Community resilience to cyclone and storm surge disasters: Evidence from coastal communities of Bangladesh.

In this study, we posit that in determining the underpinnings and attributes of community resilience to disaster-shocks, an analysis of actual and potential disaster victims' emic perspectives, that is the views of cultural insiders, on recovery processes and community resilience is crucial. We argue that community resilience must be framed within a deeper understanding of the subjective views of the actors themselves, their local knowledge and culture, and the historical context of the place or social formation. In this context, the primary goal of this study was to delineate the fundamental elements of community recovery and attributes of resilience to cyclones, storm surges, and other environmental disaster-shocks in Bangladesh's coastal communities, and, recognizing that social actions are pivotal elements of community resilience, we attempt to make a novel contribution by underscoring local emic perspectives. Using the tools of participatory research methods, we collected empirical data from four sources: a household survey of 300 household heads, eight focus group discussions, 20 key informant interviews, and five in-depth, household case studies. Our research findings revealed that the roles of traditional-informal as well as quasi-formal institutions were vital for rapid recovery and transformation to new local economic and livelihood trajectories. Resilience attributes that were deeply embedded in community characteristics assisted in ameliorating immediate impacts as well as in building future adaptive capacities. Out of 12 resilience attributes identified by the respondents, 'knowledge, skills and learning', 'values and beliefs', 'people-place connection', 'social networks and support', 'active institutions', and 'self-organization' capacities were ranked highest. The community resilience attributes and their functionality in the context of the coastal communities studied varied significantly depending on their economic base, occupations, and their respective contexts of vulnerability. Overall, the findings demonstrate that community resilience attributes function interactively rather than independently, and analyses of community attributes therefore require a clear understanding of network functioning and the processes that drive institutional structures, relations, and outcomes.

Interpretations of Resilience and Change and The Catalytic Roles of Media: A Case of Canadian Daily Newspaper Discourse on Natural Disasters.

The varied interpretations of the concept of resilience in natural hazards research literature has attracted numerous criticisms. A common criticism centers around a poor understanding of the changes caused by natural disasters by the research stream. Considering resilience as a metaphor of change, and newspaper as a catalyst that often highlights post-disaster opportunities for "forward looking" (rather than bouncing back) changes, we examined some specific aspects of change in Canadian communities by analyzing coverage of natural disasters in daily newspapers. We posit that post-disaster newspaper discourse on resilience and change can not only assist enhancing academic inquiries on resilience but also contribute to improving practices for transformative changes in post-disaster contexts. We adopted a social constructivist approach to analyzing newspaper discourse, using the ProQuest database to find articles from the 1996-2017 period. The findings exhibited a trend of the increased use of narratives on resilience in Canadian newspapers since the 1990s that substantiates the hypothesis that transformative change in the personal and practical spheres requires alteration of peoples' attitude, behavior, and thinking toward environmental risks. The discourse emphasized incremental changes at the policy level: (i) to improve response and recovery, and (ii) to address the needs of vulnerable and disaster-affected population. Our findings overall underscore the importance of documentation and efforts towards streamlining learning; application of learning at multiple interconnected levels for progressive changes to enhance community resilience, and the need for building consensus among academicians, practitioners and policy makers regarding the meaning and use of the concept of resilience.