Daniel P. Aldrich

Social Capital and Community Resilience

Despite the ubiquity of disaster and the increasing toll in human lives and financial costs, much research and policy remain focused on physical infrastructure–centered approaches to such events. Governmental organizations such as the Department of Homeland Security, United States Federal Emergency Management Agency, United States Agency for International Development, and United Kingdom’s Department for International Development continue to spend heavily on hardening levees, raising existing homes, and repairing damaged facilities despite evidence that social, not physical, infrastructure drives resilience. This article highlights the critical role of social capital and networks in disaster survival and recovery and lays out recent literature and evidence on the topic. We look at definitions of social capital, measurement and proxies, types of social capital, and mechanisms and application. The article concludes with concrete policy recommendations for disaster managers, government decision makers, and nongovernmental organizations for increasing resilience to catastrophe through strengthening social infrastructure at the community level.

The Externalities of Strong Social Capital: Post-Tsunami Recovery in Southeast India

Much research has implied that social capital functions as an unqualified ‘public good’, enhancing governance, economic performance, and quality-of-life. Scholars of disaster have extended this concept to posit that social capital provides non-excludable benefits to whole communities after major crises. Using qualitative methods to analyse data from villages in Tamil Nadu, India following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, this article demonstrates that high levels of social capital simultaneously provided strong benefits and equally strong negative externalities, especially to those already on the periphery of society. In these villages, high levels of social capital reduced barriers to collective action for members of the uur panchayats (hamlet councils) and parish councils, speeding up their recovery and connecting them to aid organizations, but at the same time reinforced obstacles to recovery for women, Dalits, migrants, and Muslims. These localized findings have important implications for academic studies of social capital and policy formation for future disasters and recovery schemes.

Social, not physical, infrastructure: the critical role of civil society after the 1923 Tokyo earthquake

Despite the tremendous destruction wrought by catastrophes, social science holds few quantitative assessments of explanations for the rate of recovery. This article illuminates four factors-damage, population density, human capital, and economic capital-that are thought to explain the variation in the pace of population recovery following disaster; it also explores the popular but relatively untested factor of social capital. Using time-series, cross-sectional models and propensity score matching, it tests these approaches using new data from the rebuilding of 39 neighbourhoods in Tokyo after its 1923 earthquake. Social capital, more than earthquake damage, population density, human capital, or economic capital, best predicts population recovery in post-earthquake Tokyo. These findings suggest new approaches for research on social capital and disasters as well as public policy avenues for handling catastrophes.

Strong Civil Society as a Double-Edged Sword: Siting Trailers in Post-Katrina New Orleans

To meet the dire need for housing following Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials created lists of potential sites for trailer parks. We analyze approved sites to track which factors were linked with larger (or smaller) numbers of trailers and trailer sites per zip code block. Areas which displayed greater levels of social capital, as evidenced by voluntaristic activities such as voting, were slated for fewer trailers, controlling for race, income, education, flood damage, and other relevant factors. Civil society worked simultaneously to bring citizens together while mobilizing them against the threat of trailer parks in their backyards.

Strong Civil Society as a Double-Edged Sword

To meet the dire need for housing following Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials created lists of potential sites for trailer parks. We analyze approved sites to track which factors were linked with larger (or smaller) numbers of trailers and trailer sites per zip code block. Areas which displayed greater levels of social capital, as evidenced by voluntaristic activities such as voting, were slated for fewer trailers, controlling for race, income, education, flood damage, and other relevant factors. Civil society worked simultaneously to bring citizens together while mobilizing them against the threat of trailer parks in their backyards.

The Physical and Social Determinants of Mortality in the 3.11 Tsunami

The human consequences of the 3.11 tsunami were not distributed equally across the municipalities of the Tohoku region of northeastern Japan. Instead, the mortality rate from the massive waves varied tremendously from zero to ten percent of the local residential population. What accounts for this variation remains a critical question for researchers and policy makers alike. This paper uses a new, sui generis data set including all villages, towns, and cities on the Pacific Ocean side of the Tohoku region to untangle the factors connected to mortality during the disaster. With data on demographic, geophysical, infrastructure, social capital, and political conditions for 133 municipalities, we find that tsunami height, stocks of social capital, and level of political support for the long-ruling LDP strongly influenced mortality rates. Given the high probability of future large scale catastrophes, these findings have important policy implications for disaster mitigation policies in Japan and abroad.

Modeling Social Opposition to Infrastructure Development

Social and political dynamics increasingly determine the fate of infrastructure development around the world. Decision makers involved with projects such as the Keystone XL pipeline in North America, the Belo Monte Dam in Brazil, and the Bujagali Dam in Uganda have been forced to substantially change their plans as a result of opposition. This study looks at such emergent dynamics to provide a quantitative assessment of risks associated with social sustainability in infrastructure development. An interactional model is proposed to analyze emergent risks in a complex system of systems and it is applied to emergent risks in infrastructure development. The analysis is based on the game-theoretic equilibria for an interaction between two actors, namely, the developer and the opposition. Using simulation the structural and contextual variations were investigated in the context of the project along with consequent emergent patterns of outcomes and associated risk profiles. The model comprises informal and formal interactional stages to investigate the impact of alternative mitigation strategies on project risk. The application of the proposed methodology is showcased in an analysis of informal and formal strategies to deliver socially sustainable projects.

Mars and Venus at Twilight: A Critical Investigation of Moralism, Age Effects, and Sex Differences

Analysts have long sought to understand whether women and men have different ethical orientations. Some researchers have argued that women and men consistently make fundamentally different ethical judgments, especially of corruption; others have found no such disparities. This study considered whether an individual’s age may also play a role in determining his or her moral judgment. A statistical investigation of interactive effects between gender and age in a nationally representative data set from Japan shows that this interaction functions better as a predictor of moralism than does education or gender alone. Older individuals of both sexes were found to have similar strict moral perceptions; as women and men age, their ethical judgments converge.

Hatoko Comes Home: Civil Society and Nuclear Power in Japan

This article seeks to explain how, given Japans “nuclear allergy” following World War II, a small coastal town not far from Hiroshima volunteered to host a nuclear power plant in the early 1980s. Where standard explanations of contentious nuclear power siting decisions have focused on the regional power utilities and the central government, this paper instead examines the importance of historical change and civil society at a local level. Using a microhistorical approach based on interviews and archival materials, and framing our discussion with a popular Japanese television show known as Hatokos Sea, we illustrate the agency of municipal actors in the decision-making process. In this way, we highlight the significance of long-term economic transformations, demographic decline, and vertical social networks in local invitations to controversial facilities. These perspectives are particularly important in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima crisis, as the outside world seeks to understand how and why Japan embraced atomic energy.

Rethinking Civil Society–State Relations in Japan after the Fukushima Accident

The 3/11 combined disaster in Japan focused both Japanese civil society and government decision makers on the issue of nuclear power. Whereas surveys over the post-war period indicated that many Japanese supported the growing role of nuclear power in Japans overall energy policy, the current crisis has resulted in a sea-change in public opinion. Even though some scholars have depicted Japanese civil society as comparatively weak and poorly organized, the disaster has stimulated citizen science, prompted large protests, and spurred many to challenge governmental authority. This article investigates the ways that Japans relatively stable patterns of state-and-civil-society relations have been reconfigured as a result of the Tohoku disaster.