Building resilience: social capital in post-disaster recovery

Robert Putnam, who turned 'social capital' into a vogue social science term in the early 1990s, defined it as the intangible benefits of living in a society with well-established 'trust, norms and networks' (Putnam 1993: 167, cited on p. 29).This book argues that after a major disaster has occurred 'high levels of social capital -more than such commonly referenced factors as socioeconomic conditions, population density, amount of damage or aid -serve as the core engine of recovery ' (p.15, italics in original).Four case studies are used to make the point.One is Hurricane Katrina, which Purdue political scientist Daniel P. Aldrich experienced first-hand.Another is the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami as experienced in…