tailieunhanh - CAN SOCIAL CAPITAL LAST? LESSONS FROM BOSTON’S VILLA VICTORIA HOUSING COMPLEX

This analysis will serve as a starting point for us to focus on a broader subject. In fact, the study of the careers of the figures involved allows us to discuss the way in which cultural flows between centre and periphery work, taking as an example the musical scenes of France and Brazil in the 1920s. With the help of this empirical material, we can identify the social practices and mechanisms through which the social positions of these figures were supported and their differences legitimized. I shall start the article by sketching Heitor Villa-Lobos’s career up until his encounter with Cocteau in Paris. Subsequently, I focus. | RAPPAPORTW Institute for Greater Boston Kennedy School of Government Harvard University Policy Brief Volume I Number I October 2004 Can Social capital last lessons from Boston s Villa Victoria Housing Complex By Mario Luis Small Assistant Professor of Sociology Princeton university Author Villa Victoria The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio For poor rural Latin Americans with few years of education and almost no marketable skills immigration to an American city with a dwindling manufacturing sector is rarely a recipe for success. Even less is to be expected when the immigrants speak no English when the city has a reputation for antagonism against outsiders and when they come to a neighborhood known as the city s Skid Row. Yet success spectacular success by one albeit collective measure was precisely the fate of the 2 000 Puerto Ricans living in the late 1960s in Parcel 19 of Boston s South End. They succeeded not at surpassing educational expectations or obtaining high-paying jobs. Their success was the creation against all odds of Villa Victoria a self-managed aesthetically pleasing architecturally sophisticated housing complex in the heart of what is now one of Boston s most exclusive neighborhoods. They created a neighborhood and along with it the security of a guaranteed home for the rest of their lives and the comfort of a community of compatriots in a foreign land. The Villa as its residents often call it is now a small treasure among New England Puerto Ricans a testament to the power of grassroots mobilization. In Villa Victoria The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio 2004 Chicago University of Chicago Press I recount the events that led to the creation of this enclave. More importantly I discuss what happened next. And what happened I suggest offers an important lesson for both scholars and practitioners even under the best structural conditions community participation is unlikely to sustain itself over time without .