The purpose of this thesis research was to understand the recovery and resilience of wetland-community to flash flood disasters and its associated risks in the north-eastern part of Bangladesh. I conducted my study using a case study approach following an interdisciplinary research paradigm. It was found that wetland-community is extremely vulnerable to flash flood hazards - both in biophysical and social terms. However, they possess certain coping thresholds, and are resilient to disaster losses. The adaptive capacity of the local communities has been severely curbed by a number of socio-ecological, economic, and political factors, leading to natural resource degradation, marginalization and exclusion of the poor from common pool resources by powerful groups. Response capacities of local institutions were severely constrained by their limited relative autonomy. For building resilience, i) effective management and access of the poor to natural resources, and ii) enhancing autonomy of local institutions are required. / February 2016

Over recent years, community resilience has been increasing in popularity as a topic for detailed study. During that time, academic researchers have been working to untangle the complex network of social relationships that define the concept. In parallel, some institutions have set the achievement of enhanced community resilience as a policy goal. This research has sought to assist in both areas: first, by contributing to the academic debate and second, to build a clearer understanding of how institutions can tailor policies to ensure success in their goal of enhancing community resilience. A case study approach was adopted for the research, centring on three communities in the Teign Estuary of South Devon (Newton Abbot, Teignmouth and Shaldon). All three communities were vulnerable to tidal flooding and links between the communities and institutions responsible for managing flood risk (FRM framework) were analysed. In the analysis, a specific form of social capital was studied: social capital derived from community-institution links (CISC). CISC was found to be effective in revealing links with the greatest potential to enhance the resilience of communities against flood risks. To assess resilience at the individual and community level, a maturity based model was used. The assessment found disparities between how resilience matures at the community level compared to the individual level. Specifically, resilience maturity in communities was revealed as a less linear process. As such, the case study communities were able to exhibit traits associated with low resilience maturity at the same time as exhibiting traits associated with high resilience maturity. This research concluded that the UK FRM policy framework was robust, aligning well with academic theory. However, the FRM system was revealed as being dominated by expert elites. These elites are mainly public sector based and were judged to be stifling the engagement of the private sector at the local level. To enhance their resilience, this study determined that communities need to investment in CISC, but that investment must not just be targeted at public sector FRM institutions alone, it also needs to target private sector FRM institutions.

The justice system in the east-African country Kenya has long been subject to severe corruption and lengthy bureaucracy.  Both historical and current injustices have been left unattended and unaddressed, obstructing community resilience. This has lead to the development of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms that often build on traditional practices. In this study the ADR of restorative justice is examined. The study seeks to explore the relationship between the informal practice of restorative justice and the social dimensions of community resilience in the rural communities of Nakuru County in western Kenya. By merging questions on the practice of restorative justice with indicators of community resilience the study has found that the informal practice of restorative justice indeed has links to the shaping of community resilience. The practice has enabled dialogue between different ethnic groups. This has facilitated reconciliation and healing of trauma partly because new narratives have formed and partly because the culture of silence has been broken allowing people to share testimonies of violence and conflict. The study has also informed the community resilience field on the importance for collectivistic communities to have historical and ancestral events honoured, shared and addressed in order to fully enable conditions under which community resilience can form. However the practice shows ambiguous tendencies when it comes to inclusion of all members of society as community elders’ possesses a lot of power over the process, partially restricting community resilience to form.

This Thesis presents ethnographic data collected through multi-sector, multi-level purposive sampling in a longitudinal qualitative case study between 2008 and 2010. A pilot study had discovered the changing role of government in building capacity for responses to civil emergencies, against a context of changing risks and resources for UK Emergency Management. The Thesis explored the increasing involvement of non-statutory agencies by focussing on the ‘Third Sector’: voluntary, charitable, faith, or community organisations and communities. The Thesis reports (1) the relationship between multi-organisational arrangements and resilience, (2) the role of Third Sector organisations in implementing resilience, and (3) the role of the Third Sector in community resilience. (1) The data suggested that the process of implementing resilience involved operationalising the resilience concept as a philosophy for Integrated Emergency Management [IEM], and consequent changes to the governance and organisation of Scottish and UK emergency management. The research linked the role of the Third Sector in resilience and community resilience to the dynamic between preparedness and response. It explored (2) the impact of implementing resilience on organising and organisations in the Third Sector, and (3) policy development and capacity-building for an emergent role in community resilience. The Thesis makes a distinctive contribution to the discipline of Public Management. Firstly, the findings represent a novel empirical and theoretical contribution regarding the role of the Third Sector in community resilience and in the resilience paradigm of emergency management. This data is used to extend existing theory about the proactive role of Third Sector organisations in collaborative emergency management. Secondly, the Thesis argues that the meso-level of analysis is neglected in the emerging field of resilience studies. Network and collaboration theory in Public Management are used to make a novel theoretical contribution, describing the relationship between multi-organisational arrangements and the operationalisation of ‘resilient’ emergency management. Thirdly, the Thesis contributes to the study of collaborative emergency management from this longitudinal perspective. This data is used to extend our understanding of (a) the applicability of Public Management theory to this context and (b) the relevance of data from this context to theories of collaborative public management.

Rural change and the ability of farming communities to respond and withstand change is a topic of ongoing concern in the current research agenda. ‘Rural community resilience’ is a concept that has become a core theme of academic, policy and lay discourses discussing dynamics of rural change, widely associated with community studies and allied to notions of social capital. This work reviews approaches to community relations developed within community studies and social capital scholarship, and suggests that the relational agency of the network ties might also be explored through the application of an assemblage approach. However, and unlike many previous approaches to community resilience that use the concept in a normative way and which understandably highlight agency of social relations, this research has been constructed in such a way that network ties established through day-to-day community practices are characterized both vital and far from passive. Developing this current line of thinking in rural studies, this project argues that more-than-social agency evoked by relations between human and non-human components of the rural assemblage is an important factor affecting community resilience. The empirical research feeds from two case studies and gathers evidence from two distinctive agricultural communities of Hungary and Wales, whilst also recognizing similarities in the context of globalization. It argues that rural community resilience lies in relations between the humans, the land and the agricultural commodities.

Natural disasters such as flooding often affect vast areas and create infinite demands that need to be addressed in the same time. The wide scopes and severe impacts of such catastrophes often exceed, if not overwhelm, capacity of the national government to handle. In such a situation, communities such as cities and neighborhoods need to rely on their own capacity (resources, strategies, and expertise) to respond to disaster impacts at least until external assistance can be reached. Thus, studying how communities can be resilient to the impacts of natural disasters is important because this would enhance their ability to respond to the next disaster better. Within the context of great flooding in Thailand in 2011, this dissertation investigated the factors that generated or enhanced resilience of flood stricken-communities in Thailand. Nakhonswan City Municipality was selected as the research site. Qualitative research methods were employed in this study. Data were collected using in-depth interview and focus group. Thirty-six participants (28 for in-depth interview and 8 for focus group interview) from various organizations were recruited using snowball and purposive sampling strategies. Interview data from the field research were transcribed, translated from Thai language to English, and then analyzed using open coding and focused coding strategies. Analyses of in-depth interview data revealed eight conceptual themes representing factors that constituted resilience of Nakhonsawan City Municipality, as the leading organization responded to the flood. These factors are: availability of resources for resilience; managerial adaptability; crisis leadership; quality workforce; knowledge sharing and learning; organizational preparedness; organizational integration; and sectoral integration. In addition, findings from the focus group interview with members of three strong neighborhoods found eight factors that helped these neighborhoods respond effectively to the flood crisis. They included: self-reliance; cooperation; local wisdom; preparedness; internal support; external support; crisis adaptability; and pre-disaster social cohesion. This dissertation ended with the discussion of implications, limitations and suggestions for future research.

People of the Caribbean have maintained social networks that provide security in the face of human and natural perturbations. Rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) constitute one such system, which probably came to much of the Caribbean with African people and persisted through slavery. As a foundation of creole economic systems throughout the Caribbean, ROSCAs are time-tested dimensions of traditional culture and a source of pride and identity. This analysis of the history and contemporary functions of ROSCAs in Barbados and the Bahamas is based on more than a thousand extensive and intensive first-person interviews and surveys. This article argues that ROSCAs continue, much as they did in the past, to provide critical human services, social stability, and a source of African-ancestor identity in these two nations. (Women’s power, rotating credit, Bahamas, Barbados).

Thesis (M.A. (Clinical Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

Thesis (M.A. (Clinical Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

Background: Community resilience to a disaster is a complex phenomenon studied using a variety of research lenses, such as psychological and ecological, resulting in a lack of consensus about what the key factors are that make a community resilient. Formally representing this knowledge will allow researchers to better understand the links between the knowledge generated using different lenses and help to integrate new findings into the existing body of knowledge. Objective: Using ontology engineering methods to represent this knowledge will provide a tool to aid researchers in the field. Methods: An ontology is a structured way of organizing and representing knowledge in the field of community resilience to a disaster. The model created using this method can be read by a computer, which allows a reasoner to manipulate and infer new knowledge. Results: When using these methods to structure community resilience knowledge some of the complexities and ambiguities were identified. These included semantic ambiguities, such as two distinct factors being used interchangeably or two terms being used to describe the same factor, making the distinction between what are the factors and the characteristics of those factors, and finally, the inherited characteristics and relationships associated with hierarchical relationships. Conclusions: Having the knowledge about community resilience to a disaster represented in an ontology will aid researchers when operationalizing this knowledge in the future.