Do social networks matter for the access to goods and services obtained outside markets?

Abstract

This article discusses the role of social networks and sociability in the access by poor people to goods and services obtained outside of markets. The article uses qualitative information from a research about social networks of poor individuals living in segregated places in São Paulo, as well as middle class individuals used as a control. The results show the importance of networks and suggest that the helps that mediate the accesses depend upon the types of ties and trust involved, as well as the cost of helping. The observed processes tend to reiterate inequalities, establishing circularities of poverty reproduction.