A Contextual Approach to the Social Psychological Study of Disaster Recovery *

Abstract

The breakdown model has led to an irresolveable theoretical ant empirical stalemate in the literature of community-wide disaster. This paper attempts to move beyond the present debate toward an empirically grounded reconceptualization. The case study employee for this purpose is the collapse of the Teton Dam which occurred in the United States in 1976. In-depth interviews and archival male-rials are used to reconstruct, from the perspective of disaster victims, the typical (successful) and the atypical (unsuccessful) recovery patterns of three years. Both patterns are explainable by reference to social processes, i.e., to collective arrangement; created for distributing human and material resources used for the rebuilding effort.

An inductively derived interpretive schema emphasizing the interconnecting linkages between disaster recovery, social resources and social relations is recommended. Three types of social relations—primary, institutional and ex-change—are identified as points of access into networks—primary, public welfare and private market—which control various types and amounts of needed resources. The organizational structure, the operational logic and the philosophy of relief associated with each network determines the distributional arrangements and consequently, the recovery patterns of disaster victims. Importantly, the distributive arrangement has a dual structure which reflects its local or extra-local pre-disastcr status.

The expected utility of this interpretive schema is two-fold. It provides a more adequate understanding of the recovery experience compared to the breakdown model and it redirects research attention to previously unexplored or underexplored areas.