Análisis descriptivo: Caracterización del trabajo de las mujeres en Cali

Social networks of an individual comprise relationships within the family, friendship, work, and informal. Social networks influence life chances and outcomes since they connect individuals with people not only in their immediate neighborhood, but also beyond the neighborhood, through contacts of friends and acquaintances. Social capital research advocates the positive role of social networks in economic efficiency, but some researchers argue that social networks can have a ‘downside’ (Meagher 2005). Dasgupta (2000), for example, indicated that social networks can either facilitate or hinder economic efficiency depending on their uses. Meagher (2005) points out that though social networks can provide informal support for better economic performance, they can also function as mechanisms of "parochialism or conspiracy". Moreover, Collier (2002) argues that social networks are not always good, pointing out that … “the control of free riding by clubs and hierarchies can produce rent seeking institutions like Mafias" (Collier, 2002: 34). The institutional analysis of

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mafias has found that, instead of serving as a means of economic efficiency, social networks can act as a medium of "corruption and opportunism" (Gambetta 1996; Meagher 2005). In fact, the advantages and downsides of social networks depend on the culture and socioeconomic environment that facilitates or hinders the development of economically efficient networks (Meagher 2005). As Woolcock further explains:

Where communities or networks are isolated, parochial, or working at cross-

purposes to society's collective interests (in ghettos, gangs, drug cartels, and so

on), productive social capital is replaced by what Rubio (1997) —in discussing Colombia—calls perverse social capital, which greedy hinders development (Woolcock, 2000: 229).

Coleman’s (1990) idea that certain territorial contexts represent “a greater emphasis on social networks as the basis of social capital rather than on shared culture, trust and civicness” (Colmeman, 1990, 300), Robert Putnam (1993) and Francis Fukuyama (1995) studies on social capital identify social capital with a cooperative culture rooted in the past history of a territory. This according to Trigilia (2001) leads to two kinds of risks: First that the culturalist explanation is rather vague with regard to the origins of the phenomenon, and it underestimates the role of political factors65. Second, that “the consequences of social capital for local development are not always positive; and it is precisely the under evaluation of politics, which makes it more difficult to distinguish under which conditions social capital can have favorable impact for local development, instead of generating collusion, patronage, political dependence or even corruption and criminal economies” (Trigilia, 2001: 434).

Granovetter (1973) developed the social network theory in his work "Strong and Weak Tie Theory", suggesting that strong ties create closed networks whereas weak ties enable access to social circles beyond the actors‘ own direct network. Strong ties are linked with

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people who interact frequently. Links with infrequent interactions, the ‘weak ties‘, tend to bridge individuals across social groups of close interpersonal relationships. He argues that new information flows to individuals through ‘weak rather than strong ties, because close friends tend to move in the same circles and the information they receive overlaps with what they already know’. In social capital literature, strong and weak ties are referred to as bonding and bridging social capital (Woolcock, 2001). Putnam (2000) also highlights the importance of distinguishing between bonding and bridging (strong and weak ties). Bonding social capital can result in closed social circles and reduce the degree of sociability beyond these boundaries. It limits the diffusion of information and the building up of inter-group networks, facilitating rent-seeking and self-interested behavior (Beugelsdijk & Smulders, 2004; PRI, 2005; Sabatini, 2005) which can lead to exclusion and sectarianism (Rubio, 1997). However, bonding social capital plays a positive and crucial role in society. It can be the source of precious services - for example emergency cash - and, in poor societies, can play an important role helping to cope with poverty (Kozer & Parker, 1998). Some families in poor countries have a share budget for meals; they buy food in large quantity (wholesale) then divided between them to save some cash for example. On the other hand, bridging social capital has a number of positive externalities: it reduces the cost of information transmission and information asymmetries, it builds trust and civic engagement, and it facilitates collective action (MAS, 2007). Woolcock (1998) and Narayan (1999) suggest that a positive correlation exists between efficient state functioning and high levels of bridging social capital, while the sociological literature emphasizes the positive effects that bridging social capital can have on conflict resolution (Schafft, 1998; Varshney, 2000) and on the development of trust and cooperative behavior in society (Stolle, 1998).

The network view argues that communities can be characterized by their endowments of these two dimensions of social capital, and that different combinations of these dimensions account for the range of outcomes associated with social capital (Woolcock, 2000), Granovetter (1995) argues that economic development takes place through a mechanism

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that allows individuals to draw initially on the benefits of close community membership. However this also enables them to acquire the skills and resources to participate in networks that transcend their community, thereby progressively joining the economic mainstream. Following Granovetter, Burt (1992) extended and reformulated the ‘weak ties‘ argument by claiming that what is important is not the quality of the ties but rather the way different parts of the networks are ‘bridged‘.

The social resource theory of Lin (1982), taking a hierarchical view of social structure, argues that the success of an action in a network depends on two issues. These are the presence of a high social position contact in a network, which enables access to crucial and good quality resources and the status diversity of a network, which increases the likelihood of accessing appropriate resources. This is related to the third type of social capital, i.e. linking social capital, which describes ties that connect individuals to people or groups in positions of high status. This means that linking social capital enables groups’ access to leverage resources and ideas and information from formal institutions, beyond the community (Woolcock, 2001).

An examination of the above three theories shows that each theoretical stance is not complete by itself and efficient structure of a network depends on the activities and challenges that an individual is facing (Klyver and Schøtt, 2011).