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Psychological Correlates of Housing in Central America*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Extract
Traditional or developing areas of the world are moving toward urban and industrial societies characterized by rationalistic behavior. To an appreciable extent this transition is identified as the rise of urban middle sectors or classes, at least in the case of Latin America. One phase of the transition from a stage of economic underdevelopment to an industrial system has been the advent of public housing. Latin America in the last twenty years has witnessed extensive migration of families from the rural hinterland—in addition to the ever expanding families of the city itself— to the squatter shacks and slums, with eventual transfer of limited numbers to public housing. This article proposes to report on some differences in behavior and values of residents of private dwellings as opposed to those residents of public housing in two Central American capitals.
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- Copyright © University of Miami 1964
Footnotes
*
Revision of a paper read at the Eastern Sociological Society meeting in New York, April 1962. The study was financed by a Social Science Research Council grant in Central America in 1960. The author is immeasurably indebted to many individuals in both El Salvador and Costa Rica who provided both counsel and labor.
References
l The term “rationalistic” as opposed to “traditionalistic,” is used in the sense of “universalistic-particularistic,” “secular-sacred” or “Gesellschaft-Gemeinschaft.” In other words, rationalistic refers to more formalized, impersonal, logico-scientific behaviors characterizing urban, secondary group life. Cf., for example, Parsons, Talcott, The Social System, New York, The Free Press of Glencoe, 1951, pp. 496–520 Google Scholar; or Becker, Howard, Through Values to Social Interpretation, Durham, Duke University Press, 1950, pp. 240–280 Google Scholar. A typical example of the application of these concepts to developing nations would be Lerner, Daniel, The Passing of Traditional Society, New York, The Free Press of Glencoe, 1958 Google Scholar.
2 Wilner, Daniel M., Walkley, Rosabelle P., Pinkerton, Thomas C., and Taback, Matthew, The Housing Environment and Family Life, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1962 Google Scholar.
3 Mogey, John M., “Changes in Family Life Experienced by English Workers Moving from Slums to Housing Estates,” Marriage and Family Living, 27 (May, 1955), pp. 123–128 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also, Family and Neighborhood: Two Studies in Oxford, London, Oxford University Press, 1956 Google Scholar.
4 Cf., among others, Monson, Astrid, “Slums, Semi-slums, and Super-slums,” Marriage and Family Living, 27 (May, 1955), pp. 118–122 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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6 Cf., among others, Hollingshead, August B. and Rogler, Lloyd H., “Attitudes toward Slums and Public Housing in Puerto Rico” in Duhl, Leonard J. (ed.), The Urban Condition, New York, Basic Books, Inc., 1963 Google Scholar; and Safa, Helen Icken, “From Shanty Town to Public Housing: A Comparison of Family Structure in Two Urban Neighborhoods in Puerto Rico,” Youth Development Center, Syracuse University, unpublished studyGoogle Scholar. Back, Kurt W., Slums, Projects and Peoples: Social Psychological Problems of Relocation in Puerto Rico, Durham, Duke University Press, 1962 Google Scholar, reports the reactions of tenants more variable depending upon the situation and the personality.
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