Social Resilience:
The Forgotten Element in Disaster Risk
Reduction
Guy Sapirstein, Ph.D.
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Bibliographic Reference:
Sapirstein, G. (2006). Social Resilience: The Forgotten Dimension in Disaster
Risk Reduction. Jamba – Quarterly Bulletin of the African Center for Disaster
Studies, Vol. 1(1), 54-63. Available online at
http://acds.co.za/jamba/jamba_vol1_no1.pdf
Contact information:
Guy Sapirstein, PhD
(e) Guy@DRGuyS.ORG
(t) 617.755.8280
Social Resilience
Background
The current thinking in the Disaster Risk Reduction field emphasizes assessment and reduction of
vulnerability and especially social vulnerability as an important factor in mitigating the effects of
disasters. In the process of emphasizing vulnerability, the role and complexity of social resilience was
somewhat lost and at times minimized. For example, Terry Cannon and his colleagues include
resilience as a factor of social vulnerability in a report to DFID (Cannon, Twigg and Rowell, 2002).
The United Nations University, Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) delineates
“Social Vulnerability” and “Individual Vulnerability” as working areas, but does not mention Social or
Individual Resilience (Bogardi, 2006).
As a result of the conflation of the term 'social resilience' with 'social vulnerability', these two concepts
in addition to the concept of “capacity” became somewhat blurred. Cannon et al. (2002) describes
some of the confusion around the concepts of social vulnerability and capacity in terms of their
relationship to one another. At times they appear linearly related and at other times nonlinearly
related. Jeff Dayton-Johnson (2004) clarifies this confusion by explaining that “Adaptive capacity is a
function of countries ex-ante vulnerability to natural disaster risk and their ex-post resilience once
such disasters have struck “ (p. 8). In other words, both vulnerability and resilience affect capacity.
The relationship between Social Vulnerability and social resilience
The concepts of social vulnerability and social resilience are orthogonal to each other (Bogardi, 2006).
In other words, when represented on a graph, social vulnerability and social resilience are
perpendicular to one another (one is represented on the “X” axis and the other represented on the “Y”
axis). Graph 1 shows a schematic depiction of social resilience and social vulnerability1.
[INSERT GRAPH 1 ABOUT HERE]
1 The author acknowledges that the process of recovery is far more complex than appears in this
representation which is solely for the purpose of representing social resilience and social vulnerability. Zunin
and Meyers (2000) provide an in depth description of the process.
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Social Resilience
While they might interact with respect to their effect on community capacity, they are not directly
correlated with each other. Moreover, they are measured in different units. Vulnerability is the degree
to which people will be impacted by a hazard (natural or man made). Social vulnerability is measured
primarily through cost: be it economic or human. In other words, how much will it cost if a hazard
occurs in a given community and how many lives will be lost or affected. Social resilience, in contrast,
is measured by time. Specifically – how long would it take for the community to respond to the event,
self organize and incorporate the lessons learned before returning to a [new] normal way of
functioning. While it might be tempting for some to to transform this measure of “time” to economic
cost (time=money), that would effectively force a nonlinear relationship into a linear one. The amount
of time it takes to recover from an occurrence of a hazard affects not only the economic viability of a
community, but also its social fabric or “glue” that keeps it together. The longer it takes to recover, the
more likely it is that the community will break up – because of people leaving, economic stagnation,
and rampant psychological and emotional distress. Similar to the notion of “broken families”, the
effect of psychological or relationship dysfunction reaches beyond the economic impact of that lack of
functioning.
A concept analogous to the concept of social resilience is the concept of Recovery Time Objectives
(RTO's) which is taken from the field of Business Continuity Planning (BCP). It refers to the time it
should take a company (or unit) to resume operations after a critical disruption. The purpose of this
metric is to create a benchmark measure that can help evaluate the efficiency and capacity of a
business unit to cope with a critical event or process.
Emphasizing the importance of time in the recovery from disasters is not merely a cold hearted
corporate attitude that time=money. It is also a reflection of the reality that the longer it takes to move
from response to rebuilding and reconstruction, the more deleterious and long lasting the negative
effects of the disaster will be. In the field of human trauma it is known that while people need some
amount of time to recuperate from traumatic events, they should try to resume their regular or
necessary activities as soon as possible.
Definition of Resilience
Despite outlining a clear description of the relationship between resilience, vulnerability and capacity,
Dayton-Johnson (2004) does not clearly define resilience beyond its economic aspect. In fact, few (if
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any) of the people who have written on social vulnerability have defined social resilience clearly. The
abundance of definitions for “resilience” and the fact the this concept is shared by many different
disciplines make it particularly difficult to define uniformly. Two definitions that are especially
comprehensive are the following:
● ...”the ability to face internal or external crisis and not only effectively resolve it but also learn
from it, be strengthened by it and emerge transformed by it, both individually and as a group.”
(Brenson-Lazan, 2003).
● The resilience of an eco-system is its capacity of absorb disturbances while maintaining its
behavioral processes and structure. It can be defined as the capacity to buffer perturbations, to
self-organize, and to learn and adapt (ResAlliance.org).
These definitions include 4 main components: Response, Self-Organization, Learning, and
Adaptation2.
Response
The social response to hazards (natural or man-made) differs across regions and cultures.
Communities differ with respect to their reliance on themselves versus others in the aftermath of a
hazardous event. More resilient communities mobilize their own resources quickly and effectively,
irrespective of assistance from other sources. Often it is community inaction (passively waiting for
assistance) that contributes greatly to psycho-social complications following hazardous events
(Hutton, 2001).
Self Organization
From a social perspective, self organization refers to the activities a community engages in to restore
functioning at least to the pre-event level. These activities can range from emergency response and
recovery to fostering collaboration among civic organizations and neighborhoods and maintaining
social order. Community initiative is important in providing a sense of safety, control of one's destiny,
and predictability, following a profound disruption of all three (Herman, 1992).
Learning
Coming together as a community to discuss “lessons learned” after negative (and positive) events
have taken place is sometimes a challenge (Bazerman and Watkins, 2004). People often want to
2 As the concept of resilience is shared by many different fields, the term resilience as used in this article refers
to 'the general capacity to recover'. Social resilience refers to the application of this term specifically to the
social aspect of resilience.
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“move on” and deal with their current stressors. When disasters are seen as “an act of god” or “fate”
rather than a preventable phenomenon learning is tacitly discouraged. Combining the process of
community learning with educational curricula is an especially important step, as it empowers children
to respond responsibly to natural hazards and fosters a culture of learning.
Adaptation
Catastrophic events cause change. Very often, communities are forever changed – either through
loss of life or loss of social-cultural landmarks and reference points. While grief is understandable and
normal, it is important for a community to adapt to the new normal. The process of adaptation ensures
that people are dealing with the situation at hand, rather than romanticizing an idealized past or
harboring anger and resentment at perceived (or real) failures of government.
These components apply equally to all social units – from individuals, through families to communities
or organizations. Moreover, they necessitate voluntary participation by all involved: one cannot force
or require an individual to be resilient. Rather, resilience is the outcome of developing those four
components. While poverty reduction (the cornerstone of reducing social vulnerability) is a complex
process involving factors beyond the individual or even a community, developing social resilience is a
grassroots process that does not require an intervention on a macro level. Social resilience can be
achieved at the level of the individual family, isolated village or at the other end of the spectrum – a
mega-city.
Redundancy: Enhancing Social Resilience
Implicit in the definitions of resilience is the assumption of redundancy (ResAlliance.org). In other
words, there is more than one system of coping -- when one system is impacted the other systems
help with continued functioning. The greater the redundancy, the more resilient the system. A simple
example would be someone who has a single computer with no backup. If the computer crashes they
will have lost all the data. Increasing redundancy would translate into having a backup and perhaps
even having another computer with the data on it (higher level of redundancy). Looking at the amount
of time it would take that person to resume working (resilience), one could safely assume that if they
had a backup and an extra computer the disruption would be minimal. If they only had the backup
they would need to find another computer which would take longer (thereby decreasing resilience).
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In the social sphere, social resilience assumes a certain amount of redundancy. Traditionally, the
redundancy was created through family ties. People were cared for by their extended family when in
need (e.g. Disaster, illness, old age). With the phenomenon of migration to more urban areas, that
traditional system of social resilience cannot always provide support (e.g. Klineberg, 2002). In these
situations the creation of redundancy is expected of the central or local government which is supposed
to take care of the citizens and residents when they cannot care for themselves (e.g. Vatsa 2005).
With globalization, population migration and other social phenomena of the late 20th century the
Disaster Risk Reduction community needs to rethink the way in which redundancy and social
resilience are achieved. An increasing number of people are living in urban areas -- at least 50% of
the world population by some estimates (Vatsa, 2005) -- and thus are exposed to different types of
social ties. Faith based communities, workplace communities, neighborhoods, dwellers of high-rise
buildings all can provide the redundancy necessary for social resilience. Of this list, the first two have
a particular vested interest in social resilience. Most (if not all) organized religions have as part of their
tenets a moral code calling for social responsibility (www.wcrp.org, under ‘initatives’. See also
Brammer, Williams and Zinkin, 2005 for an interesting perspective). Similarly, most (if not all)
companies and businesses depend on people for their functioning and revenue. It seems logical then
that those organizations (faith based and businesses) should be involved in the process of enhancing
social resilience. Not just out of a sense of social responsibility, but out of a realization that social
resilience is critical and essential to their continued viability. A business will cease to function if it does
not have employees, customers or suppliers. Even if it has all three, the longer the disruption to
operations, the more money the business will lose. Similarly, a faith based community will fail its
constituents if it does not offer social support. With many more alternatives in an urban setting,
worshipers are more likely to choose a community offering them organized, practical and sustained
support in times of crisis and disaster.
An important aspect of this approach is the adoption of a decentralized component to enhancing social
resilience – much of this process is a local, lateral approach, rather than the traditional top-down
approach. In this respect it differs from many of the policies aimed at reducing social vulnerability (e.g.
DFID, 2006; Twigg, 2005; Vatsa, 2005). Many such programs are dependent on central governance
to assist in attaining the goals. Social resilience is developed community by community. Assistance
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from centralized or local government is of secondary importance. As long as there is buy-in from
organizations in the community – employers, businesses, faith based organizations, community
groups, etc. -- one can efficiently and cost-effectively enhance the ability of communities to “bounce
forward” after a potentially devastating event.
Introducing a greater degree of redundancy into prevention and mitigation of the impact of hazards
reduces the pool of people who are dependent solely on governments and charitable organizations for
care, thereby facilitating a greater efficiency in response to hazards. This efficiency is the cornerstone
to the enhancement of social resilience. With more “safety nets” two goals will be accomplished:
1. Governments and charitable organizations will be able to attend to the most needy.
2. Less people will “slip through the cracks” and be missed in the planning, response and
recovery phases.
Future Steps to Enhancing Social Resilience
The biggest obstacle to implementing a plan for enhancing social resilience is obtaining the
cooperation and collaboration of all the “players” or stakeholders who together create the matrix of
redundancy. The challenge to the business or private sector is to look beyond the immediate profit
and loss statements and invest in strategic planning that will ultimately enhance social resilience. In
fact there is research that suggests that some types of corporate support is useful in reducing
absenteeism and worker's compensation claims (Sanchez, Korbin and Viscarra, 1995). The public
sector needs to foster a collaborative atmosphere and consider incentivizing the other players to
assume some of the responsibility for enhancing the social resilience. NGO's and other traditional
“not-for-profit” entities need to accept the private -- “for profit” -- sector as having an important role in
this process, rather than being suspicious and critical of its motives.
Conclusion
Increasing the strength of a society is about increasing the strength and scope of the internal
connections between the people, organizations and environment that form that society. Moving away
from the doctrine of independence to embracing a culture of interdependence is the key to both
harmony and development. The essence of social resilience is not merely fostering independence,
but rather the interdependence that is known in the Philippines as “kapwa” (the unity of “self” and
“other”) and in South Africa as “ubuntu” (the spirit of a community) or “Umuntu ngumuntu ngbaantu” (I
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am a person through other people). The cultural knowledge of social resilience exists across the
globe, but it is up to policy makers, the private sector, and communities to apply it.
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References
Bazerman, M. H., and Watkins, M. D. (2004). Predictable Surprises. Boston, MA: Harvard Business
School Press.
Bogardi, J. J. (2006). Resilience building: from knowledge to action. Introduction to UNU-EHS . June,
Presented to the Summer Academy of UNU: EHS. URL: http://www.ehs.unu.edu/file.php?id=184
Brammer, S, Williams, G. A. and Zinkin, J. (2005). Religion and Attitudes to Corporate Social
Responsibility in a Large Cross-Country Sample. Available at SSRN: ssrn.com/abstract=905182
Brenson-Lazan, G. (2003). Group and social resilience Building. URL:
www.communityatwork.com/resilience/RESILIENCIAENG.pdf
Cannon, T., Twigg, J., and Rowell, J. (2002). Social Vulnerability, Sustainable Livelihoods and
Disasters: Report to DFID Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance Department (CHAD) and
Sustainable Livelihoods Support Office. Url: http://www.livelihoods.org/info/docs/vulnerability.doc
Dayton-Johnson, J. (2004). Natural Disasters and Adaptive Capacity. OECD Development Centre,
working paper No. 237.
DFID (2006). Reducing the Risk of Disasters – Helping to Achieve Sustainable Poverty Reduction in a
Vulnerable World: A DFID policy paper. http://www.unisdr.org/news/DFID-reducing-risk-of-
disasters.pdf.
Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery. Boston, MA: Basic Books.
Hutton, D. (2001). Psychosocial Aspects of Disaster: Integrating Communities Into Disaster Planning
and Policy Making. Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction. www.ICLR.org.
Klineberg, E. (2002). Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of disaster in Chicago. Chicag, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Resilience Alliance, http://www.ResAlliance.org/576.php accessed September 28, 2006.
Sanchez, J. I., Korbin, W. I., and Viscarra, D. M. (1995). Corporate Support in the Aftermath of a
Natural Disaster: Effects on Employee Strains. Academy Of Management Journal, 38(2), 504-521.
Twigg, J. (2005). Community Participation: Time for a Reality Check? In T. Jeggle (Ed.) Know Risk.
UN/ISDR: Tudor-Rose.
Vasta, K. S. (2005). Home for Almost Half the World. In T. Jeggle (Ed.) Know Risk. UN/ISDR: Tudor-
Rose.
World Conference of Religions for Peace, http://www.wcrp.org/about/index, accessed October 23,
2006.
Zunin, L. M. & Myers, D. (2000). Training Manual for Human Service Workers in Major Disasters. 2nd
Ed. Washington, DC: Department of Health and Human Services Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration, Center for Mental Health Services; DHHS Publication No. ADM 90-
538. Retrieved June 14, 2005 from http://www.mentalhealth.org/publications/allpubs/ADM90-
538/tmpreface.asp
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Graph 1: Schematic depiction of the relationship between Social
Resilience* and Social Vulnerability
Time
Degree of
Impact
Recovery and
Social Reconstruction
Vulnerability process
(Cost of
recovery in $)
Social Resilience
*
Gr
*Social Resilience is inversely related to time: the more time elapses till complete
recovery/reconstruction is accomplished, the smaller the Social Resilience of the community.
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