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Letters & CommentsRussell Dynes
Russell R. Dynes is research professor in the Disaster Research Center (DRC) of the Department of Sociology at the University of Delaware. He is the co-founder and former co-director of DRC. Dr. Dynes received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Tennessee and his Ph.D. from Ohio State University. He has served as chair of the Department of Sociology at Ohio State University and the University of Delaware. From 1977-82, he was executive officer, American Sociological Association in Washington, DC. From 1976-79, he chaired the Committee on International Disaster Assistance, National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council and in 1979, he served as head of the Task Force on Emergency Preparedness and Response for the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island. From 1986-90, he served as president, Research Committee on Disasters, International Sociological Association. He has been a Fulbright lecturer in Egypt, India and Thailand, as well as a visiting professor at University College, Cardiff. He is author or editor of eleven books, including Organized Behavior in Disaster; Sociology of Disaster; Disasters, Collective Behavior and Social Organization and The Handbook of Disaster Research.
Social Capital: Dealing with Community Emergencies
ABSTRACT:
Terrorism produces what is conventionally called disaster.
The locus of the response to disaster is the community, which as a unit has the social capital necessary to respond to disasters.
The six forms of social capital referenced in this article are obligations and expectations, informational potential,
norms and effective sanctions, authority relations, appropriable social organizations, and intentional organizations.
Most disaster research has fixated primarily on the destruction of physical capital (structures)
and secondarily on the destruction of human capital (lives); social capital is less tangible but, of all forms of capital,
is less damaged and less affected by disaster.
Consequently, during the emergency period of disaster response, it is social capital
that serves as the primary basis for a community response.
In addition, social capital is the only form of capital which is renewed and enhanced during the emergency period.
This article looks at the ways in which the theory of social capital might be helpful in understanding our response
to threat and disaster.
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SUGGESTED CITATION:
Dynes, Russell R. “Social Capital: Dealing with Community Emergencies.” Homeland Security Affairs II, no. 2 (July 2006)http://www.hsaj.org/?article=2.2.5