(1979). Social Networks and Psychology. Connections, 2 - INSNA

- 1 0 4 -financial dependence, internal inflation, lack of private investment in production and so on . The increasein authoritarian and often military government in Latin America and other underdeveloped countries is thusseen as a 'solution' to the current bottlenecks of economic growth, resolving temporarily the class conflictsbrought about by industrialization and urban development .Bryan Roberts . 1973 . Organizing Strangers : Poor Families in Guatemala City . Austin and London : Universityof Texas Press .The subject of this book is social change, particularly that change occurring as a result of rapidurban growth in underdeveloped countries . The material used here is drawn from a study of poor familiesliving in Guatemala City . Their homes, their appearance, and their evident difficulties in meeting thenecessities of daily life make me characterize them as poor . One group of families lives in a shantytownlocated near the center of the city ; the other lives in a legally established neighborhood on the outskirts .Both areas are well known in the city as the residences of poor families, and in this book they are giventhe pseudonyms "San Lorenzo" and "Planificada ." Although these families include very few white-collarworkers, they vary in income and ather social characteristics and are, in most respects, similar to themajority of Guatemala City's population . In their own life careers, they have experienced the transitionfrom villages and towns to a large, rapidly growing city, and it is through their life careers and presentbehavior that more general questions of social change are approached .This study looks at the behavior of these families in terms of two distinct but interconnected perspectives. First is the analysis of the implications of rapid urban growth for the lives of poor people .During the lifetimes of our subjects, Guatemala City has considerably changed its social and economicorganization, and these changes have affected the ways in which people interact with each other and copewith their environment . Some of these changes are necessary consequences of urban life, especially in arapidly expanding city . Both migrants and city born have come to reside among strangers who are rarelyrelated by familial or occupational ties . As position within a set of friends and kin has become lessrelevant to obtaining jobs, housing, and social standing, individual characteristics, such as education,age, and personal appearance, have become more relevant . However, to use the data only to illustratechange would be to ignore the importance that people's actions and perceptions have for directing change .It is in their attempts to cope with a series of problems and possibilities emerging from the rapid andunplanned growth of the city that the poor in Guatemala are themselves becoming further factors in socialchange . From this perspective, change is occurring in this city through the attempts of people with certainsocial characteristics to interpret and mold their urban environment so as to produce in it some degree oforder and predictability .These poor families are, then, active agents of change in urban life, but their activity is heavilyconditioned by the links they have with urban organizations and with other urban social groups . Poorpeople do not form an isolated group in Guatemala City but are permeated by external influences . One ofthe defining characteristics of urban life is this openness of its residents to the diversity of influencespresent in a city . In studying the activity of poor families, the relevant context will be not only otherpoor people in their immediate vicinity, but also all the groups and organizations that intentionally orunintentionally relate to them .I will detail the actions and orientations of poor and ill-educated people who find themselves in adisturbing and often dangerous urban milieu . What is striking about their behavior is the extent to whichthey are active in shaping their own destinies . This is not to say that they are successful, either intheir own terms or by some "objective" standard of economic and social development, but it is not for wantof trying . We will see them using sophisticated strategies to manipulate their urban economic and politicalenvironment, calculations that are often surprisingly shrewd and rational . Their behavior is describablein terms that could be applied equally to people in the developed societies, and their own positionappears to result not from their traditional practices or attitudes, but from more fundamental problemsof the social and economic structure of their country . This book will show how external influences repeatedlycondition and limit change within this environment . It is on this point that the present study andits conclusions differ from other studies of the poor in urban areas of Latin America . Here it is intendedto demonstrate that whatever the reasons for the capacity or incapacity of the poor to organize, to geton with each other, or to improve their individual positions, these cannot be explained in terms of a"culture of poverty ." Instead, this analysis emphasizes the importance of the outside influences thatpermeate these families . And for this reason the study also differs from analyses that emphasize themarginality of the poor as the obstacle to their urban adaption . On the contrary, the problem is preciselythat these families are overly involved in urban life .