Do Networks Help People To Manage Poverty? Perspectives from the Field

DOI10.1177/0002716220923959
Date01 May 2020
Published date01 May 2020
ANNALS, AAPSS, 689, May 2020 7
DOI: 10.1177/0002716220923959
Do Networks
Help People To
Manage
Poverty?
Perspectives
from the Field
By
MIRANDA J. LUBBERS,
MARIO LUIS SMALL,
and
HUGO VALENZUELA
GARCÍA
923959ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYDo Networks Help People To Manage Poverty?
research-article2020
Keywords: poverty; social exclusion; social networks;
social support; relational mechanisms;
coping strategies; network poverty
In 2018, a staggering 38 million Americans,
about one in every nine, faced income
poverty. Seventeen million of them experi-
enced deep or extreme poverty, defined as a
household income below 50 percent of the
household’s poverty threshold (Semega etal.
2019). Extreme poverty has almost doubled
between 1995 and 2016 (Brady and Parolin
2019). Given the magnitude of the problem
both in the United States and worldwide, it is
hardly surprising that poverty has had a steady
place on the agenda of the social sciences.
Nonetheless, not all of its features have received
equal attention. A recent literature review of
the causes of poverty (Brady 2019) distin-
guished between three dominant explanations
for poverty: individual behaviors and risk fac-
tors (e.g., unemployment, single motherhood,
Miranda J. Lubbers is an associate professor in the
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology and
director of the Research Group GRAFO at the
Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain. She
investigates personal networks, migration, poverty,
social exclusion, and social cohesion. Her recent work
appears in, among others, Social Networks, Human
Nature, and the International Migration Review. She is
coauthor of the book Conducting Personal Network
Research: A Practical Guide (Guilford Press 2019).
Mario Luis Small is Grafstein Family Professor of
Sociology at Harvard University. His research interests
include urban poverty, inequality, culture, networks,
and case study methods. He is the author of Villa
Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a
Boston Barrio (University of Chicago Press 2004),
Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in
Everyday Life (Oxford University Press 2009), and
Someone to Talk to (Oxford University Press 2017).
Correspondence: mirandajessica.lubbers@uab.es
8 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY
cultural schemas, and repertoires guiding behaviors), structural factors (e.g., the
economic and demographic context), and power and institutions that create
policies affecting poverty rates (e.g., by redistributing resources, investing in
capabilities, or “disciplining the poor”). Both structural and institutional explana-
tions have included meso-level factors, such as neighborhoods and organizations.
These meso-level conditions have also received attention in other reviews
(Desmond and Western 2018; Small and Newman 2001) and special issues (e.g.,
Allard and Small 2013; Friedrichs, Galster, and Musterd 2003; Lee etal. 2015).
In contrast, a meso-level concept that has received far less attention in such
reviews for its role in poverty is that of social networks. This limited attention is
surprising, since poverty is profoundly relational (Desmond and Western 2018;
Hall 2019; Walker 2014) in the sense that it is lived, managed, negotiated, and
reproduced in relationships with others. Research into social networks and pov-
erty has made it clear how important it is to pay attention to the role of networks
in how people experience, cope with, and seek to escape poverty. Nonetheless,
researchers have drawn widely diverging conclusions. Some authors have empha-
sized how networks are an essential survival mechanism, whereas others find that
they exacerbate the risk of social exclusion, and still others present alternative
perspectives. It is unclear how these contrasting findings can be consolidated.
This volume aims to push our understanding of the role of social networks in
the day-to-day subsistence of families and individuals suffering economic hard-
ship further. We have two objectives: (1) we seek to update the literature with
new, fieldwork-based evidence on how networks affect how people cope with
poverty; and (2) we aim to refine and expand on the theoretical processes through
which networks are mobilized in times of need. The multiple causal pathways
between network conditions and poverty remain only partly mapped out. While
many social relationships emerge in organizations in which people routinely par-
ticipate (Small 2009), little is known about the conditions under which these
organizations contribute to the creation of social capital among their clients or
participants. The studies and results reported in this volume intend to inform
theory, substance, and practice by expanding on the many ways networks are
related to poverty.
Hugo Valenzuela García is an associate professor in social and cultural anthropology at the
Autonomous University of Barcelona. His main research interest is economic anthropology
(poverty, precarious work, peasantry, entrepreneurship, work, consumption) and he has
conducted fieldwork in Malaysia, Mexico, and Spain. He is associate editor of the Journal of
Organizational Ethnography.
NOTE: We thank the RecerCaixa program for their research support to Miranda Lubbers
and Hugo Valenzuela (RecerCaixa, 2015ACUP 00145), which also helped us to organize
the workshop “Who cares? Relational mechanisms involved in the day-to-day subsistence of
families and individuals struggling with poverty” in Barcelona on February 7–8, 2019, at which
the articles in this volume were originally presented. We thank Harvard University and its
Project on Race, Class and Cumulative Adversity, funded by the Ford Foundation and the
Hutchins Family Foundation, for research support to Mario L. Small. The articles in this
volume benefited from the generous feedback of the other participants of the workshop, as
well as of the anonymous reviewers. We thank Thomas Kecskemethy and Emily Babson for
their support and advice at all stages of this project.

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