Resilient Communities in Disasters and Emergencies: Exploring their Characteristicsâ€
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper is a succinct capturing of the different types of social capital. While it is not a totally new concept, there is a need in the literature for an updated, straightforward account of the way that social capital continues to impact disasters and emergencies. I can see this paper being used in classes as a quick overview of social capital and how it is used in practice. It can also help practitioners conceptualize the types of resources and connect that needs to be built outside of emergency times. Conceptual work is needed! Good work!
There are a few areas that could make the paper better:
1) Get editing to reduce wordiness.
2) Mutual aid theory and literature is underrepresented in this article. I encourage the author to look into mutual aid work, which has greatly increased during/after COVID.
3) The 3.2.1 heat wave example was a great extensive example showing bonding capital. I recommend giving examples earlier in the 3.2.1 section when you mention "the physical structure of their area may facilitate interaction, neighborly assistance, and mutual protection." What does that look like?
4) Also, in the 3.2.1 section, the sentence with "There are few voluntary associations...readily made available" can be deleted. It does not offer more to section.
5) Similarly, in 3.2.2 (lines 359-362) the sentences of "As an example, it may be important for people hoping to gain advancement...absent in a community" can be deleted. These sections can confuse the reader after the point has already been well-made.
Overall, this paper brings some recent conceptual framing to social capital that could be very helpful in social work, community-engaged research, and other fields needing a refresh on how social capital theory can be of great benefit in times of trouble--especially if they recognize it before the disaster comes.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer #1
1) The paper has been rewritten in an attempt to make it more theoretically integrated. Where
before it listed qualities of resilient communities and then separately discussed social capital, the new
version discusses aspects of resilient with reference to specific aspects of social capital. The same
material on social capital is there, but it supports the resiliency themes more coherently. The paper
is about the same length but hopefully it does not seem so wordy (I agreed with you when I reread
the paper!)
2) I brought in two strands of self-help mutual aid theory. One has to do with what is called
community self-help and it talks about self-help at the level of whole communities. The other is the
literature on self-help groups in the tradition of organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous.
Thomasina Borkman her colleagues have written extensively on this and we used her work. She
particularly emphasizes experiential knowledge, which is consistent with the theme of community
learning one finds in the resiliency literature.
3) Since you liked the Heat Wave example, I included more narrative examples of other resiliency
instances. Hopefully, this makes clearer what earlier might just have been presented as theoretical
entries.
4) & 5) I was careful to go through the text to eliminate unnecessary passages and make the
writing more concise.
Final note: I appreciate that you think this paper might be useful to social workers. The conference
the paper was written for was actually led by historians and authors of this paper are sociologists, so
we are one step removed from social work as a field
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
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Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Response to Reviewer #2
The paper has been completely rewritten, so hopefully it meets your feeling that the first version was
unclear.
1) As part of the revision, the abstract has been re-written.
2) In rewriting, six qualities of resilient communities were identified and discussed at length. Each
aspect of resilience was related to aspects of social capital development. Some of this clarification
happened in the introduction section but most clarification happened later in the text.
The paper relates to three research reviews that each go over the literature on community resilience.
These reviews particularly emphasize the importance of informal dynamics in communities as factors
that lead to greater resilience. The resilience literature tends to be somewhat critical of the roles played
by government and large nonprofit organizations in addressing the effects of community crises. Part of
the problem is that outside organizations tend to be poorly equipped to study and understand local
culture and local social dynamics and to include them in planning and intervention. By the same token
local communities tend to be ineffective at reaching up to interact effectively with outside government
and organizations. A focus of this paper is how local actors can be more effective at reaching up to
organizations and how large outside organizations can be more effective at doing research and
understanding the local community.
There is a more focused discussion (or “findings”( section at the end of the paper.
3) There is a new section labeled “method” that explicitly explains the long term process by which
authors collected data related to the subject of the paper and also how the research literature was used
to inform and develop ideas in the paper.
4) The new discussion section summarizes material covered in the paper and the significance of
findings given in the paper
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Author/s
Thank you for your paper.
General Comments
Even though your paper is quite interesting, it lacks solid methodoligical approach. Consequently your findings and the interpretention of the findings are very difficult to justify. The paper is written in a way that the reader in under the impression that most of the arguments are done by the author/s without relying on scientific data/ findings. I believe that the paper has many assumptions but not solid justifications for these assumptions.
It is also important for the study that the context of the research is identified? Where in the world are we? What are the specific cultural background of these communities? Are there any similarities among the literature the author investigated?
I also think that the language used in this paper is quite informal and lacks academic quality.
Specific Comments
1. Abstract: if the second part is mentioned here, it would be useful to mention the first part as well. Please revise the abstract.
2. Line 45-50: Does the author mean that these questions suggest community integration or fragmentation? Who is asking these questions? Are these Research Questions of the paper? Please clarify
3. Line 66: who are "we" ? Is this the author or the literature?
4. Line 229: i think that the sentence missing something?
5. Line 87: Is this a finding or an assumption?
6. Line 248: it will be better for the readability of the paper the call this part 1 and so on
7. Line 278: What is the justification of this argument?
8. Line 282-289: Are these findings rely on a survey by the author or they are the findings from the literature?
9. Line 363: Should this be bonding social capital?
10. Line 409: What do you mean by we met Protestan mural painters? Is this a finding from the literature.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer #3
The paper was entirely re-written, partly with an eye to making the paper more formal and less informal.
There is a new methods section that explains our integration of past research done by the authors with research literature related to resilience. We introduce the methodological approach of “slow sociology” to describe research over a period of decades focused on specific geographic areas and that produce a number of empirical papers. This approach is different from focused ethnographic studies that take place over a relatively short period of time, a year or so, and that are guided by specific hypotheses. The body of work built up by authors over decades gives a theoretical framework for how different aspects of social capital interconnect and mutually support each other.
The paper also draws on three major reviews of research on resilience and follows and develops concepts presented in those reviews. The paper includes research not covered in some of the reviews since the major review we used came from 2012.
These reviews make clear that the literature on resilience in the wake of community crisis is drawn from case examples from around the world, so there is no single geographic focus. The literature also relates to a variety of types of disasters, so when researchers talk about resilience examples are diverse and the common focus is on the level of abstractions, not in terms of the content of specific cases. The research reviews specifically emphasize that a difficulty in this field is that examples tend to be multi-dimensional and to operate on multiple levels of societal aggregation (local communities, social regions, and whole societies are affected at the same time).
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear author/s. Thank you for revising your paper.
The paper has undergone significant improvement, both in terms of its structure and the coherence of the ideas presented. However, there is one issue that needs to be addressed. In section three, the author(s) discuss the six attributes that contribute to community resilience, and subsequently delve into the topic of social capital, which is listed as the third attribute. As mentioned by the authors in the discussion section (which should actually be titled "Discussion and Conclusion"), "each of these elements grow out of processes that build social capital and they rely on the elements of social capital...". This crucial point should be emphasized earlier in section three, and the subsequent sections should be built upon it.
Author Response
I changed the title of the last section to Discussion and Conclusion.
I expanded point #5 in the section on the attributes of resilient communities to include the point made in the conclusion, that each of the elements of resilient communities grow out of the way the three types of social capital are interconnected and mutually supportive.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
