Migrant slum economies combine communal kinship ethics with individual enrichment drives

Evidence

I was captivated by what seemed a paradox: on the one hand the banality of a barely differentiated Dickensian mob, of water carriers, bread sellers, shit shovellers, taxi drivers, pickpockets, and prostitutes; on the other the communal spirit of hill tribesmen whose fathers were earth priests and who expected to end their days as custodians of ancestral shrines. I was impressed by the energy and ingenuity of their efforts to enrich themselves and by the inevitability of long run failure for all but a handful. It seemed as if the economy was being made, unmade and remade from day to day. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2302

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels Saramago’s blindness narrative in reverse: here kin-based trust survives within an environment of criminal predation, whereas blindness collapses it entirely.
• ADDENDUM: Enrichment amid communal ethics echoes the ‘On Sacrifice’ theme of how obligation and reciprocity are maintained in stratified societies.