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Social Capital, Community Resilience, and Faith-based Organizations in Disaster Recovery

Year: 2013
Type: preprint
Abstract: In August of 2005, Hurricane Katina struck the Gulf Coast, flooding eighty percent of the City of New Orleans (Associated Press, 2005). This disaster that continues to be defined as the most destructive natural disaster to impact the United States in recorded history illustrated the social vulnerability of urban populations living in hazard prone regions. Moreover, the disaster illustrated that a community’s vulnerability to disasters was not only a product of the built environment’s varying resistance to disasters and a community’s physical proximity to hazards, but also a byproduct of social dynamics that contribute to the vulnerability of populations (Miller and Rivera, 2008; Cutter et al., 2009). The subsequent effects of these social dynamics, when placed under the pressure of a severe natural disaster, illustrates to both the directly affected communities and the rest of the nation, that organizational, governmental, and private sector arrangements designed to mitigate detrimental disaster affects are inadequate (Gunter and Kroll-Smith, 2007), and that the public’s reliance on governmental structures can be more detrimental to the success of community survival than self-reliance (Miller and Rivera, 2008; Rivera and Miller, 2010). As a by-product of the public’s realization that governmental structures put in place to mitigate disaster risks and aid communities in the disaster recovery process were inadequate, reliance on other types of organizations was necessary for some communities to survive. Although there are a number of different actors that played a role in the reestablishment of communities within New Orleans since the Hurricane took place, the Mary Queen of Vietnam (MQVN) Catholic Church is a prime example of how a community based organization stepped in to address the needs of its community in the wake of the disaster. This paper examines how MQVN garnered social capital within its surrounding community to pursue successful community development in the absence of governmental support, and to a certain extent in the presence of political resistance. This paper will first review the government failure and decrease in civic trust that fostered a robust third sector response in disaster recovery and redevelopment. Then, using social capital theory, the paper follows Newton’s (2001) proposition that civic distrust and confidence is derived from government and institutional performance, rather than “increasing individualism, declining social trust, or the disintegration of community life” (Newton, 1999, p. 12); and argues that the social trust fostered by MQVN empowered community solidarity, bridged social networks and successfully pursued community redevelopment initiatives in the aftermath of disasters, even when resources are restricted and local political structures are at odds with neighborhood priorities. ct will be provided by author.
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2273322091
Cites: 112
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Related to: 10