A Janus-Faced Resource: Social Capital and Resilience Trade-offs
Publisher: International Risk Governance Center
Author(s): Daniel P. Aldrich, Courtney Page-Tan, and Timothy Fraser
Date: 2018
Topics: Cooperation, Disasters
Much research has underscored the critical role played by social capital in building resilience in communities and organizations. In a time of crisis, we know that individuals with more connections embedded in communities that are more cohesive and better connected horizontally and vertically have higher survival rates and better recoveries compared to similar individuals and locations that are less connected. Yet, a more nuanced analysis reveals resilience trade-offs between types of these social connections. This piece investigates how different types of social ties, including bonding, bridging, and linking ties, create different resilience trajectories for neighborhoods and institutions, and how they impart dynamic effects on pre-disaster neighborhood vulnerability.