'Here, I'm not at ease': anthropological perspectives on community resilience

A number of recent studies on disaster reconstruction have focused on the concept of community resilience and its importance in the recovery of communities from collective trauma. This article reviews the contributions the anthropological literature and the ethnographic case studies of two post‐Hurr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Disasters 2014-04, Vol.38 (2), p.329-350
Main Author: Barrios, Roberto E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accidents
Adaptation, Psychological
Adult
Anthropological research
Anthropology
capacity
Case studies
Communities
community
Community relations
Cyclones
Cyclonic Storms
Disaster management
Disaster recovery
Disaster relief
Disasters
Emotions
Ethnographic research
Ethnography
Female
Government Agencies
Honduras
Housing
Humans
Hurricane Mitch
Hurricanes
Male
Mitigation
Natural disasters
Programmes
Reconstruction
Residence Characteristics
Resilience
Risk Assessment
Social sciences
Studies
Trauma
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Summary:A number of recent studies on disaster reconstruction have focused on the concept of community resilience and its importance in the recovery of communities from collective trauma. This article reviews the contributions the anthropological literature and the ethnographic case studies of two post‐Hurricane Mitch housing reconstruction sites make to the theorising of community and resilience in post‐disaster reconstruction. Specifically, the article demonstrates that communities are not static or neatly bounded entities that remain constant before, during and after a disaster; rather, communities take on shape and qualities depending on the relationships in which they engage with government agencies and aid organisations before and after disasters. Consequently, the article argues that definitions of community resilience and disaster mitigation programmes must take the emergent and relational nature of communities into account in order to address the long‐term causes and impacts of disasters.
ISSN:0361-3666
1467-7717
DOI:10.1111/disa.12044