Small Community Businesses in Slums: A Perspective on Kenyan Slum Networks

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite extensive research on networks, the relational dimensions and structures cocreated by small community businesses and cooperative societies through everyday entrepreneurship in slum neighborhoods remain undertheorized. Drawing upon 1166 small community businesses, we conceptualize the relational dimensions and structures underlying their slum networks in Kenya. Network analysis suggests that these small community businesses, characterized by their distinct focus on the everyday entrepreneurship involving slum essentials—firewood, food, labor, fish, water, and farm produce—coalesce into a complex geometric axis of slum networks. Their geographical reach extends across Kenya's slum neighborhoods, but the cooperative societies they are affiliated with are confined by their immediate surroundings. Thus, extending network theories of closeness, centrality, and betweenness to incorporate the relational dimensions and structures inherent in Kenya's slums, where small community businesses and cooperative societies are the heartbeat. With over a billion people in slums, this understanding establishes a baseline for social, policy, and academic applications.