Disasters as Opportunity for Change: Tsunami Recovery and Energy Transition in Japan

Disasters may offer a window of opportunity, in which extraordinary circumstances create momentum for positive social change. While this potential is popularized through the concept of “building back better,” few studies have examined quantitatively the processes and drivers of broader social change in a post-disaster context. Using renewable energy transition (specifically, solar photovoltaic diffusion) as one measure of building back better, this study explores how pre-and post- disaster contexts, capacities, and policies affected recovery outcomes of 30 coastal communities nearly 5 years following the Great East Japan earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster (Tohoku disaster). Our study shows that the disaster-affected communities adopted significantly more solar power than the rest of Japan following the introduction of the country's Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) system in 2012. The communities examined are highly diverse in their solar energy adoption as of 2015, and regression analysis was conducted to explain differences in overall solar energy diffusion as well as in adoption of very large scale mega-solar projects. The dynamic relationship between physical damage and subsequent solar adoption was found to be nonlinear, as was the relationship between degree of household relocation and solar energy adoption. Differences in communities’ mega-solar adoption were also explained by the variability in hazard zone designation and extent of physical damage. These findings suggest that a disaster may serve as an opportunity for positive community change when immediate impact (or the level of change involved in a reconstruction process) is high enough but not overwhelming. Overall, this study finds potentially complex relationships

Multilingual Miami: Current Trends in Sociolinguistic Research

In this paper, we discuss current trends in sociolinguistic work focusing on language in metropolitan Miami, an area we contend is underrepresented in the sociolinguistics literature given the unique contact situation that has arisen there during the past half century. We focus our attention on four main areas of theoretical and empirical concern: (1) Spanish–English bilingualism, (2) issues related to the varieties of Spanish spoken in Miami, (3) issues related to the varieties of English spoken in Miami, and (4) an over- view of languages other than English and Spanish spoken in the region, with particular attention to Haitian Creole. We conclude with suggestions for future sociolinguistic work in all of these areas