Overview
- Provides an original and thorough theoretical insight on urban violence by combining perspectives from Latin American Studies and systematic sciences like political science, economics, and urban sociology
- Includes theoretical framework and builds on a non-linear model that can explain variations in urban violence rates within and across cities
- Offers a non-linear analysis of variations in urban violence rates in the barrios of Caracas, which contributes to the understanding of how politico-economic structures affect meso-level variations in outcomes like urban violence rates
Part of the book series: The Latin American Studies Book Series (LASBS)
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This book presents an overview of the problem of urban violence in Caracas, and specifically in its barrios. It helps situate readers familiar or not with Latin American in the context that is Caracas, Venezuela, a city displaying one of the world’s highest homicide rates. The book offers a qualitative comparison of the informal mechanisms of social control in three barrios of Caracas. This comprehensive analysis can help explain high homicide rates, while socio-economic conditions improved due to substantial oil windfalls in the twenty-first century. The author describes why informal social control was not effective in some barrios, and points to the role of some organizational arrangements in increasing the incentives to use violence, even under improving socio-economic conditions.
The analysis addresses a gap in the literature on violence, which mainly posits high violence rates after economic downturns. Specifically, it investigates social capital's moderating effect between Caracas' political and economic structures and high violence rates. This book concludes that perverse social capital found in the barrios of Caracas helps explain high violence rates while socio-economic indicators improved until the early 2010s. Students and researchers interested in security studies or Latin America will benefit from this book because of its extensive theoretical discussions, use of primary sources, and unique multidisciplinary analysis of urban violence.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Violence in the Barrios of Caracas
Book Subtitle: Social Capital and the Political Economy of Venezuela
Authors: Daniel S. Leon
Series Title: The Latin American Studies Book Series
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22940-5
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental Science, Earth and Environmental Science (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-22939-9Published: 15 July 2019
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-22942-9Published: 15 August 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-22940-5Published: 02 July 2019
Series ISSN: 2366-3421
Series E-ISSN: 2366-343X
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XV, 181
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations, 10 illustrations in colour
Topics: Cultural Geography, Urban Politics, Human Geography, Urban Studies/Sociology, Development and Social Change, Violence and Crime