Assessing Social Engagement Practices in Unstable Environments. Examining Collective Action and Community Participation in Mexico

Background/Purpose:

A tension between wealth and development, and enduring poverty, disease and exploitation, challenges the study of social relations particularly in conflicted and unstable societies. Research emphasizing people’s wellbeing over state-centered measures is urged. In line with it, this paper examines social interactions in environments where violent conflict, politics and social action intertwine. We argue that studying social change requires appreciation of the collectivity, and that enhanced wellbeing rests on collective action.

The study explores resources people use to come together to resist a common risk in Mexico, a country affected by the War on Drugs since 2006. Two core features characterize this case: (1) the increased presence and strength of organized crime and (2) the failure of the state to provide public safety and grant justice. Survey data was used to examine social engagement based on people’s social relations and the violent and political contexts.

Using Social Capital theory (Lin, 2001; Portes, 1998, 2000), the study examines the associations that facilitate the creation, increase, reinforcement or deterioration of capacity for social engagement. The study is guided by two underlying assumptions: (1) that existing levels of trust and reciprocity expressed in social relations help to explicate people’s degree of social engagement; (2) that those relations are potentially affected when other factors are considered.

Methods:

The study uses data (N = 7,416) from the Citizenship, Democracy, and Drug-Related Violence survey (CIDENA), collected in 2011. Descriptive and bivariate analyses are used to explore the data and to identify response patterns and relationships. Regression analysis using nested models was conducted to show how a selected set of factors differentially explain the occurrence of social engagement. The study looks at the effect of three sets of explanatory factors: a) social relations, b) context of violence, c) political engagement, on two forms of social engagement: a) what people do (forms of collective action) and b) what they are willing to do (help the community).

Results:

The following results were indicated: Collective Action was mostly influenced by contextual and political factors than what people are willing to do (Help the Community). In general, fear and violence appear to influence people’s willingness to mobilize. The study points to the need to include additional contextual factors for the analysis of why people become involved in collective action.

Conclusions and Implications:

Generally, results were consistent with previous research on the limitations of testing social capital in contexts of violence and its potential detrimental effect. They also point at the difficulty of measuring Social Capital with single variables, highlighting the relevance of including contextual indicators to better explain how and why people mobilize when living in conflicted societies. A number of implications for future research were identified. There is a need to include several other factors and experiences for social capital policy to be successful. Measurement limitations and implications for research on positive and negative social capital in unstable contexts were also identified.