Social capital and community resilience

Annotated Bibliography

Title and authors:
Social capital and community resilience.
Daniel P Aldrich and Michelle A Meyer

What is the main argument of the paper?

The argument of the paper is revolving around how governments and decision makers, when deciding for disaster management preparedness, must broaden their perspective from just enhancing the physical infrastructure, but must also recognise and enable Community Resilience, constituted by Social Capital

Why is the work important? How does it relate to the design challenge brief?

This body of work is important especially as it highlights the three types of Social Capital namely Bonding, Bridging and Linking capital. It argues that how social capital is a concrete resource for people in the times of adversity, by people becoming first source of first aid, information aid, financial aid, emotional and psychological aid, child care etc. Moreover, social bonds ensure checking wellbeing of one another and empower systematic local action. Interestingly the paper also claims that how often Local groups, social norms and preferences manage behavior better than formal rule and institution. This ties back to the design brief by urging the team to look at the three facets and explore how addition, deletion, transformation in these bonds can affect disaster prevention, management and recovery. Also methods of increasing social capital.

What research methods were used?

Purposive selection, analysis and synthesis of secondary research was the methodology employed. A lot of data cited uses case studies, surveys and results from laboratory experiments and field experiments.