Challenging Disaster Administration

Abstract

Recent studies on disaster resilience policies focus on government and administrative shortcomings that prevent affected communities from improving their life circumstances. This article offers to break this cycle of disadvantage through greater utilization of community capacity building among disaster-affected groups that meet social justice principles in various regional settings. It is suggested that the central role of public administration is raised in developing empathetic relationships and facilitating collaborative action and a more resilient outcome. For this purpose, the author addresses an alternative model of disaster administration that follows a community-driven resilience process aimed at fostering well-informed, competent, and active participant communities.

Keywords

resilient community disaster management public administration

Introduction

The 2011 massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake that struck off Japan’s northeast coast was one of the world’s largest quakes. With the widespread destruction and suffering, loss, and death, Japanese community resilience has occupied a central role in media coverage of the recent disaster. According to Ron Provost, president of Showa Boston Institute for Language and Culture, a campus of the University of Tokyo,¹

People have opened up their homes to others. I heard someone say they had two bottles of water and gave one to someone else . . . On a daily basis—in tragedy and in good times—the Japanese have “come up with a system to accommodate each other.”

Provost identifies a strong community role in disaster management; “That strength and resilience are rooted in a culture that has historically relied on social organization” (Donaldson & Goldman, 2011). Strong evidence of communitarian spirit was also addressed by the Japanese Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, as “ittai”—the need to deepen the bonds that unite the Japanese nation as one body in times of emergency.²

Growing concern for the increasing marginalization of affected individuals and communities has yielded a paradigmatic shift from the top-down traditional approach in disaster management toward a bottom-up approach aimed at building local communities’ capacities in facing the risk of disasters.

However, viewing disaster management solely at the community level may be too crude to take comprehensive account of adverse consequences for family and community life, health, and citizenship resulting from the pressure of disaster emergency and risk. It is claimed that many of these potential negative consequences go beyond loss of life and damage to property and bring into the fore social justice issues. Indeed, recent studies on disaster management policies focus on government and administrative shortcomings and barriers that prevent members of affected communities from improving their life circumstances (Adams & Balfour, 2009; Ink, 2006; Menzel, 2006; Mooney, 2009; Solnit, 2009; Stivers, 2007; Ventriss, 1987).

Thus, this article offers to break this cycle of disadvantage by moving on to administration and society interactions that can bring a new impetus to the development of disaster management policies aiming to promoting the well-being of affected communities. This article suggests that community bonds cannot be maintained if public administrations are unable to respond to disaster in an effective and equitable way.

For disaster management to deal fairly with the causes of disadvantage faced by disaster-affected communities, communities and the general society need to accept disaster policy interventions as effective and just. This implies quite a change in the ordinary mode of disaster administration—less attention to what to do when disaster strikes, and more attention to the issue of how government and administrations strengthen their communities, which means very basic capacity building, including strengthening of the social bond. For this purpose, I offer to apply the resilience approach to profiles of community—administration interactions for better implementation of disaster management policies that underlie the dynamic community—environment interactions affecting the adaptive responses to emergency.

The resilience approach to community-based disaster management addresses the need to build a community’s capacities effectively and equitably to deal with the disaster event by focusing on communities’ ties, shared understanding, and common interests to gain control over their environment as the criteria guiding the decisions and actions of governments and public administrators.

Given the subjective and normative assumptions underlying a resilience approach to community-based disaster management as to what constitutes positive or desirable outcomes for resilient communities, the question at issue here remains how to validate the application of social justice of specific administrative choices and practices, along with their efficiency consequences.

In this article, I draw on Michael Walzer’s communitarian view of social justice and, in particular, on needs-based policy dominating the welfare and security sphere that calls for the satisfaction of all people’s basic needs that give rise to the state’s protective role toward affected communities’ needs. It is argued that attention to the communal provisions in Walzer’s theory of social justice are particularly relevant in light of the central role community occupies in disaster programs and policies. I further extend the ethical evaluation to the extent of how public administration and community interactions in different regional settings enhance the disaster resilience of affected communities by meeting the communitarian justice approach set down by Walzer.

In the first section, I outline the resilience approach to community-based disaster management. The second section evaluates the principles underpinning resilient community using Walzer’s theory of social justice, particularly as they impact communities and public administration relations and their implications on disaster management policies in various recent contexts, including the Gulf Coast Hurricanes (USA), the West Sumatra Earthquakes (Indonesia), and the Wenchuan Earthquake (China). The article concludes with more specific guidance, which can be drawn from the broad principles that underlie the various forms of resilience discussed in-depth in the previous sections.

Community-Based Disaster Management: From Resistance to Resilience

The shift of focus from a top-down approach to a bottom-up traditional approach in disaster management toward an alternative approach addressing the vulnerabilities and capacities of local communities has yielded an interplay between community and disaster risk reduction strategies such as resistance, sustainability, and resilience. Geis argues that the need to strengthen local communities and their resources should be defined in terms of resistance that focuses on “the ability of structures and infrastructures to withstand the forces of powerful agents, minimizing damages” (Geis, 2000. p. 151).

The concept of a disaster-resistant community is therefore based on utilizing construction practices, building codes, and technology that reduce property and life losses from known natural hazards (Mooney, 2009; Özerdem & Jacoby, 2006). However, such conceptualization overlooks other important factors that are involved in promoting the well-being of communities at risk, including community ties, sense of solidarity, shared interests and values, and common goals. Moreover, this formulation views a disaster-resistant community as an outcome rather than a process whose continuous nature makes it difficult for public administrators to approach it systematically and effectively because of the constraints of hazards and emergency dynamics.

Another approach to address the need to strengthen communities and their resources is defined by Beatly through sustainability “where people and property are kept out of the way of natural hazards, where the inherently mitigating qualities of natural environmental systems are maintained, and where development is maintained” (Beatley, 1998, p. 243). In a study on coastal storms, Godschalk, Brower, and Beatley (1989) identified the importance of incorporating physical factors as well as social and environmental forces such as social capital, political support, and opposition from various stakeholders concerned with designing infrastructure policies. Although the sustainability approach brings in a broad spectrum of risk factors in disaster management, far less is known about the processes through which such factors impact on building community capacities in times of disaster.

In this article, we offer the use of the resilience approach to community-based emergency management—referring to the ability of a community to adapt or recover more quickly from a disaster. Positive adaptation is usually defined in terms of observable competence, or success, in coping with adversity or trauma as quickly and effectively as possible (Luthar & Cicchetti, 2000). To avoid an overly narrow definition of resilience, I propose to split resilience conceptualization into two dimensions: The first dimension refers to the dynamic and relational nature of resilience as a process of positive adaptation in the face of significant adversity or trauma that establishes the interrelation arising from the community at risk and the wider environment (Luthar & Cicchetti, 2000; Rutter, 1999). Such conceptualization of resilience and its application provides profiles of dynamic community–environment interactions reflecting adaptive responses to disaster (Schoon, 2006).

The second dimension of resilience is tied to the normative and subjective judgments of what constitutes positive or desirable outcomes (Bartelt, 1994). Thus, this article supplies a social justice foundation of resilience to evaluate the principles underpinning resilience doctrine and practice. By using a social justice device to achieve effective and equitable goals, disaster management policies should take into account principles of advocacy, diversity, competence, and inclusion.

Perceptions of basic rights and goods surrounding disaster management policies are often at the core of social justice disputes. This article offers to evaluate resilience doctrine in meeting the justice criteria set down by Michael Walzer’s communitarian theory of social justice. Following Walzer’s theory, reason is always internal to bounded political community and so always internal to social meanings. Walzer’s theory of communitarian social justice emphasizes the significance of communities organized around a common good containing a commitment to improve members’ capacities and resources. Because the resilience approach to community-based emergency management resides in the active interactions between a community and aspects of the environment it experiences, it does not bear the danger of blaming the individual, the victim of disaster event, rendering him personally responsible for his problems. It is the community that establishes the form and shape as well as the circumstances and the background for resilience. Thus, it is useful to apply Walzer’s communitarian theory of social justice to analyze the equity of resilience doctrine, with concern for the interrelationship of institutions such as public administration and affected communities.

Disaster management policy directed at building and improving the resilience of communities at risk needs to ensure positive adaptational outcomes and their antecedents. From a policy perspective, this implies an emphasis on public officials’ efforts to identify and build on the strength of communities in emergency circumstances aiming to support and promote their own feelings of competence and capability across disaster mitigation stages, including preparedness, response, and recovery. Effective and equitable mechanisms within which communities at risk can become resilient need to be developed on the normative basis of communitarian justice, including advocacy, competency, and inclusion (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

The community-based disaster resilience model.

Advocacy

Advocacy centers on the relationship between a group or organization providing advocacy—the advocate—and the community being supported—the partner. In 2002, Action for Advocacy defined advocacy as

Taking action to help people say what they want, secure their rights, represent their interests and obtain services they need. Advocates and advocacy schemes work in partnership with the people they support and take their side. Advocacy promotes social inclusion, equality and social justice. (Action for Advocacy, 2002, p. 2)

The principle of advocacy places greater importance on local knowledge, including understandings and practices of communities at risk that better mobilize communities in the pursuit of collective goals. This principle suggests that public officials should respect this knowledge in policy deliberation and practice and create opportunities for affected communities to develop their capabilities (Cochran, 1986; Rappaport, 1981).

In applying Walzer’s theory of justice, it is claimed that there is a plurality of goods found in spheres such as religion, kinship, law, politics, economics, aesthetics, and education; however, each good or cluster of goods has its own social meaning, which shapes particular patterns of division and exchange. Thus, goods are always social in nature in that they are objects of exchange, both physically and symbolically, including human practices, traditions, customs, institutions, and ways of life that structure and shape so much of our experience (Walzer, 1993, p. 282).

Therefore, administrative intervention programs should follow Walzer’s idea of public administrators as professional “helpers,” as their aim is not the provision of goods but rather as partners that support the partners’ active engagement in coordination and distribution decision making with their goods providers for positive outcomes. “By virtue of what characteristics are we one another’s equals? One characteristic above all is central to my argument. We are (all of us) culture-producing creatures; we make and inhabit meaningful worlds” (Walzer, 1983, p. 314).

Competency

Resilience is based on the principle that all individuals, families, and communities have some control and/or competencies over their environment, and as recipients of help are not totally dysfunctional. Thus, people can exercise their strength and competence in their lives through their personal interaction in various social institutions such as families, neighborhoods, churches, and voluntary associations, and these institutions will be best at providing effective assistance based on a more balanced exchange.

Recognizing the pluralist nature of society and personal relationships, Walzer proceeds to describe a system of distributive justice that he characterizes as “egalitarianism that is consistent with liberty” (Walzer, 1983, p. xiv). Starting with the premise that we live in a pluralistic society, allocation of goods will be achieved according to the principles of “different goods to different companies of men and women for different reasons and in accordance with different procedures” (Walzer, 1983, p. 14). For example, in the sphere of Welfare and Security, the prevailing distributive principle is of “providing according to need.”

Walzer’s complex equality provides the need to address local understanding—which I argue is the value that gives administrators their unique character among mediating institutions, termed by Walzer “professional helpers” (Walzer, 1988, p. 300). According to Walzer, public administrators need to enhance their communicative skills so that they will be able to form their local “intimate knowledge” provided by small, intimate social institutions, such as child care centers, schools, churches, neighborhood, where the strength and the competence of the community are reflected, to generate information and knowledge of distributive goods, internally valued as need for their recipients. It is claimed that participating in local institutions reflects community members’ judgment about whether they are capable of carrying out the social tasks that underlie successful relations with others.

Inclusion

Inclusion or the act of being included means being accepted and able to participate fully within the family, the community, and the society within which one lives (Guildford, 2000). People who are excluded, whether because of poverty, ill-health, gender, race, or lack of education created by disaster effects, do not have the opportunity for full participation in the social and economic benefits of the community or the society. It is argued that how communities interpret and deal with exclusion and stigma is an important factor in building community resilience because discrimination and social exclusion processes affect communities’ mental and physical resources and well-being.

Walzer’s view of community of justice seems to offer limited inclusiveness as it is always bounded by dense webs of common understandings or shared social meanings. The boundaries of the political community entail obligations we have to other members. Obligations flow from belonging, identity, and relatedness. Thus, the moral role of memberships in certain constitutive communities or constitutive ties more generally can be an important variable in advancing a sense of mutual care and obligation: “Morality takes shape as a conversation with particular other people, our relatives, friends and neighbors” (Walzer, 1987, p. 46). Thus, relations of reciprocity and mutual trust (and so forth) generate the necessary solidarity, willingness to help others, and so to act responsibly (Solnit, 2009).

However, the moral effects derive from engagement in a community of justice where special, stronger obligations to others, formed by shared history or close personal relationships, can serve as a channel for extending obligations beyond the boundary of the political community and proceed to those more geographically or culturally distant from us (“society of equals”). The applicability of this inclusive view of community is actualized in the sphere of security and welfare, where goods are to be collectively provided to each needy person in proportion to his or her neediness (Walzer, 1983, p. 89).

Walzer’s theory thus provides a form of inclusivity that is based on responsibility and reciprocity that has self-determination at its core, rather than coercion, which offers potential safeguards to communities’ substantive capacity to choose, and to their potential for empowerment and active participation (Goodwin-Smith, 2009).

In summary, the process of building resilient communities is based on normative assessment of four main government and administrative efforts aimed at improving the capacity of disaster-affected communities to cope with emergency circumstances. This section suggests that issues surrounding the management of disaster resilience involve a communitarian framework of social justice. In our particular case, in affected communities organized around a common good containing a commitment to improve members’ capacities and resources, it is likely that needs-meeting is functional for resilience policy in natural disaster events.

It appears that Walzer’s approach to social justice deals with community members as we find them—that is, people standing in relation to a set of goods, with a history of transactions. Walzer’s conception of community of justice offers to show that distributing government resources according to need across affected communities contributed to sustaining people’s lives, so that the relationship between justice and resilience management would be one of reinforcement. Moreover, it seems that Walzer’s principle of need is compatible with increasing the knowledge of community valuable goods and needs so long as it is functional for securing community-valued goods. Following Walzer, the respect for persons is extended to respect for their experience as local knowledge, and their abilities and capacities as community members to contribute to decision making and planning at the community level. Taking on Walzer’s conception of community, nurturing relations of reciprocity and mutual trust (and so forth) in communities generates the necessary solidarity, willingness to help others, and so to act responsibly and promote inclusion.

Thus, disaster resilience management should be constructed so as to give space for community–administration interaction as formalized by Walzer’s theory of justice. Indeed, public officials are often uniquely situated to respond to someone’s need, which derives from an ongoing relationship with her by virtue of which one has been held responsible for her well-being. In this sense, the Walzerian theory of social justice is morally instrumental in a relationship to the extent that it contributes to the protection of those who are in need and on social conventions that assign responsibilities for the care of needy persons to others who stand in certain relationships to them.

Comparative Analysis of Disaster Resilience Policies

Natural disaster crises prompted a variety of programs and services to address individual and community issues. This section will review some regional programs that utilize resilience strategies, including the Gulf Coast Hurricanes (USA), the West Sumatra Earthquakes (Indonesia), and the Wenchuan Earthquake (China); resilience plans that were strongly criticized by a number of scholars who claim that such plans reflect government and bureaucratic decision-making breakdown in the face of pressing need (Adams & Balfour, 2009; Ink, 2006; Menzel, 2006; Nickel & Eikenberry, 2007; Stivers, 2007). It should be noted that some of these programs were designed using the resilience principles as guidelines, whereas others arose naturally in response to concerns and issues. Indeed, heated debates and concerns address racial and exclusionary bias in the inefficient and inequitable management, rescue, and relief actions by public officials in response to disaster effects (BondGraham, 2007).

On March 28, 2005, Indonesia suffered from the 2005 Sumatran earthquake. As indicated, about 800 people were reported dead, with an estimate of more than 2,000 casualties. In addition, it was reported that hundreds of buildings had collapsed, which left thousands of people homeless.⁵ On August 29, 2005, the center of Hurricane Katrina passed east of New Orleans; winds downtown were in the Category 3 range with frequent intense gusts and tidal surges. At least 1,836 people lost their lives and 80% of New Orleans was flooded, with some parts under 15 feet (4.5 m) of water (Hsu, 2006). Another deadly disaster occurred on May 12, 2008, in Sichuan province of China (also known as the Wenchuan earthquake). At least 69,000 people were killed, 374,176 injured, with 18,222 listed as missing; about 4.8 million people were left homeless (Ministry of Civil Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, 2008). By (examining) these (case studies), it is possible to examine the extent to which governmental and administrative deliberations in disaster relief efforts in these regions meet resilience principles, their degree of success, and the limits of these efforts.

Community-Based Disaster Resilience: Tensions in Application

Advocacy

In the case of New Orleans, the storm affected distributed goods that are linked to cultural attributes. Pre Katrina Hurricane, about 67% of New Orleans’ residents were Afro-Americans (www.Census.gov). Consequently, New Orleans’ Afro-American majority has long been the core of its cultural and economic vitality; however, many Afro-Americans and poor residents, returned or otherwise, shared the cultural meaning of its goods—music, food, language, history, and art (Hsu, 2006; Krause, 2006). In the case of the West Sumatra Earthquake, the disaster effects were more powerful in the Nias Island, which is relatively geographically isolated and through history has created a unique culture. In fact, the people of Nias use their Megalithic culture as an intrinsic tool to attract tourists and advance the island’s trading activities.³ The gap between the Nias rural community and public officials’ efforts was quite large. When the 2005 earthquake occurred, the people of Nias worked to restore their cultural assets, such as the Museum Pusaka Nias (Nias Heritage Foundation), which suffered damage to the grounds and collections and their community cultural centers where Nias festivals and celebrations take place. The administrative efforts, on the contrary, were concentrated on developing a strong-motion observation and warning system and securing communications among relevant offices in the urban areas (Bachyul, 2009b).

China’s experience with the Sichuan earthquake was quite different from the New Orleans and Nias cases, as China’s public officials had worked out an effective set of operating procedures to place Qiang community cultural preservation as a special recovery need. Specifically, the earthquake caused profound losses among the Qiang community, including large numbers of handicraft masters, professional dancers, and cultural researchers, thus placing Qiang minority culture in a precarious situation. To help alleviate the suffering of Qiang survivors and promote Qiang culture, the Help Heal the Soul and Protect Traditional Culture program sought to train various Qiang handicraft-making skills at local schools in earthquake-affected Beichuan. Moreover, focusing on disaster refugee camps in Shuangtu, Shuangquan, Maoxian, Mianzhu, Beichuan, and Mianyang Counties of Sichuan, public officials and volunteers who were familiar with local dialects initiated mobile classrooms to teach and play with children and give their parents psychological support and basic first-aid knowledge (Give2Asia, 2009).

In the cases of New Orleans and Nias resilience efforts, there is some evidence that the efforts did not foster utilization of local community knowledge and experience. Consequently, government and public administrators’ response to distribution of goods was criticized for their “instant accountability” for failing to invest time and resources in developing their methods of interactions with the citizens, for example, go to schools; churches; child care centers; local mental health care centers; local food, sport, entertainment, and art facilities; and local businesses (Rosenstein, 2007, p. 13). They were also criticized for failing to gain more information regarding distributed goods in various spheres such as education, health, social services, and art, which community members value as endowed with crucial cultural attributes (Beabout et al., 2008; Ruscher, 2006). Following the study of Walzer, addressing sensitivity to need encourages free exchange of resources and information with other organizations to continue waging “the struggle against poverty (and against every other sort of neediness)” (Walzer, 1983, pp. 92-93). This process requires that public officials present greater sensitivity toward the value individuals place on the goods they “hand over” to public officials. Forming a space to freely exchange concerns and advice seems to serve as a precondition if public officials are to be able to provide appropriate care and service for the goods that citizens entrust to public officials.

Competency

When exploring the form of distribution, especially of material and social basic needs that aimed at securing the well-being of New Orleans’ residents during and after Hurricane Katrina, scholars and practitioners considered nonprofit and grassroots organizations’ support and care as a source of empowering intervention. In fact, in too many cases, officials got in the way of nonprofit, community-based organizations and activist groups, waving red tape and rule books (Cooper & Block, 2006, pp. 257, 266, 172; Solnit, 2009). In the case of Katrina, with Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) failure to satisfy needs for medical care, food, and housing, nonprofit organizations stepped in promptly to coordinate the response effort and met these needs by supplying immediate material infrastructure across the nation as well as locally.

It is suggested then that public administrators can be a source of a supportive environment that empowers individuals and communities actively engaged in community–administration collaboration, the same as volunteers and charitable individuals who became the immediate source of generating associative obligations and empowering intervention for the victims of natural disasters. The Walzerian principle of need is meant to show that equality of membership has a fundamental influence on the processes by which people control their lives and in the working out of the appropriate modes of provision. Voluntary associations of civil society, in which people share the view of need, are beneficial for community members who experience levels of necessity and stress. Thus, public administration should collaborate with local self-help and voluntary organizations in welfare provisions to facilitate community members gaining power over the distribution of needed goods (Irons, 2006; Terry, 2005). Without cultivating a relationship with a community through the participation of nonprofit organizations in decision making, city administration is unlikely to find active and interested citizens.

In Indonesia, community leaders used the “Smong” (“Inamura-no-hi”), local verbal tales that inform the readers of the danger of disaster as a tool to raise public awareness. Such a community-based device was proven efficient in saving the Simeuleu communities from the Great Indian Ocean Tsunami in December 2004. In Banda Aceh, people had no idea about the risk and even summoned relatives to help “collect fish” from the beach, when the sea suddenly drew back after the December 26, 2004, earthquake. On Simeulue, the islanders ran immediately to the mountains instead, leaving everything just as it was. Only nine people died on the entire island (Schott, 2006).

In the Sichuan earthquake, more than 7,000 nonengineered schoolrooms collapsed, causing many families to lose their only child. The government urged the parents who protested and accused the local government and the builders of corruption in school construction not to protest, using both positive and negative tools such as bribe and violence (Weaver, 2008). Within the context of such incidents, there were few education officials who responded with a high degree of urgency and a clear sense of purpose. Ye Zhiping, the principal of Sangzao Middle School in Sangzao, one of the largest in An County, has been credited for his relief effort that spared the lives of all 2,323 pupils in attendance when the earthquake happened (Human Rights in China, 2008). Zhiping himself used 400,000 yuan (US$60,000) from the county education department to widen and strengthen his school building construction (Buckley, 2008; Human Rights in China, 2008).

Inclusion

In post-Katrina New Orleans, education can provide a good case for examining the negative implications of advancing recovery efforts according to need but disregarding community values and norms. The storm created an optimistic feeling for the city’s school system, which was long regarded as one of the worst in the States (Simon, 2007). Thus, the circumstances were favorable for caring reform within the poor educational system that should have been governed by choice and competition that are structured in the American educational system (Chubb & Moe, 1988).

However, studies have shown that when trying to introduce school reform, increased levels of distrust among community members could result. This could be explained by the weak network between parents and educators and school–community relations as a whole, especially in the schools serving large numbers of poor students, as prevailed before the storm. The effects of the storm, which led to disrupted mail, lack of communication, disrupted social networks, high housing costs, and increased violent crime in post-Katrina New Orleans during 2005 and early 2006 created additional burdens on the old educational system. These burdens, together with the uncertainty surrounding the return of New Orleans’ population and student enrollment in particular, which serves as a key determinant for how much funding should be distributed and is available for hiring teachers and opening school buildings, reduced the possibilities for successful school reforms (Giroux, 2006; Hill & Hannaway, 2006; Mooney, 2009; Ritea, 2006a, 2006b, 2007; Warner, 2005).

Applying Walzer’s theory of justice in the decisions and reforms in the education sphere of New Orleans requires promoting the inclusion of disadvantaged people such as poor parents in the decision-making process over reform in the educational system. Positive adaption of disadvantaged communities viewed in this case brings into resilience the notion of the rights of community members to express themselves and their interests politically even at the cost of maintaining the troubled education system of the past. This adds a refreshing framework to the social inclusion landscape in terms of responsibility and obligation rather than efficacy and rationality.

Thus, public administrators who pursue the common good by promoting a rejuvenated school system for bringing residents back into the city need to take into consideration the effects of uncertainty along with the traditional patterns of interaction between parents, students, and community with the school system, as these factors are likely to shape the education system in the post-Katrina era (Tyack & Cuban, 1995). Implementing the reform should be regarded as an evolutionary process instead of a revolutionary one that will gradually create a supportive environment for collaborative decision making, reduce pressure to reform, and generate positive effects of administrative interventions introduced in the educational system.

In the Indonesian setting, provincial administration officials offered to distribute the state fund for reconstruction of damaged homes and office buildings directly into each community’s bank account; 3 months after the earthquake hit the West Sumatra coast, no apparent reconstruction or rehabilitation programs by the government have been seen (Bachyul, 2009a). The provincial disaster management unit head advanced this program by requiring communities to list expected needed goods, including rebuilding infrastructure, funding social activities, and looking after survivors. Such administrative effort demonstrates empowered expression of genuine partnership between administration and community in welfare delivery in times of emergency. In China, the government and its administration were praised for their response to the quake. Among many resilience efforts one example is worth mentioning: inclusion of homeless and isolated Qiang women-led households in recovery from the earthquake. The community of Qiang women in the Maoxian County of Sichuan was left behind as their husbands and sons have left the rural villages to become migrant workers in China’s major coastal cities. The earthquake had devastating effects on these women, increasing their stress and loneliness, leaving Qiang women and single-mother families extremely vulnerable. To help the earthquake-affected Qiang women, the Asian Foundation–China, together with other Sichuan Administration support, implemented community capacity-building activities including strengthening their mutual-assistance and networking capacity, and enhancing their participation in social life and long-term community development, to fully include this community of homeless and isolated Qiang women (Give2Asia, 2009). This case illustrates the principle of need-extended welfare administration to volunteers—the practice of active involvement in welfare engenders a sensitivity to need that is grounded in the “inner logic of communal provision,” that is, the principle of need (Walzer, 1983, p. 75).

The important differences in the three case studies lie in the successful integration of community-based disaster resilience strategies on the part of public officials to strengthen social bonds and a sense of community. Local officials in affected areas should recognize their affection for fellow citizens and concern for the fate of the city/region while measuring the wonderful new plans the state has imposed on them. Indeed, the Walzerian theory of justice is to be expected in times of disaster and has added ethical weight in deliberation that should trump local officials’ vital social role. Without validating this approach in evaluating policy projects, errors and social unrest are more likely.

Conclusion and Guidance for Public Officials and Community From Disaster Resilience Principles

In this article, I claim that to constitute an equitable and effective emergency management program, one needs to apply the resilience approach on social justice grounds when applied at the level of interaction between administration and affected communities.

Community-based resilience management is presented here as a dynamic process of positive adaptation in the face of significant adversity or trauma underlying mechanisms and processes that enable community members to develop and maintain competencies and resources despite the experience of adversity, including advocacy, inclusion, and competency.

In this article, I have reviewed community-based strategies to understand how disaster relief efforts can best be provided to enhance resilient communities. This study provides an insightful understanding regarding the relationship between public administration and community resilience. The central role of public administration lies in developing empathetic relationships and facilitating collaborative action and better resilience outcome. However, it is suggested that the ordinary mode of disaster administration cannot address such goals. This might be because the resilience process requires well-informed, confident, and active participant communities rather than passive receivers. Resilience can play a crucial public role in helping institutions to help individuals to become autonomous agents, in helping the government to make individuals’ and communities’ political lives work properly, and helping to mitigate the effects of future natural disasters on society as a whole.

However, administration and community interaction in enhancing disaster resilience also needs to be examined in terms of social justice, which adds a new dimension to the evaluation of disaster management policies.

By using social justice theories to address concerns of disaster-affected communities, it is suggested that Walzer’s communitarian social justice theory helps to envisage the political process as generating a range of provisions that express a shared conception of social citizenship, through the gradual formation of legitimate expectations concerning the access to needed goods in the “society of equals” as a whole. Thus, incorporating principles of disaster resilience in emergency management policy should not just be phrased in the introductory sections of public administration Code of Conduct or ethical codes, but they need to guide disaster resilience policy in an effective and equitable way as these principles carry with them underpinning social justice philosophy.

In this article, I attempt to explore the applicability of a disaster-resilient community model that meets the criteria of social justice in various regional settings. Although comparing these three events seems odd because the cases of the Gulf Coast Hurricanes (USA), the West Sumatra earthquakes (Indonesia), and the Wenchuan Earthquake (China) strongly differ in their socioeconomic development, political regime, and cultural attributes, the Indonesian and Chinese cases have proven that their administrations were able to respond immediately to natural disaster. In the American setting, the interactions between affected communities and public officials were quite polarized, whereas in Indonesia and China, communities’ members and public officials were more committed to creating genuine partnerships with open and shared perceptions of need, high level of trust, and patterns of collaborations. Higher levels of local competency and enthusiasm facilitated disadvantaged communities’ inclusion and motivated the cooperation between communities and external organizations such as voluntary and local business organizations to promote the effectiveness of community adaptation in the face of disaster risks in both Indonesia and, to a greater extent, in China. The Chinese case as well as the recent disaster event in Japan highlight the importance of less diversified society where both public officials and communities are familiar with daily practical needs, physical needs, and maintenance of social norms and order in developing spontaneous interactions and collaborative efforts with public administration initiated to respond in effective and equitable manner in the disaster risks.

Finally, we cannot exaggerate administrators’ role to undertake the responsibility in achieving socially just community-based disaster resilience planning and outcomes under the existing political-administrative system in each country. It is clear that public administers act within confined structural context defined to a greater extent by legislation. Thus, public administrators’ role should be empowered by structural conditions such as public laws and their accompanying structure. It is suggested that such legislation can bring more incentives for disaster management policy based on effective and equitable principles. A move in this direction has become entrenched in various legal initiatives such as the post-Katrina reform act of 2006³ (P.L. 109-61—H.R. 3645 and P.L. 109-62—H.R. 3673) in the U.S.A, the “Law of the People’s Republic of China on Protecting Against and Mitigating Earthquake Disasters” of 2007,⁴ and the Reform of the Disaster Management (DM) Law of 2007 in Indonesia.

The design of community-based disaster resilience policy needs to meet the following key guidelines:

Guidelines for Public Administration

Advocacy

Create official understanding for community goals and vision by visiting community institutions (child care centers, hospitals, schools) and regular meetings with community representatives

Official reports on disaster risks and implications should be carried out to include both professional risk assessment and community risk assessments, which are articulated by community members

Make sure that updated disaster risks, perceptions, solutions, and findings provided by the affected community will be fed into community resilience planning

Discuss with community representatives the appropriate design of awareness-raising programs at the community level

Use local and community knowledge to discover critical facilities of the community (e.g., shelters, evacuation, communication, first-aid centers, supplies)

Competency

Advise community leadership or representatives of community and individuals’ rights and the legal and regulatory obligations of the government and its administrative agencies to provide protection and recovery in disastrous events

Provide professional counseling to advise the community on how to manage its resources and material assets

Promote community and external agencies and organizations partnerships by encouraging them to participate in disaster preparedness and assessments decision making

Incorporate maximum utilization of community resources and capacities in preparedness and recovery official policies

Inclusion

Identify genuine partnership or collaborations between private and voluntary organizations and community members that represent a high level of trust

Collaborate with local community educational centers to enhance disaster resilience education courses and through curriculum at all educational levels

Engage in cultural/community activities (e.g., festivals, church meetings) to increase the awareness of mutual aid and knowledge of safe locations, and access to emergency facilities and communication

Learn community codes and regulations

Use special training and support programs for the most vulnerable members of the community (e.g., elderly, disabled)

Demand representation of various vulnerable groups within the community in decision-making processes

Promote a comprehensive awareness campaign of how to manage disaster risks and access to available services and facilities designed for various groups in the community by official agencies

Design emergency response covering physical, financial, and psychological services to protect and help different vulnerable groups within the community

Develop open discussions over disaster risks and implications to the community in informal locations such as local coffee shops or elder care centers to strengthen the participation of the most vulnerable groups in the community

Guidelines for Resilient Community

Advocacy

Create accountable community leadership of the disaster management program, including community vision, set of priorities, and general needs and goals (e.g., poverty alleviation, equality in employment, cultural preservation, quality of life)

Provide a comprehensive assessment of all disaster risks and relevant socioeconomic, physical, psychological, and cultural implications (both actual and potential), both internal and external to the community, such as public officials, private and local organizations, and volunteers

Encourage members of the community to share their views, lessons from the events, problems, and possible solutions

Competency

Take the initiative to talk with community members and share with them relevant knowledge regarding their rights and the government’s legal and regulatory obligations

Develop ongoing partnerships with external agencies and organizations to support the community in times of emergency

Educate community members on adequate nutrition, sanitation, hygiene, water, and first-aid techniques to provide effective and timely emergency response

Increase community activities to support self-confidence and motivate mutual aid and voluntarism

Include representatives of all groups and sources of expertise within the community in community decision-making

Inclusion

Assimilation of community codes (e.g., warning signs) and agreed regulations when warnings are issued at all levels of community interactions, including family, local labor, religious groups

Develop communication and decision-making processes and terms of coordination between community and other local external organizations

Community leadership should try and mobilize volunteers in all levels of resilience planning (not only in first aid)

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Dr. Liza Ireni-Saban is an assistant professor in the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya.

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