Search results

Citizen participation has attracted attention in the context of decentralization. In a disaster reconstruction process, a business plan for reconstruction can be modified in line with diversified situations of disaster-affected areas by citizen participation. In Japan, the central government makes a decision about the authority in charge of an overall disaster reconstruction and the budget planning, whereas local governments are in charge of creating and implementing a business plan for reconstruction of each local municipality. Therefore, local governments play an important role in organizing citizen participation to realize the reconstruction that fits reality. It has yet to be shown as decentralization reform and citizen participation system in Japan produce the socio-spatial inequality after the Great East Japan Earthquake. However, it remains to be elucidated how local government and community have to operate the institution about citizen participation during the disaster reconstruction process. I have been doing fieldwork on three tsunami-affected sites in Miyagi Prefecture over past 4 years: Onagawa Town, Higashimatsushima City, and Natori City. I have investigated the social processes of making and implementing a reconstruction plan, and citizen participation. The findings from my fieldwork are as follows: First, citizen participation is based on organizing residents at the community level. Second, traditional community organization (such as neighborhood organization abd industrial associations) contribute to organize residents especially in the emergency phase. Third, as the disaster phase moves, local government and community organization need to change the previous participation frame to ensure residents representation and policy legitimacy.

On December 26, 2004, a strong earthquake of magnitude 9.0 on the richer scale, hit the Northwest of Sumatra island, Indonesia and caused the Indian Ocean Tsunami. The tsunami struck Aceh and North Sumatra (NAD), caused about 130,000 deaths, 500,000 left homeless, and extensive damage to life, property, and infrastructures. Sumatra is the western tip of island in the Indonesian archipelago. The population of Aceh province is estimated at 4.2 million (2000), or 3% of the Indonesian population and nearly a quarter of the population of Sumatra as a whole. One of the most heavily affected areas is Banda Aceh, which is located at the tip of Sumatra island had a population of 270,000 of which about 25% people lost their lives.

The earthquake and tsunami that struck eastern Japan on March 11, 2011, not only caused extensive direct damage to the population but also triggered a nuclear power plant accident that brought the terror and reality of radiation. The restoration of communities in Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima Prefectures presents enormous problems. People from the radiation-contaminated areas have faced numerous ordeals since resettlement after the accident. Through personal interviews with victims, this chapter investigates what happened in the regional societies and how community consciousness changed as a result of the combined natural and manmade catastrophes. The study focuses on the restoration of community from social bonds through mutual help networks as a spontaneous social order. As the result of interviewing, some propositions were developed concerning the transformation of mutual help networks. The stronger the outside assistance from volunteers whom the victims came to trust and rely on, the weaker inside communal help becomes. Inventorying and clarifying the particular problems of conflict in stricken communities such as the loss of confidence in neighbors, the possibilities of rebuilding communities are explored, especially indicating how to cope with the social demise of communities that local people had formed and occupied all their lives.

This chapter provides the foundation for the book. The objective of this chapter is to outline the theme of the book and to provide the context for the chapters that follow. Disaster recovery is a challenge for governments and for affected communities, families, and individuals. It is a challenge, because recovery from catastrophic disasters can be much more complicated and elusive than what can be addressed by national and international aid organizations given the time and other resources. The short literature review provides the research context, and the overview of the book describes each of the chapters briefly.

Drawing on a case study in Hitachi City, Ibaraki prefecture, this chapter aims to analyze the relationship between community support and the behavior of residents after the Tohoku Pacific Earthquake in the regions affected by the disaster. The chapter will examine residents’ behavior and the community’s roles by way of the following process: (1) We will review Japan’s natural disaster prevention regimes; (2) we will examine the result of a field survey conducted in Hitachi City detailing the city’s natural disaster prevention procedures and the operation of some neighborhood evacuation sites; (3) the behavior of residents following the earthquake is analyzed. In this part, questionnaires were sent to 2000 households, of which 492 (24.6%) were collected and used for this analysis. The earthquake and tsunami destroyed lifelines such as water supply for several days in the city. According to the city, a total of 65 buildings were judged to be in dangerous condition, 251 as requiring care, and 478 were only partially damaged. The most serious damage was found mainly in the city’s coastal areas, where a total of 85 houses were entirely or partly damaged, and 483 houses were flooded above the floorboards by the tsunami. On March 11, a total of 69 evacuation sites opened, and 13,607 residents rushed into them. After the disaster, residents initially tried to go back to their homes. Depending on the damage done, they either stayed there or moved to a relative’s or friend’s house, or to a neighborhood evacuation site. Due to the failure of the lifelines, transportation systems, and the damage caused by the disaster, most residents had to stay within an area more limited than usual, around which they could walk or ride by bicycle. Residents had only the human and physical resources of their neighborhoods. Therefore, the characteristics of their local communities affected how residents behaved during and after the earthquake.

Environment and disasters have a close relationship. Environmental change causes disasters or enhances the frequency or intensity of disasters. Climate change is often regarded as an environmental phenomenon; however, when we see changes in the typhoon path, or repeated occurrences of heavy rainfall or strong typhoons, it is often attributed to climatic changes. In that case, environmental change (climate change) is the cause and disaster (typhoon or flood) is considered as the impact. On the other hand, when a disaster like typhoon, earthquake, or tsunami occurs, it produces a huge amount of debris. Disaster debris or disaster waste becomes an environmental problem. In many cases, the disaster also causes significant impacts on the ecology. Therefore, disaster becomes a cause, and environmental degradation becomes the impact.

When it comes to small island developing states (SIDS), the literature is burgeoning with articles on resilience and climate change or resilience as an aftermath to some type of natural disaster. As a singular topic, economic resilience or political resilience has not been as widely discussed. Baldacchino (2014), however, took a close look at sovereign small island states and how they have been able to, among other things, secure their independence following long periods of colonization and exhibit good economic indicators that were and are comparative to those of much larger developing countries (Anklesaria Aiyar, 2008; Armstrong & Read, 1998; Easterly & Kraay, 2000). In his essay, Baldacchino discusses economic development of small island states using a heavy dose of commercialization of resources as the backdrop for sustainable economic development.

This chapter will take a look at what The Bahamas has implemented in the wake of major external shocks that have all but crippled other small economies. The strategies implemented have not only been a stabilizing force but have placed the country well on the road to economic recovery. It is to be noted that while implementation of some of these strategies were not easy or received well by certain factions in the country, politics aside, government officials from across the divide came together to prove once and for all that regardless of individual politics, the strength of the country's economic and political pillars was the best show of resilience as the world looked toward the future.

Nepal is confronted by an increasing number of natural- and human-induced disasters, making it the most disaster-prone country in the world. Landslides, floods, droughts, fires, thunderbolts, blockades, and earthquakes, among others, occur frequently. All these disasters take a high toll on people and cause heavy damage to physical properties worth billions of dollars every year. One of the recent examples in the history of disasters was the devastating earthquakes that struck Nepal in 2015 taking away human lives, destroying physical infrastructures, altering cultures, challenging institutions, and devastating the hope and ambitions of people. Thirty-three of the Nepal’s 75 districts were affected, at different degrees, and 14 out of 33 were badly damaged by the two major earthquakes on the 26th of April and the 12th of May 2015. This chapter provides a reflective dialogue on the current state of the disaster-recovery process with a focus on the delivery of recovery services aiming to (1) understand how key actors are responding to disaster-recovery works in Nepal and (2) identify knowledge gaps in the disaster response policy and research arenas in managing future disasters in Nepal.

Anthropologists who study disasters share the widely acknowledged understanding that the effects of disasters tend to be more severe among economically and socially marginalized communities than others. Moreover, while poverty intensifies the effects of disasters, it also places survivors at the mercy of policies they have little control over because they often tend to be socially and politically marginalized on account of their poverty. Social vulnerability in other words is a determining factor in shaping the vulnerability of populations to catastrophic events. While scholars tend to focus on the catastrophic event itself as the locus of analysis, it has also become amply clear that such studies need to be in conversation with those that explore the long-term trajectories and effects of social inequality. Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in southern India among artisanal fisher communities affected by the tsunami of 2004, this paper argues that the conceptual aims and claims of the vulnerability concept ought to be extended beyond the confines of the disaster (conceptualized as event), to the broader historical sweep of unequal social relations of production, exchange and consumption within which such communities find themselves. Positioned at a disadvantage in relation to powerful players such as the state, multilateral entities and private big capital, such communities nevertheless might also become important loci of possibility, as they bring to bear their own critiques of power, and fashion political strategies that often frustrate and undermine the conceptual frameworks and goals of contemporary capitalist-led development.

This chapter embraces a rhythmanalytic approach to address the complexities of a city recovering from a disaster. Bridging Henri Lefebvre's work on everyday life with his later work on rhythms this chapter engages his theory to analyse the case of L'Aquila, a city in central Italy that was destroyed by an earthquake in 2009. To this day, the city's skyline is dominated by cranes, while life unfolds along with sounds of the ongoing reconstruction. While the city is still recovering from the earthquake, the landscape of ruins co-exists with a landscape of construction. More than 10 years after the earthquake stripped away life from its historical centre, the city continues to live in a temporal in-between the disaster and its future ‘rebirth’. While most of the current research on the city neglects the city's everyday experience, my research decentres the debate by analysing the everyday rhythms of L'Aquila's historical centre. Additionally, drawing from walking interviews this chapter highlights the perplexing aspects of everyday life in the city emphasising how the city is negotiated and learned from the locals. This chapter highlights the way different temporalities blur in the everyday practices of reconstruction, emphasising how the city is lived and created in the here-and-now.