Theorizing a Social Repair Orientation to Disaster Recovery: Developing Insights for Disaster Recovery Policy and Programming

Abstract

This paper conceptualizes a social repair orientation to disaster recovery for policy makers and programmers. It locates the concept of social repair in a variety of academic disciplines and identifies two distinct understandings of social repair: resumption of everyday life and re-humanization/reconstituting the self. The paper then theorizes the agency of memory, hope and resistance as strategic tools for achieving social repair. Additionally, social learning is used to describe the use of these tools by disaster survivors to achieve social repair. Finally, the paper delineates the differences between a social repair orientation to disaster recovery and existing disaster recovery praxis, offering guidance for policy makers and programmers.

Data, Disasters, and Space-Time Entanglements

“…For instance, dominant political actors and formal disaster governance actors are likely to emphasize the phases of disaster governance, such as mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. This phase-based approach centers the disaster event and reinforces the linearity of time where before, during, and after disaster follow one another (Aijazi 2014 ). In the response phase, Zebrowski ( 2019 ) argues that political actors strive to suppress events and their “disruptive” time quickly, aiming to restore the linear time of the everyday.…”

“…The hazard formed a fixed point on space-time trajectories. Rather than understanding the event as a single moment on a linear temporal continuum that splits before from after (Aijazi 2014 ), we suggest viewing the hazard as temporally rooted in the events of 12 April 2014, where the “place” of the hazard acts as an “arena where negotiation is forced upon us” (Massey 2005 , p. 154). Qualitative research is thought to fare particularly well in mapping social phenomena in real time (Silverman 2016 ), but the fieldwork illustrated in this article was not only taking place in the present, but was tracing the entanglements of space-time trajectories brought to the fore by the fire.…”

“…In the response phase, Zebrowski ( 2019 ) argues that political actors strive to suppress events and their “disruptive” time quickly, aiming to restore the linear time of the everyday. Disaster recovery perspectives, similarly, tend to emphasize the role of institutional actors in addressing the political threat of disasters as events, even if an emphasis on resuming everyday life and rehumanizing the self might be more relevant for disaster-affected people (Aijazi 2014 ). Preparedness, meanwhile, uses future events as the justification for “action in the here and now” to mitigate the disruption caused by the threat to a life that is valued (Anderson 2010 , p. 778).…”

Estimating the Lost Economic Production Caused by Internal Displacement Because of Disasters

“…Each of these damage states has a description (FEMA 2017b) and based on them, a linkage between the damage and MDRs obtained in stage 2 is made. For this linkage, values found in the disaster recovery literature can be used, which consider not only the direct physical damage but other socioeconomic and resilience factors that are known to have a relevant role in this aspect (Cardona 2001;Aijazi 2014;Pribadi et al 2014;Mamula-Seadon 2015;Salgado-Gálvez, Zuloaga Romero, Velás1uez et al 2016). The values used are shown in Table 1.…”

Social repair and structural inequity: implications for disaster recovery practice

“…Building on Aijazi's (2014) conceptualization of a social repair orientation to disaster recovery, theorized as the processes by which disaster survivors resume everyday life and re-humanize/re-constitute themselves, this paper develops yet another dimension of social repair. Social repair is understood as the restoration and/or formation of relationships and this particular understanding of social repair is related to existing discourses of disaster recovery.…”