encourages healthy daily social interactions among residents keepingalive a sense of comm unity. And the Villa is well known for its musical and culturalevents. One of these even ts, called the Betances festival, brings over many Latinosliving in the Boston m etropo litan area to the Villa every year. But the success of thisfestivity also serves to reinforce the social and cxiltural boundaries tha t segregate VillaVictoria from white affluent surrounding communities. As Small indicates:...although the festiv al celebrated lif e, equality and the beauty of diverse musical andartistic cultures, the combination of inside and outside circumstances in that sectionof the South End gave the impression of an invis ible fence, draw n neatly around theVil la, that kept residents (and Latinos) in an nonresidents o ut. (p. 98 )

Th e process of gentrification of South End has played a key role in the increasingrelative social isolation of the Villa's residents from local institutions and localbusinesses. Small docum ents racial and social tensions be tween Puerto Ricanand Latino residents of Villa Victoria and the middle and upper class neighbors


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W idesp read negative images about th e Villa have infiuenced some of thereside nts' gloomy views about living there, sentim ents tha t have been reinforced bycomparing the situation of Villa Victoria with the exquisite living conditions of theuppe r middle class professionals of the surrounding South E nd.

Th e alleged relative social isolation of the Villa's residents is examined in dep thin chapter seven. Small found that not all poor Puerto Rican and Latino residentswere socially isolated. Indeed, some residents were strongly connected to peoplefrom other racial and ethnic groups and maintained diverse degrees of interactionand social exchanges with m iddle class residents from different areas of Boston.Th is study suggests that one cannot assume that all poor people living in low-incomecommunities are marginalized and without social and cultural resources. Presentinga complex and dynamic picture of residen ts' participation in social networks andoutside groups. Small shows tha t these residen ts have developed multiple externaland internal social loyalties and a diversity of expectations and aspirations in life. Inreference to his informants. Small poses the que stion: Are Erne sto, Eugenia, Gloria,Melisa and Oscar socially isolated? His own answer is:...by conceiving of the relationship between neighborhood poverty and socialisolation as dynamic, a process that changes over residents' lifetime and depends onintermed iary conditions, such as generational status (including age , language ability,and imm igration statu s) and being employed or in school, (p . 173)

Small's well-timed book shares concerns and questions w ith D vila's BarrioDreams and Freidenberg's Growing Old in El Barrio. In different ways, these scholarlypublications challenge the so-called cultural deficiency perspectives tha t haveblamed poor Puerto Rican and Latinos for the inequalities and poverty that theyhave suffered for decades. These stud ies question the validity of approaches tha thave intended to analyze and explain urban poverty through normative no tions ofculture. Th e tru th is that Puerto Rican residents of El Barrio in East Harlem andVilla Victoria in Boston have developed ingenious mechanisms to cope effectivelywith adverse socioeconomic living cond itions in one way or the other. W hile Small'sstudy emphasizes what he calls cohort effects and differences in cognitive frames tomake sense of people narratives while explaining variations in levels of social capitalin a poor urban enclave, Dvila's research seeks to articulate econom ic, political andcultural factors in an original way by analyzing how poor Puerto Rican res idents of ElBarrio have dealt with the destructive effects of neoliberal pro-m arket policies andthe gentrification oftheir community.

Concluding RemarksIn this review essay I have looked at four different academic works th at examinediverse aspects of the living and socioeconomic conditions of Puerto Ricans in


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practical solutions for recurrent social and economic problems such as high ratesof crime and delinquency; drug addiction; single mo therhood; unemployment andunderem ploym ent; lower levels of education; and so on.

Most important, the qualitative data-based studies discussed in this reviewessay depart from simplistic in terpre tations about urban poverty by payingatten tion to fluid social processes and othe r specific mechanisms that account forcomplex relations between individual agency, cultural understandings and socialcapital (or social networks) in relatively deprived ethn ic enclaves. Each one ofthementioned works has contributed to the scholarly literature in the field by posingpertin ent questions and advancing perspectives that challenge methodologicallyand theoretically taken for granted assumptions in the field of urban anthropology(and urban sociology) and urban studies in general. One common element linkingthese studies together is the shared concern among the authors who questioncurrent theories of urban marginality by looking at the ways poor Pu erto Ricanshave developed ingenious strategies to challenge their own disadvantageous livingconditions. In each case, one sees that regardless of existing material constraintsand the erosion of living conditions due to gentrification and other socioeconomicvariables, Puerto Ricans have been able to maintain primary forms of solidarity anda strong sense of comm unity among themselves.

In the fields of urban and P uerto Rican/Latino studies no one denies that cultureis a significant factor for the analysis of urban com munity life and social partic ipatio nin organizations and in local institutions. In that sense, these studies pose p ertine ntquestions about how to conceptualize culture as part of the critical analysis of urbanpoverty and residents' participation in local institutions and groups. W hile culturehas been conceptualized in many ethnographic investigations as som ething limited tonorms and values, books like Villa Victoria and Barrio Dreams go beyond that narrowviewpoint by using culture as a "cognitive framework" for Luis Mario Small or as a"contentious term" that embodies multiple and contradictory meanings for ArleneDvila, an anthropologist who shares Appadurai's view of culture as articulation andboundary of differences.

Th e o ther significant c ontribution of these books is to fuel the public debateabout tbe destabilizing effects of gentrification on poor ethnic urban com mu nities.In one way or the o ther, the spatial transformation and gentrification of EastHarlem in Ne w Y ork C ity or in the South End in Boston have affected the quality ofsocial life am ong residents and the econom ic and cultural dynamics of these PuertoRican and Latino urban enclaves. W hile in El Barrio one has witnessed processesof displacement of longtime poor residents and of urban restructuring that havereshaped cultural meanings and the demographic and class profile of East Harlem,in the case of Villa Victoria the gentrification of the surroundings has playedperhaps circuitouslya part in the weakening of commu nity institutions and thedecline of social capital.


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poverty, culture and social capital in

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