Like a Fish Out of Water: Reconsidering Disaster Recovery and the Role of Place and Social Capital in Community Disaster Resilience

TLDR

The paper argues that disaster recovery must be reconfigured to more meaningfully incorporate place, identity, and social capital, allowing a reflective response to the disorientation caused by disasters. The authors introduce the reorientation process, a social‑psychological framework in which affected individuals and communities navigate the psychological, social, and emotional responses to the symbolic and material changes in place caused by wildfire destruction. The study finds that reorientation highlights place as both an orienting framework and the foundation for social capital and community resilience, underscoring the need for practitioners to account for contextual and cultural dynamics in disaster recovery.

Abstract

In this paper we draw on the findings of a critical, multi-sited ethnographic study of two rural communities affected by a wildfire in British Columbia, Canada to examine the salience of place, identity, and social capital to the disaster recovery process and community disaster resilience. We argue that a reconfiguration of disaster recovery is required that more meaningfully considers the role of place in the disaster recovery process and opens up the space for a more reflective and intentional consideration of the disorientation and disruption associated with disasters and our organized response to that disorientation. We describe a social-psychological process, reorientation, in which affected individuals and communities navigate the psychological, social and emotional responses to the symbolic and material changes to social and geographic place that result from the fire's destruction. The reorientation process emphasizes the critical importance of place not only as an orienting framework in recovery but also as the ground upon which social capital and community disaster resilience are built. This approach to understanding and responding to the disorientation of disasters has implications for community psychologists and other service providers engaged in supporting disaster survivors. This includes the need to consider the complex dynamic of contextual and cultural factors that influence the disaster recovery process.