SOCIAL CAPITAL AND DISASTER PREPAREDNESS: CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND LINKAGE

There is a growing relationship between social capital and disaster. This article draws conceptual framework and linkage between these two components. Social capital includes social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness which are highly important to speed up disaster preparedness and recovery. An individual’s preparedness is reciprocally determined through the amount of available material and intellectual resources, their social support networks, the community-level preparedness and the ability of the community to access resources from those in power. Thus disaster preparedness and response activities create new types of social capital. Recent studies show that social capital is related to a community’s ability to plan for and respond to disasters. The positive relationships have found in case of high level of fairness and trustworthiness with the disaster preparedness. So proper initiatives need to be taken by the government, NGOs and civil societies towards formation and development of social capital and disaster preparedness as well. Linking social capital with disaster preparedness could be useful to reduce disaster impacts and sustainable livelihood.