A. J. Faas

Applied Anthropology of Risk, Hazards, and Disasters

This article provides a brief introduction to advancements in the anthropology of disasters as well as the historical antecedents and the intellectual collaborations that contributed to contemporary work in the field. It reviews the multiple directions, methodological approaches, and theoretical leanings that comprise todays diversified field of disaster anthropology and discusses how the monographs included in the special edition of Human Organization (74[4]) on the applied anthropology of risks, hazards, and disasters showcase the variety of topics and themes engaged by applied anthropologists who work on disaster-related issues.

Gendered Access to Formal and Informal Resources in Postdisaster Development in the Ecuadorian Andes

Abstract The devastating eruptions of Mount Tungurahua in the Ecuadorian highlands in 1999 and 2006 left many communities struggling to rebuild their homes and others permanently displaced to settlements built by state and nongovernmental organizations. For several years afterward, households diversified their economic strategies to compensate for losses, communities organized to promote local development, and the state and nongovernmental organizations sponsored many economic recovery programs in the affected communities. Our study examined the ways in which gender and gender roles were associated with different levels and paths of access to scarce resources in these communities. Specifically, this article contrasts the experiences of men and women in accessing household necessities and project assistance through formal institutions and informal networks. We found that women and men used different types of informal social support networks, with men receiving significantly more material, emotional, and informational support than women. We also found that men and women experienced different challenges and advantages when pursuing support through local and extralocal institutions and that these institutions often coordinated in ways that reified their biases. We present a methodology that is replicable in a wide variety of disaster, resettlement, and development settings, and we advocate an inductive, evidence-based approach to policy, built upon an understanding of local gender, class, and ethnic dynamics affecting access to formal and informal resources. This evidence should be used to build more robust local institutions that can resist wider social and cultural pressures for male dominance and gendered exclusion.

Critical aspects of social networks in a resettlement setting

Each year, more than 30 million people worldwide are displaced by disaster, development, and conflict. The sheer magnitude of displacement points to a need for wider application of social science theories and methodologies to the special problems posed by these crises. We are convinced that social network analysis of the structure and development of social relations can help to identify variables and patterns essential to maintaining or fostering social (re)articulation in resettlement. The research model we propose applies advances in network methodology to emerging theory on structural gaps in networks in the context of forced displacement and resettlement.

Articulation of Personal Network Structure with Gendered Well-Being in Disaster and Relocation Settings

Women are frequently considered more vulnerable and generally experience higher levels of stress than do men in disaster environments. This is due in minor part to biological differences between men and women (e.g., pregnancy, nursing, physical strength, various hormone levels, differences in daily caloric intake strategies/metabolism), but is due in major part to culturally derived gender roles involving responsibilities of maintaining networks and caring for others during crises when fewer familiar resources are available. This study delves into how personal networks figure in the relationship between gender and well-being. We employed a social network framework in seven disaster-affected and resettled communities in Ecuador and Mexico to understand better how gender and personal networks interact to produce variations in personal well-being. More than 400 people affected by the volcanic activity around Mt. Tungurahua (Ecuador) and Mt. Popocatepetl (Mexico) and landslides in the Caribbean coastal mountains (Mexico) participated in in-depth structured interviews. Data were collected on demographics, health, mental health, and personal networks. Resettled women in both Ecuador and Mexico reported the overall lowest well-being for any network type, although there was considerable variation associated with network type. Subgroups were promising as a protective factor for resettled women in both Ecuador and Mexico, which further points to the role of personal networks. Non-resettled men, on the other hand, reported the highest well-being, followed by non-resettled women and resettled men.

Rain and Raids Revisited: Disaggregating Ethnic Group Livestock Raiding in the Ethiopian-Kenyan Border Region

Focusing on livestock raiding, a major form of violence in arid and semiarid regions, we evaluate the relationship between rainfall and intensity of violence, disaggregating ethnic groups that have somewhat different subsistence patterns. We do so to try to resolve previously published results and conclusions that appear contradictory – some research finding livestock violence higher in wet times suggestive of more violence in times of plenty; others finding violence higher in dry times suggestive of greater scarcity. Using rainfall from NASA and violence data from ACLED for the years 1998–2009, we looked at the patterns of livestock-related violence for six different ethnic groups that have a home in the area in and around Marsabit district of Kenya. Different ethnic groups appear to have somewhat different patterns and we suggest how some of their cultural differences may explain these patterns. However, for most groups, intense violence is more common in drier times.

Enduring Cooperation: Time, Discipline, and Minga Practice in Disaster-induced Displacement and Resettlement in the Ecuadorian Andes

This paper presents a study of an Andean form of cooperation, the minga, in a disaster-affected community and a disaster-induced resettlement––both due to volcanic eruption—in the Andean highlands of Ecuador. I explore factors affecting the continuity of minga practice post disaster and reveal some of the largely temporal tensions between wage labor and minga practice. However, I argue that much of the variation in inter-household minga participation was due to interventions by the state and NGOs and how these organizations structured the labor and temporal organization of mingas as a form of discipline. I further find that this dynamic is an extension of the historical role mingas have played in domination and local agency and highlight how this has important implications for disaster recovery at the household and community levels and for disaster relief and resettlement policy and practice.

Social Network Analysis Focused on Individuals Facing Hazards and Disasters

This chapter reviews social network analysiss contribution to alternatively complementary or conflicting conclusions about human behavior and relationships in disaster. The social network is a seductive concept in the anthropology of disasters—a potentially robust tool for investigating complex human and human-environment entanglements. What are the conceptual, theoretical, and empirical trends—and potential opportunities and constraints—in social network analysis approaches to studying the behaviors, perceptions, and well-being of individuals in disaster contexts? In this integrative overview, we find generally promising topics to be: how various types of ties contribute to an individuals experience of disaster; what diversity and homophily do in response, recovery, and adaptation; why a constellation or spiderweb of relationships sometimes produces emergent properties; when network potential is translated into network activation; and how we can theoretically capture the unfolding of the disaster experience without making it an unrealistic set of stages.

Patterns of preference and practice: bridging actors in wildfire response networks in the American Northwest

The roles of bridging actors in emergency response networks can be important to disaster response outcomes. This paper is based on an evaluation of wildfire preparedness and response networks in 21 large-scale wildfire events in the wildland-urban interface near national forests in the American Northwest. The study investigated how key individuals in responder networks anticipated seeking out specific people in perceived bridging roles prior to the occurrence of wildfires, and then captured who in fact assumed these roles during actual large-scale events. It examines two plausible, but contradictory, bodies of theory-similarity and dissimilarity-that suggest who people might seek out as bridgers and who they would really go to during a disaster. Roughly one-half of all pre-fire nominations were consistent with similarity. Yet, while similarity is a reliable indicator of how people expect to organise, it does not hold up for how they organise during the real incident.

Social Networks and Disaster Risk Perception in Mexico and Ecuador

We examine social aspects of risk perception in seven sites among communities affected by a flood in Mexico (one site), as well by volcanic eruptions in Mexico (one site) and Ecuador (five sites). We conducted over 450 interviews with questions about the danger people feel at the time (after the disaster) about what happened in the past, their current concerns, and their expectations about the future. We explored how aspects of the context in which people live have an effect on the relationship between risk perception and social network factors. Levels of risk perception for past, present, and future aspects of a specific hazard were similar across these two countries and seven sites. However, specific network factors varied from site to site across the countries, thus there was little overlap between sites in the variables that predicted the past, present, or future aspects of risk perception in each site.