Myra Margolin

Hosted by the Center for Rebuilding Sustainable Communities after Disasters at the University of Massachusetts, Boston

November 16–19, 2008

Myra Margolin

The closing conference remarks delivered by sociologist Russell Schutt were more a call to arms than a summary of conference proceedings. Dr. Schutt focused on two key themes. First, he emphasized the social nature of all disasters, stating that, “social forces shape the causes, course, and consequences of every disaster.” Second, he stressed the importance of focusing on communities in response to disasters. He highlighted the role of the fragmentation of communities in the trauma process as well as the role of communities and their survival in the recovery process. He urged those who shape policy to “turn attention to the importance of thinking about community processes and attending to community in the aftermath of disaster” and drew upon the research showing the impact of neighborhood effects in community crime — both in increasing and reducing crime — and in health — both promoting and hurting health outcomes. While Dr. Schutt’s dual foci — the social nature of disaster and the importance of focusing on community in response to disasters — were not mirrored in many of the presentations at the conference, they are still salient benchmarks to use to guide how we think about disaster and disaster response.

It was particularly striking how few of the presentations explicitly engaged the notion of community rebuilding. I did not hear any theorizing on what community actually is (as a community psychologist, I know that the concept is by no means a clear or straight-forward one). Nor did I hear much attention paid to structural problems that impact how disasters are experienced or felt. A notable exception was a panel I attended on Hurricane Katrina, an event around which there has been much discussion about the linkage between the utterly disastrous government response and the fact that the bulk of those impacted were poor and black. Otherwise, I did not hear much attention given to the power imbalances inherent in disaster situations and the differential responses by government and aid organizations depending on who is impacted.

Many of the discussions and presentations centered around notions of resilience — building individual resilience, building community resilience. It was not always clear what this meant or looked like but, again, I was struck by the very apolitical nature of the idea of resilience. What lies behind the construct is that disaster events are in some way inevitable, in some way outside of our control, and that the way to respond to disaster is to find a way to “bounce back.” There is an assumption in this that disasters, themselves, are politically neutral events. So, in the case of Katrina, one could ask whether building community resilience is an appropriate construct given the massive governmental failure and the racism inherent in the governmental response. A woman on the Katrina panel gave a talk about an organizing effort regarding the fight for housing. Of course, the community and individuals must rebuild their lives. The notion of “resilience”, though, implies that this bounce-back occurs outside of the politics of response. In the case of Katrina (and, most likely, other disasters), a more useful focus of discussion would be how to facilitate community activism rather than studying the nebulous concept of community resilience.

Although there was some rhetoric around allowing responses to disasters to be community driven, many of the proposed interventions and responses were very top-down. They often involved education. In fact, one attendee gave the following response to a comment that there seems to have been, in recent years, an increase in child trafficking and abuse, particularly in refugee situations, and in the use of child soldiers: “I think that education is at the forefront of this whole situation. If we can educate the parents into a better parenthood, that consequently will be passed down to the children so that the children become more aware and more aware of their surroundings and grow to be better citizens and protect themselves more.” The individual level of analysis and top-down approach was often disturbing to me.

This also highlighted the need for more theorizing in this context around the notion of community. Presenters seemed to have a pretty good grasp of what an individual-level intervention looks like. And many attendees talked about impacting policy — a macro-level intervention. There was less clarity around what a community-level response would look like. Does it involve rebuilding community infrastructures and institutions? What role do impacted individuals play in a community-level response? Does it have to do with social support and interpersonal relationships? Does it have to do with a sense of community? These were not clearly explicated and led to the focus on resilience and, to a lesser extent, capacity building. Community participation was conceptualized in some cases (if it was mentioned at all) as asking for community input. It was not discussed as community mobilization or empowerment or building upon existing community resources.

As I think about Susila Dharma in the context of this conference, a few thoughts come to mind. First, I am curious how SD projects straddle multiple levels of analysis — the individual, the community and the policy. The project I am most familiar with, Illene’s project, conceptualizes community and empowerment in a way that I did not see represented at this particular conference (although, of course, her project is not about disaster recovery). Second, it seems that if disaster does hit an area in which Subud members are affected or a Susila Dharma project operates, it is useful to be aware that the most marginalized groups before disaster are oftentimes the most marginalized in the aftermath of disaster. As Dr. Schutt noted, all disasters are social and, therefore, it would not be surprising to find social inequities replicated in the disaster recovery process. It seems crucial to attend to these communities in the aftermath of disaster. Lastly, while an emphasis on building capacity or find community resilience is admirable, it is the case that recovery efforts often undermine existing capacities. For instance, there is evidence that relocation efforts that separate families or social support networks can have serious individual-level psychological consequences. Finding ways to support existing community strengths and working with communities to acquire necessary (community-identified) resources for rebuilding (e.g., housing) seems to be crucial.