While creating my thesis outline and annotated bibliography for this independent study, it became clear that in order to effectively use resilience as a framework for my research, I would need to better interrogate the concept. Throughout the collection of key literature, authors tended to use similar definitions, yet expanded them in different ways. Cutter et. al., for example, uses the definition in their research context as “a system’s capacity to absorb disturbance and reorganize into a fully functioning system. It includes not only a system’s capacity to return to the state (or multiple states) that existed before the disturbance, but also to advance the state through learning and adaptation” (2008, p. 600). The backbone of the definition given by Cutter et. al., like many authors, is that a system (or individual) adapts to an event. A common theme of the definitions is the process of change leading to reorganization, leading to collective learning (Benson and Craig 2014, Cutter et. al. 2008, Adger et. al. 2005).
Understanding what functions a community must have to be considered resilient is a broad, multi-faceted question, and has multiple points that must be addressed in order for it to be applied to a context like Fukushima. Perhaps the most straightforward part of the process is determining what change Fukushima prefecture experienced; the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami combined with the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant to create a disaster of epic proportion. Tens of thousands of residents were evacuated in the aftermath, dispersing communities all over the area.
The next step, that of reorganization, is much more convoluted. What does it mean to reorganize after a nuclear disaster? At what scale does this need to happen? If a family meets up, is that enough? Does an entire community need to stick together in order to be considered resilient? Perhaps most importantly in the context of nuclear disaster, where does said reorganization need to happen? In the case of Fukushima and Chernobyl, the land that the communities in question once lived on is not necessarily safe, or at least not believed to be. If the community decides to regroup and live in another place, is that not resilient?
Similarly, the last step is that of social learning, which is in and of itself a broad topic. The difficulty of this last step is that it has the potential to contradict other steps in the resilience process, especially in the aftermath of nuclear disaster. For the residents of Fukushima, the most applicable social learning might be that it is unwise to expose oneself to the hazard of living near a nuclear plant. For many researchers, if residents are not able to return back to their community and return to work, the community is not resilient. However, if an entire community learns that it is not a good idea to live by such a hazard, one could also argue that the community is actually resilient. With the soundness of a common social learning, the residents might feel comfortable separating and immersing themselves in other communities with more to offer.
All of these questions are not answerable by some universal definition of disaster resilience, so to a certain extent in my research I will need to choose the direction that I would like to investigate on my own.
Adger, W. Neil, Terry P. Hughes, Carl Folke, Stephen R. Carpenter, and Johan Rockström. 2005. “Social-Ecological Resilience to Coastal Disasters.” Science 309 (5737): 1036–39. doi:10.1126/science.1112122.
Benson, Melinda Harm, and Robin Kundis Craig. 2014. “The End of Sustainability.” Society & Natural Resources 27 (7): 777–82. doi:10.1080/08941920.2014.901467.
Cutter, Susan L., Lindsey Barnes, Melissa Berry, Christopher Burton, Elijah Evans, Eric Tate, and Jennifer Webb. 2008. “A Place-Based Model for Understanding Community Resilience to Natural Disasters.” Global Environmental Change 18: 598–606.