Communities have the potential to function effectively and adapt successfully in the aftermath of disasters. Drawing upon literatures in several disciplines, we present a theory of resilience that encompasses contemporary understandings of stress, adaptation, wellness, and resource dynamics. Community resilience is a process linking a network of adaptive capacities (resources with dynamic attributes) to adaptation after a disturbance or adversity. Community adaptation is manifest in population wellness, defined as high and non-disparate levels of mental and behavioral health, functioning, and quality of life. Community resilience emerges from four primary sets of adaptive capacities—Economic Development, Social Capital, Information and Communication, and Community Competence—that together provide a strategy for disaster readiness. To build collective resilience, communities must reduce risk and resource inequities, engage local people in mitigation, create organizational linkages, boost and protect social supports, and plan for not having a plan, which requires flexibility, decision-making skills, and trusted sources of information that function in the face of unknowns.

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Community Resilience as a Metaphor, Theory, Set of Capacities, and Strategy for Disaster Readiness

This chapter begins by reviewing some of the principles. Building on these, the chapter then discusses how social structures and social networks can affect economic outcomes like hiring, price, productivity, and innovation. It focuses on Sociologists have developed core principles about the interactions of social structure, information, ability to punish or reward, and trust that frequently recur in their analyses of political, economic, and other institutions. Thus, network structure can be partially endogenized in labor market analysis. However, there are also a range of alternatives, not commonly included in economic analysis, that work through social groups and create compliance in less intrusive ways. Many studies, comprehensively reviewed in Roger Myersons, show the powerful impact of social structure and networks on the extent and source of innovation and its diffusion. When people trade with others they know, the impact of knowing each other on the price varies with their relationship, the cost of shifting to different partners, and the market situation.

https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/0895330053147958

The Impact of Social Structure on Economic Outcomes

This study examines if Facebook, one of the most popular social network sites among college students in the U.S., is related to attitudes and behaviors that enhance individuals' social capital. Using data from a random web survey of college students across Texas (n = 2,603), we find positive relationships between intensity of Facebook use and students' life satisfaction, social trust, civic engagement, and political participation. While these findings should ease the concerns of those who fear that Facebook has mostly negative effects on young adults, the positive and significant associations between Facebook variables and social capital were small, suggesting that online social networks are not the most effective solution for youth disengagement from civic duty and democracy.

/pdf/is-there-social-capital-in-a-social-network-site-facebook-11f1qusu65.pdf

Is There Social Capital in a Social Network Site?: Facebook Use and College Students' Life Satisfaction, Trust, and Participation

https://www.bond.org.uk/sites/default/files/resource-documents/using_icts_to_create_a_culture_of_transparency.pdf

Using ICTs to create a culture of transparency: E-government and social media as openness and anti-corruption tools for societies

Health and Wealth: Health by Association? Social Capital, Social Theory, and the Political Economy of Public Health

/pdf/social-capital-a-theory-of-social-structure-and-action-4m7poq6byy.pdf

Social capital: a theory of social structure and action

Boolean analysis of questionnaire data

Rien ne bouge ou tout se transforme. Les analyses de la societe francaise oscillent souvent entre ces deux positions extremes. Bien peu d'entre elles, pourtant, se livrent a l'examen des evolutions en cours en prenant le soin de fonder le diagnostic sur des indicateurs fiables. C'est a cet exercice que s'emploie cet ouvrage en rassemblant, de maniere organisee et systematique, les analyses sociologiques des mutations de la societe francaise. La stratification sociale, la dynamique familiale, la sociabilite, les metamorphoses des systemes educatif et productif, le role de l'Etat-providence, les transformations ideologiques, les mouvements et les conflits sociaux, les deviances : dans chacun des domaines etudies, les auteurs presentent un bilan des evolutions et de la situation actuelle, le plus souvent possible assorti de donnees d'enquetes et d'une synthese des interpretations sociologiques. Au terme de ce vaste tour d'horizon, il apparait que la balance du changement et des permanences est relativement equilibree et se partage en deux domaines distincts : le changement l'emporte nettement dans les moeurs gagnees par la montee irrepressible de l'individualisme, c'est-a-dire du souci de plus en plus affirme des personnes d'etre totalement libres de leurs choix ; mais les institutions qui encadrent les Francais ont vu finalement leur organisation assez faiblement modifiee au regard de la profonde transformation des attitudes individuelles.

Alain Degenne

Papers

Social capital: a theory of social structure and action

Boolean analysis of questionnaire data

La nouvelle société française : trente années de mutation

6. Le capital social dans la vie de tous les jours

Le temps des loisirs, le cycle de vie et ses contraintes