DOES PLACE DETERMINE DESTINY? HOW "NEIGHBORHOOD MECHANISMS" MEDIATE FOOD VENDOR SUCCESS IN NANG LOENG, BANGKOK.

AuthorKumar, Anjali

INTRODUCTION

How do different neighborhoods affect the people that reside within? To be sure, extant research points to obvious conclusions. Low resource environments tend to be disadvantageous and produce poor outcomes for residents. But describing exactiy how place influences performance is less intuitive. This study focuses on a residential neighborhood in Bangkok and explores the specific causal pathways by which location impacts the job success of self-employed food vendors.

In the historic Bangkok neighborhood of Nang Loeng, a tale of two cities emerges. Food vendors clustered near the Wat Sommanat temple perceive that their counterparts near the Nang Loeng market enjoy "better" business. Through the frame of "neighborhood effects" research, this article suggests which "neighborhood mechanisms" explain this divide.

NEIGHBORHOOD EFFECTS

The topic of "neighborhood effects" includes the impact of geography on residents' socioeconomic life outcomes. As documented by Jencks and Meyer, early queries investigated how residence in impoverished neighborhoods affected varied arenas of life such as health outcomes, criminal behavior, educational attainment, and economic success. (1)

Over the past two decades, research has built upon this initial work to reaffirm that ecological poverty consistently results in adverse outcomes. Residence in a low-income neighborhood corresponds to negative and risky health behaviors among female adolescents, (2) low attendance at local health centers, (3) high diabetes rates, (4) high teenage dropout rates, (5) depressed wages, (6) and high rates of homicide, robberies, and rape. (7)

In the last five years, neighborhood effects literature has increasingly examined how the ill effects of disadvantage spread beyond the boundaries of a neighborhood. Socioeconomic inequality within a neighborhood leads to increases in crime in the environs surrounding it; (8) black females are likely to suffer from shorter telomere length and produce disproportionately unhealthy children (even when they have moved to more affluent neighborhoods); (9) and individuals from disadvantaged neighborhoods carry a stigma that disadvantages them in economic exchanges with non-neighborhood counterparts. (10)

NEIGHBORHOOD MECHANISMS

Understanding the causal pathways is central to understanding how place and outcome are interconnected. Neighborhood effects literature has repeatedly documented the relationship between impoverished places and unhealthy residents. Yet, the exact reasons why could vary. Low wages may cause residents to make poor food choices; low levels of education may lead to low information about healthy lifestyles; or, a lack of sanitation services may result in polluted water supplies, leading to a proliferation of waterborne diseases. Indeed, across literature reviews of neighborhood effect studies, "the causal pathways that underlie hypotheses about the effects of neighborhood[s]"--are typically implied rather than explicitly defined."

Causation has been understudied because neighborhood effects literature has largely been the domain of quantitative, rather than qualitative, studies. Statistical studies are often drawn from historical records and tend not to engage directly with the neighborhood at hand. The authors of most quantitative research studies largely generate their hypotheses about causation from theoretical reflection ex ante. (12) At times, these research hypotheses have proved misguided. They intuited intermediate effects that never appeared once the data had been analyzed. Hence, engaging with a given neighborhood to first search for the causal linkages that connect geography to outcomes proves important in setting the stage for robust research.

Where neighborhood effects literature has referenced causation, it has done so with specific nomenclature. The term "neighborhood mechanisms" has been coined by sociological literature to explain how or why a given neighborhood produces a specific effect on its residents. (13)

Different qualitative researchers have proposed specific neighborhood mechanisms that fit the models of their studies. These mechanisms are often grouped under thematic categories. The four most dominant categories to emerge are social-interactive, environmental, cultural, and institutional. (14)

First, social-interactive mechanisms refer to social processes within neighborhoods. For example, "collective efficacy," or feelings of mutual trust and solidarity, can inspire individuals within a given residential community to take tangible action towards fostering the common good. (15)

Second, environmental mechanisms spring from physical attributes of geographic space. In certain neighborhoods, "physical disorder," such as graffiti and litter, can weaken social order, inducing said residents to wallow in malaise and disinvest in their communities. (16)

Third, cultural mechanisms can govern how members of a particular community interact with the outside world. Cultural mechanisms include frames, narratives, symbolic boundaries, and cultural capital. (17) Frames, the lens through which communities observe the world around them, and narratives, the specific interpretations of one's community as it relates to the outside world, can guide the perceptions of community members. (18) Symbolic boundaries, the moral separation of different groups of people, can highlight divisions between different neighborhoods. (19) Cultural capital, the "styles" or "tastes" associated with higher-income neighborhoods, often predisposes high-class peers to relate exclusively to other higher-income neighborhoods. (20)

Finally, institution-based mechanisms can have both positive and negative effects. Institution-based mechanisms comprise neighborhood-based organizations, codified rules, norms governing service delivery, and macro-level systems (such as the health care system and the criminal justice system). (21) On the one hand, low-income residents are subject to "complex bureaucracies that regulate their opportunities, constraints, and behavior." (22) On the other hand, local institutions, such as childcare centers, can expose residents to business, civil sector, or governmental resources that they would not otherwise access. (23)

MECHANISMS IN HETEROGENEOUS NEIGHBORHOODS

Neighborhoods are rarely homogenous. (24) This point proves particularly salient in the developing world. Data collected from eighty-five demographic studies across Africa, Asia, and Latin America reveal that poor households do not necessarily live in uniformly poor neighborhoods; rather, comparatively more affluent households are interspersed with impoverished ones. (25)

Although past research often assumes that neighborhood mechanisms affect all residents equally, evidence suggests that mechanisms may affect sub-populations within a neighborhood in different ways. For example, in a low-income housing complex in Boston, outcomes were mediated by the cultural mechanism of narratives. (26) Importantly, one sub-population viewed the complex as a "ghetto" and thus was disinclined to participate in communal activities. (27) In contrast, the other sub-population viewed their complex favorably and participated in community-building activities. (28) A given mechanism can also produce different results in two sub-populations when they are differentiated by race. The institutional mechanism of the American criminal justice system limits the pool of potential marriage partners for poor black females by disproportionately removing large numbers of poor black men from society. (29) As a result, in certain neighborhoods, low marriage rates exist among low-income black females, but not among low-income white females. (30)

Neighborhood mechanisms, then, should not assume a singular effect across a neighborhood. Instead, research should consider how a singular mechanism might differentially affect sub-populations residing within a neighborhood. (31) This article heeds that advice by exploring the different outcomes produced amongst two sub-populations in the Nang Loeng neighborhood of Bangkok.

MECHANISMS MEDIATING JOB SUCCESS

Neighborhood effects research focusing specifically on job success in the United States and Europe typically references social-interactive mechanisms that mediate employability. (32) "Social capital" is limited for residents in low-income neighborhoods because their peers are low skilled. (33) "Spatial mismatch," in which employment opportunities are located far away from low-income neighborhoods, can deter employment due to such factors as high commuting costs and long commuting times. (34) Finally, "negative stigma," which is attached to certain low-income neighborhoods, can cause employers to refuse to hire residents of low-income neighborhoods. (35)

However, an important factor differentiates employability in the West and in emerging markets in Asia. According to the World Bank, 49.2 percent of the world's population is self-employed as of 2019. (36) But self-employment rates vary in relation to the economic development of the underlying country. In the emergent economies of Southeast Asia, high rates reign: 51.2 percent of Thais, 50.4 percent of Cambodians, 80.6 percent of Laotians, and 56.1 percent of Vietnamese are self-employed. (37) Tellingly, just 6.2 percent of Americans work for themselves. (38)

Important implications follow. Job success in the Western world is contingent upon the ability of low-income people to secure gainful employment. In contrast, job success in emerging markets is contingent upon the ability of low-income people to run successful enterprises. Thus, when neighborhood effects research probes job success in the emerging economies of Asia, it should focus not on neighborhood mechanisms that mediate employability, but rather those that mediate self-employability.

To date, little neighborhood effects research--of any kind--has been conducted on self-employability or even in...

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