Eric C. Jones

Cross-Cultural and Site-Based Influences on Demographic, Well-being, and Social Network Predictors of Risk Perception in Hazard and Disaster Settings in Ecuador and Mexico

Although virtually all comparative research about risk perception focuses on which hazards are of concern to people in different culture groups, much can be gained by focusing on predictors of levels of risk perception in various countries and places. In this case, we examine standard and novel predictors of risk perception in seven sites among communities affected by a flood in Mexico (one site) and volcanic eruptions in Mexico (one site) and Ecuador (five sites). We conducted more than 450 interviews with questions about how people feel at the time (after the disaster) regarding what happened in the past, their current concerns, and their expectations for the future. We explore how aspects of the context in which people live have an effect on how strongly people perceive natural hazards in relationship with demographic, well-being, and social network factors. Generally, our research indicates that levels of risk perception for past, present, and future aspects of a specific hazard are similar across these two countries and seven sites. However, these contexts produced different predictors of risk perception—in other words, there was little overlap between sites in the variables that predicted the past, present, or future aspects of risk perception in each site. Generally, current stress was related to perception of past danger of an event in the Mexican sites, but not in Ecuador; network variables were mainly important for perception of past danger (rather than future or present danger), although specific network correlates varied from site to site across the countries.

Livestock Raiding and Rainfall Variability in Northwestern Kenya.

In 2009, Witsenburg and Adano summarized their research on rainfall variability and livestock raiding in Marsabit District, Kenya. They found that livestock-related violence was higher in wetter months and wetter years, contrary to the common assumption that scarcity of water and pasture is the primary driver of livestock violence. Our research, focusing on the neighboring Turkana District of northwestern Kenya, attempted to replicate the Witsenburg and Adano findings for the years 1998–2009. We find significant relationships between rainfall variability and intensity of livestock violence, but in the opposite direction – drier months and drought years in Turkana District have higher intensities of violence.

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.

Class-Based Social Networks in Regional Economic Systems.

Does a villages location in a regional economic system predict the extent to which close interpersonal relationships are based on socioeconomic similarity? A comparison of sample social networks of four frontier villages in northwest Ecuador showed that village centrality influences the dominant types of social relationships and, thus, the differential tendencies for socioeconomic differentiation. Compared to residents in peripheral villages, those in central ones were more likely to name individuals of their own class and to note mutual relations in their social networks.

Social Networks of Help-Seeking in Different Types of Disaster Responses to the 2008 Mississippi River Floods

We conducted thirty-two interviews and four focus groups in Illinois after extensive flooding in 2008 to determine whether people use social networks in different ways when responding to different types of challenges before, during, and after the flood. Using a grounded theory approach to analyze narratives of interviewees recalling events, we coded sections of text using “social relationship” and “response” as sensitizing concepts. Results showed people relied most on immediate family when securing life. Networks expanded to friends, neighbors, professionals, and volunteers during non-life-threatening preparation and immediate recovery. Immediately before the disasters impact, social networks extended outward into weak ties in a spirit of communitas. During long-term recovery, interviewees were most isolated and relied heavily on immediate family and professionals. The concepts of bridging and bonding social capital may be more important for understanding non-vital response, whereas strong and weak ties...

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.

Design for Data Quality in a Multisite Cross-Sectional and Panel Study

The authors address the issues faced while collecting survey data as part of a large multisite, multidisciplinary long-term project using interviewers rather than self-administered questionnaires in a country in which the researchers are not native. The issues pertain to the collection of high-quality data that accurately measure the variables of interest from which generalizations can be made. Three issues were prominent: potential cross-cultural variation in the validity of measures; how to manage multiple control sites and multiple study sites; and how to control for problems presented by series/panel data (i.e., the influence of prior interviews or subsequent intervening events on later interviews). The authors addressed these issues through five strategies at different points in the study. This discussion concerns the challenges and benefits of using these techniques to address the three main issues.

Using Social Network Analysis to Examine the Effect of Care Management Structure on Chronic Disease Management Communication Within Primary Care

BackgroundCare management and care managers are becoming increasingly prevalent in primary care medical practice as a means of improving population health and reducing unnecessary care. Care managers are often involved in chronic disease management and associated transitional care. In this study, we examined the communication regarding chronic disease care within 24 primary care practices in Michigan and Colorado. We sought to answer the following questions: Do care managers play a key role in chronic disease management in the practice? Does the prominence of the care manager’s connectivity within the practice’s communication network vary by the type of care management structure implemented?MethodsIndividual written surveys were given to all practice members in the participating practices. Survey questions assessed demographics as well as practice culture, quality improvement, care management activities, and communication regarding chronic disease care. Using social network analysis and other statistical methods, we analyzed the communication dynamics related to chronic disease care for each practice.ResultsThe structure of chronic disease communication varies greatly from practice to practice. Care managers who were embedded in the practice or co-located were more likely to be in the core of the communication network than were off-site care managers. These care managers also had higher in-degree centrality, indicating that they acted as a hub for communication with team members in many other roles.DiscussionSocial network analysis provided a useful means of examining chronic disease communication in practice, and highlighted the central role of care managers in this communication when their role structure supported such communication. Structuring care managers as embedded team members within the practice has important implications for their role in chronic disease communication within primary care.

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.

Social Organization of Suffering and Justice-Seeking in a Tragic Day Care Fire Disaster

In 2009 a fire destroyed a day care center in Mexico, killing 49 children and leaving 100 others with serious injuries. This chapter explores how suffering and the search for justice and closure have produced a social movement of interconnected subgroups of parents and caretakers. These new social groups collaborate and at times compete due to their myriad definitions and concepts of justice. In various combinations, parents and caretakers in four self-defined groups seek justice through legal consequences for day care owners plus regulators and politicians: seeing that it never happens again; demanding compensation; assuring that their surviving children are healthy and taken care of; and expressing their loss or anger. How their suffering translates into these objectives must be understood in a context in which the new Mexican multi-party system is figuring out how to handle major problems like this so that citizens feel closure. The single party system always had answers for such problems—send the perpetrators to another state or off to an ambassadorial post. While it appears that the social movement approach has seen some success in the case of the 2009 fire and in other applications, it also holds limitations in that it reminds individuals of their suffering and grief and may limit progress in constructing a new well-being.