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Community rebuilding processes in a disaster-damaged area through community currency: The pilot project of Domo in Kamaishi, Japan

Hiromi Nakazato (School of Information and Communication, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan) (Department of Sociology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden)
Seunghoo Lim (Public Management and Policy Analysis Program, International University of Japan, Niigata, Japan)

Disaster Prevention and Management

ISSN: 0965-3562

Article publication date: 6 February 2017

538

Abstract

Purpose

Community currency (CC) is used as a tool for reviving local communities by promoting economic growth and facilitating the formation of social capital. Although the Japanese CC movement has stagnated since mid-2005, a new experiment, Fukkou Ouen Chiiki Tsuka (CC for supporting disaster recovery), was introduced across disaster-damaged areas after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami of March 2011. Previous studies assessing the role of CC in these earthquake-damaged areas are rare; the purpose of this paper is to examine the micro processes of community rebuilding that underlie the transactional networks mediated by one of the experiments, Domo, in Kamaishi.

Design/methodology/approach

Using transactional records capturing residents’ CC activities during the five-month pilot period before actual implementation of Domo simultaneous investigation for empirical network analysis techniques identify the network configuration dynamics representing the multiple observed forms of social capital in this disaster-affected local community.

Findings

This study of the five-month pilot for the Domo system revealed: intensive dependence on the coordinating role of core members (i.e. the creation of weak ties), a lack of balanced support among members and the resulting uni-directional transactions (i.e. the avoidance of generalized exchanges), and the reinforcement of previous transactional ties via reciprocation or transitive triads (i.e. the formation of strong ties).

Originality/value

This study provides guidance for practitioners, researchers, and policy makers on how community residents’ engagement in CC activities could function as a potential tool for generating positive socio-economic effects for local communities in disaster areas.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Yoshio Konno, Tomio Abe, Shigeo Ito, Izumi Yamazaki, and Yoshiko Turuyama for their support for conducting the surveys. This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI Grant No. 26780287.

Citation

Nakazato, H. and Lim, S. (2017), "Community rebuilding processes in a disaster-damaged area through community currency: The pilot project of Domo in Kamaishi, Japan", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 26 No. 1, pp. 79-93. https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-06-2016-0116

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited

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