Doctoral Dissertation Research: Community Rebuilding after Disaster

University Of Kentucky Research Foundation, Lexington KY

Investigators

Abstract

How do damaged or destroyed communities rebuild themselves after disasters, such as war and extreme weather events? Does the extent of destruction matter? Does a totally destroyed community rebuild in the same way and as successfully as a less extensively damaged one? The research supported by this award addresses these questions through an ethnographic study of post-disaster community rebuilding. The researcher takes up the questions by looking at the what it means to reconstitute a place, not just as a physical location but as site where people can once again feel at home. In the wake of multiple disasters that have torn people from their homes and damaged communities throughout the United States, people are asking if they can return, if they should return, if indeed there is a community to return to. It is critical that policy makers and social scientists better understand what it will take to put people's lives back together, not just as households but also as communities. The research will be carried out by University of Kentucky anthropology doctoral student, Pathmanesan Sanmugeswaran, who is supervised by Dr. Mark Whitaker. The research takes a comparative design approach. The researcher has identified two post-disaster communities in Sri Lanka. One community was totally destroyed and the inhabitants are returning to rebuild after 26 years, and the other was physically damaged and social disrupted but nonetheless remained intact. This contrast in an otherwise similar socio-cultural and geographic environmental context provides a scientifically useful and rare experimental opportunity that would not be available in the United States, although the results will be generalizable to many other contexts. Data will be gathered through semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and cultural mapping. Sampling will be structured to represent the full range of socio-cultural variation, including caste, gender, and age. Particular attention will be paid to how traditional notions of community, which centered around combined ideas of community and religion, are remade in the two contrasting post-disaster situations.