Social Ties, Disorder and Distress: A Qualitative Examination of the Protective Effects of Social Capital in Neighborhoods

Abstract

This paper is examines how social ties mediate the negative impact of neighborhood disorder by changing people’s perceptions of their neighborhood. It draws on and helps to advance an understanding of social capital as a protective cognitive resource that people use to frame their understandings of their local environments. This paper extends current research about the importance of social capital as a protective factor at the neighborhood level while taking advantage of a unique research setting, a Habitat for Humanity neighborhood, to begin to uncover how social capital operates at the micro-level to produce positive effects. We find that social networks operate as a resource which impacts the way people perceive and interpret agreed upon problems.