This research explores community post-disaster recovery practices in Minami-Sanriku, Japan after the 2011 tsunami by focusing on how various types of social capital have been developed and deployed in bottom up community-based tourism initiatives. In so doing, the research fills a gap in the existing disaster recovery literature by bringing to the fore the voices and experiences of the tsunami survivors as opposed to outsiders (Government, NGOs etc.) who have already received extensive attention in terms of their roles in the reconstruction efforts. The study adopts a social capital lens which is applied to the context of disaster recovery and illustrated via empirical cases which unpack the processes by which social innovation was facilitated by and in turn facilitated the development of bonding, bridging and linking social forms of capital. The research also demonstrates the dynamics of Kizuna as perceived by the local community which challenges the official meaning of Kizuna of social solidarity as espoused by the government in its reconstruction rhetoric. Finally, this research contributes new insights to the role of community leadership by highlighting its emergent and collective nature and its roots in a crisis situation. This alerts us to rethink power-sharing in decision-making and coordinating recovery activities at all levels to achieve the goal of “building back better”.
The research is ethnographic and the data was collected via a mosaic of complementary methods. Classical American pragmatism was chosen due to its emphasis on problem-driven inquiry and to the view that theory is valid and rigorous only when it has consequences in the real world. The research findings can inform preparing for future disasters, thus being beneficial for other disaster-prone communities. It is hoped that the study will inspire other researchers to put community experiences at the heart of studying disaster recovery practices
