Article contents
Rationality in the Slum: An Essay on Interpretive Sociology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
Extract
The peripheral slum population in urban Latin America is still characterized, despite much research to the contrary, as a focus of discontent and political disruptiveness. The resilience of this approach lies in its being imbedded in a more general and unquestionably accepted definition of the slum population as culturally primitive and, hence, most frequently irrational.
- Type
- Cities
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1972
References
1 See, for example, Szulc, Tad, Winds of Revolution: Latin America Today and Tomorrow (New York: Praeger, 1965)Google Scholar. A detailed analysis and critique of these views are found in Nelson, Joan M., Migrants, Urban Poverty, and Instability in Developing Nations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969)Google Scholar; also Goldrich, Daniel, ‘Toward the Comparative Study of Politicization in Latin America’ in Heath, Dwight B. and Adams, Richard N. (eds.), Contemporary Cultures and Societies in Latin America (New York: Random House, 1965), pp. 361–78.Google Scholar
2 Lipset, Seymour Martin, Political Man (Garden City, N. Y.: Anchor Books, 1963)Google Scholar, chapter 4 3 Kornhauser, William, The Politics of Mass Society (New York: The Free Press, 1959).Google Scholar
4 See, for example, Schmitt, Karl and Burks, David, Evolution or Chaos: Dynamics of Latin American Government and Politics (New York: Praeger, 1963). Also Szulc, op. cit.Google Scholar
5 Lewis, Oscar, ‘The Culture of Poverty’, Scientific American, 215 (10 1966), pp. 19–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lewis, Oscar, Antropologia de la Pobreza (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1962).Google Scholar
6 Rosenbluth, Guillermo, ‘Problemas Socio-economicos de la Marginalidad y la Integracion Urbana’, Revista Paraguaya de Sociologia, 11 (1968)Google Scholar. Also Hoffmann, R., Garcia, N., Mercado, O., and Uribe, F., ‘La Marginalidad Urbana’ in DESAL, Marginalidad en America Latina (Barcelona: Herder, 1969), chapter 2.Google Scholar
7 Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, Henderson and Parsons, (trans.) (New York: The Free Press, 1965), p. 111.Google Scholar
8 Ibid., p. 115.
9 Clinard, Marshall B., ‘Urbanization, Urbanism, and Deviant Behavior in Puerto Rico’ in Social Change and Public Policy (San Juan: Social Science Research Center, University of Puerto Rico, 1968), p. 29.Google Scholar
10 Marris, Peter, ‘A Report on Urban Renewal in the United States’ in The Urban Condition (New York: Basic Books, 1963).Google Scholar
11 Vekemans, Roger and Fuenzalida, I. S., ‘EI Concepto de Marginalidad’ in DESAL, op. cit., p. 50.Google Scholar
12 Ibid., p. 59.
13 Ward, Barbara, ‘The Uses of Prosperity’, Saturday Review (August 29, 1964), pp. 191–2.Google Scholar
14 Hoffmann, et al. , op. cit., p. 302.Google Scholar
15 A. Cabala Darghan, ‘Estudio sobre Participación dentro de un Tipo de Asociación Voluntaria: Junta de Vecinos’, Consejeria Nacional de Promoción Popular, División de Estudios, Santiago (1968) (mimeograph).
16 See, for example, Hoffmann et al., op. cit. Also Wright, Charles and Hyman, Herbert, ‘Voluntary Associations' Membership of American Adults’, American Sociological Review, 23:3 (1958)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Freeman, H. E., Novak, E., and Reeder, L. G., ‘Correlates of Membership in Voluntary Associations’, American Sociological Review, 22:5 (1957).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17 Goldrich, Daniel, Pratt, Raymond B., and Schuller, C. R., ‘The Political Integration of Lower-Class Urban Settlements in Chile and Peru’, Studies in Comparative International Development, 3:1 (1967–1967), p. 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18 Mangin, William, ‘Latin American Squatter Settlements: A Problem and a Solution’, Latin Research Review, 2:3 (Summer 1967), pp. 65–98.Google Scholar
19 Goldrich, et. al, op. cit.
20 Vekemans, and Fuenzalida, , op. cit., pp. 57–8.Google Scholar
21 Abrams, Charles, ‘Squatter Settlements: The Problem and the Opportunity’, AID, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Washington, D.C. (1965).Google Scholar
22 Others include studies in Rio de Janeiro, Caracas, Buenos Aires, Bogota, Lima, Guatemala City, Santo Domingo, and Santiago. They are excluded here for the sake of brevity. Results from these studies have been summarized and are available upon request from the author.
23 Turner, John F. C., ‘Uncontrolled Urban Settlement: Problems and Policies’, International Social Development Review, 1 (1968), pp. 107–30.Google Scholar
24 Ibid.
25 Mattgin, , op. cit., p. 74.Google Scholar
26 Goldrich, et al. ,, op. tit., p. 4.Google Scholar
27 Cornelius, Wayne A., ‘Urbanization as an Agent ia Latin American Political Instabaity: The Case of Mexico’, American Political Science Review, 63 (09 1969), p. 855.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
28 Germani, Gino, ‘Social and Political Consequences of Mobility’ in Smelser, Neil J. and Lipset, Seymour M. (eds.), Social Structure and Mobility in Economic Development (Chicago: Aldine, 1966).Google Scholar
29 Cardoso, Fernando H., ‘Le Proletariat brésilien’, Sociologie du Travail, 4 (1961), pp. 50–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Touraine, Alain, ‘Industrialisation et conscience ouvrière à São Paulo’, Sociologie du Travail, 4 (1961), pp. 389–407.Google Scholar
30 Germani, Gino, ‘Inquiry into the Social Effects of Urbanization in a Working Class Sector of Greater Buenos Aires’, United Nations (1958)Google Scholar; Briones, Guillermo, ‘Movilidad Ocupacional y Mercado de Trabajo en el Peru’, America Latina, 6:3 (1963)Google Scholar; Flinn, William, ‘Rural-to-Urban Migration: A Colombian Case’, Land Tenure Center Research Publication no. 19, University of Wisconsin (1968)Google Scholar; Bonilla, Frank, ‘Rio’s Favelas, the Rural Slum within the City’, American University Field Staff Reports, 8:3 (1961)Google Scholar; Usandizaga, Elsa and Havens, A. Eugene, Tres Barrios de Invasion (Bogota: Tercer Mundo, 1966). In the writer's study of peripheral settlements in Santiago, 45 percent of respondents reported that their present occupations were better than before, while 18 percent judged them to be the same. When asked to compare their occupations with the ones to which they had aspired at the beginning of their adult lives, 44 percent found them to be better than or equal to their initial aspirations.Google Scholar
31 For a recent analysis of black ghetto demands, see Litt, Edgar, Ethnic Politics in America (Glenview, III.: Scott, Foresman, and Co., 1970).Google Scholar
32 Mangin, , op. cit., p. 85.Google Scholar
- 81
- Cited by