jmaced

Social capital outbreak

One of the effects of the Brisbane flood has been an outbreak of social capital.

Social capital is the glue that holds neighbourhoods, communities, and societies together. ‘Non-familial’ networks are the basis of social capital; that is personal networks beyond the family.

Trust is the key attribute of social capital. Social capital is not directly correlated with financial capital, although it is correlated with cultural capital.

So what of situations where complete strangers turn up to help? This is where trust is evident.

The other interesting aspect of the current flood disaster in Queensland is the way social networking sites have helped individuals draw on social capital. But traffic gridlock has been created as people travel across the city into flood zones to help their friends and work mates living in different suburbs.

 The good thing is that communities with high levels of social capital recover from adverse circumstances faster than those with lower levels of social capital.

 The case studies in the literature on disaster recovery come principally from the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. For those interested here is a short list of references:

 Darby, I. (2005). Tsunami fundraiser shows the power of commercial radio. Campaign, , 10.

Friel, B. (2005). Building social capital. Government Executive, 37(18), 82.

George, B. P. (2008). Local community’s support for post-tsunami recovery efforts in an agrarian village and a tourist destination: A comparative analysis. Community Development Journal, 43(4), 444.

Kapucu, N. (2007). Non-profit response to catastrophic disasters. Disaster Prevention and Management, 16(4), 551.

Minamoto, Y. (2010). Social capital and livelihood recovery: Post-tsunami Sri Lanka as a case. Disaster Prevention and Management, 19(5), 548.

Sherrieb, K., Norris, F. H., & Galea, S. (2010). Measuring capacities for community resilience. Social Indicators Research, 99(2), 227.

CREATIVE COMMONS PIC

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 15th, 2011 at 14:07. It is filed under Media Words, Policy and regulation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.