Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Amazon River Region – Social conditions'

Access to markets is increasingly regarded in development circles as a critical factor in determining livelihood choices in peasant economies. In the northeastern Peruvian Amazon, a multitude of river transporters and market intermediaries based in the central city of Iquitos provide essential services and market opportunities for remote peasant producers across the region. Using a multi-scalar, multi-method approach involving extensive fieldwork in the Peruvian Amazon, this research (re)assesses the meanings and implications of "remoteness" and "connectedness" for rural peasants. At the regional scale, I examine the functional heterogeneity of river trading networks and marketing agents. Given the high-risk/high-transaction-cost environment, river trading is found to be expensive for producers and traders alike. High costs are exacerbated by the low gross returns of rural production (mainly food and natural building materials). Thin or missing markets for credit, labour, land and insurance increase the hardships associated with limited access to product markets. Regional findings are complemented with a comparative livelihoods analysis in two remote communities of the Alto Tigre River that benefit from differential access to oil-labour. My study reveals that differential access to labour has significant impacts on the livelihood strategies of working households. However, given limited access to external markets, cash-income from oil-labour is found to offer limited opportunities for growth. In sum, the research proposes insights for advancing the debate on livelihoods and poverty in the Peruvian Amazon.

One of the primary challenges facing researchers and practitioners in their efforts to address issues of poverty and environment is the need to deepen our understanding of the logic that guides local people's decisions over resource use, particularly among the rural poor whose livelihoods depend on fragile and dynamic environments. This study seeks to identify the set of factors that influences how rainforest people respond to abrupt natural disturbances and resource scarcity through changes in livelihood and resource management practices in two rural poor communities of the Peruvian Amazon. Data were gathered through in-depth survey interviews (n=95 households) between June and December 2003 in the Amerindian community of Arica Viejo (Ucayali River) and the mestizo (ribereno) community of Roca Fuerte (Maranon River). The results reveal that socioeconomic characteristics such as forest experience and knowledge, and access to agricultural land explain striking differences among households in livelihood responses to environmental change, particularly concerning resource use behavior, resilience to disturbance, and the propensity to adopt sustainable resource management strategies.

Poor people in rural areas of developing countries are considered to be particularly vulnerable. Research shows that the rural poor tend to live in risky environments and face greater difficulties coping because they are excluded from formal safety nets and have few assets. Today, there is much concern that risk, especially environmental risk, contributes to perpetuate poverty and threatens livelihood security, yet our understanding of the implications of environmental risk for rural livelihood remains incipient. This dissertation explores peasant livelihood within the context of environmental change through a study of peasant responses to rapid river changes along the Central Ucayali River, a highly active meandering river and a major Amazon tributary in Peru.
Livelihood responses to floodplain dynamics were examined using the case of a recent meander cut-off near the city of Pucallpa as a "natural experiment." Participant observation and a household survey with 68 ribereno households, in three different villages upstream and downstream from the cut-off, served to investigate: (1) livelihood before and after the cut-off; (2) the role of humans in facilitating the cut-off, (3) land tenure; and (4) the links between shocks and asset evolution.
Descriptive analysis indicates that riberenos modified their livelihoods in response to the biophysical changes attributed to the cut-off and derived important economic opportunities. Results suggest that riberenos actually intervened to facilitate the cut-off to reduce travel time and make boat travel safer. Despite the potential for unclear rights and overlapping claims, due to land instability and the coexistence of formal and customary tenure rules, land disputes did not result in physical violence. Examples from two villages were used to illustrate how tenure rules are renegotiated as the resource base expands or contracts. Descriptive and statistical analyses show that riverbank slumps were the main form of risk along the Ucayali and, despite their direct effect on land holdings, environmental shocks did not necessarily constrain land accumulation or increase inequality. This study argues that environmental risk can increase vulnerability and reduce welfare but, under certain circumstances it creates new opportunities for rural people in developing countries. The implications of these findings for vulnerability reduction, human adaptation to environmental change, and Amazonian cultural ecology are discussed.
Les populations pauvres des regions rurales des pays en développement sontconsidérées comme étant particulièrement vulnérables. Les recherches passées ontdémontré que les membres de ces populations tendent à vivre dans des environnements àrisques et font face à de plus grands défis parce qu'exclus du filet de sécurité socialeformel et parce que possédant comparativement moins de biens mobiliers et immobiliers.Aujourd'hui, de beaucoup s'inquiètent de la contribution de ces risques, en particulier desriques environnementaux, à perpétuer la pauvreté et du danger qu'ils posent pour lemaintient des modes de vie. Malgré ces inquiétudes, notre compéhension desimplications des risques environnementaux pour les modes de vie ruraux demeure faible.Cette dissertation explore le mode de vie paysan en période de changementsenvironnementaux. Il s'agit d'une étude de la réponse des paysans du moyen Ucayali auxrapides changements dans la dynamique du fleuve. L'Ucayali est un affluent majeur dufleuve Amazone, au Pérou.

This ethnoecological study of the Makushi Amerindians of Amazonian Guyana explores the place of plants in the indigenous culture and cosmology. The North Rupununi, the homeland of the Makushi people, is a bioculturally diverse mosaic of neotropical savannahs, forests, and wetlands. As subsistence hunters, fishers, and horticulturalists, the Makushi live in a constant and dynamic interaction with their ecologically rich surroundings. Against the human-faunal bias latent in much Amazonian anthropology, I place plants firmly at the centre of analysis, a positioning that mirrors their centrality in the ethnographic context. Human-plant encounters explored herein include swidden agriculture, the cultivation of bitter cassava, the fermentation of cassava drinks using a domesticated fungus, the use of a category of charm plants, and the consumption of plant substances in shamanic ritual. With the Makushi, I emphasise the status of plants as living selves and agents of semiosis, occupying perspectives on the world in and outside of their interactions with human beings. In order to investigate ethno-theories of life, I attempt to understand the constitution of the person - and associated notions of body and soul - in the indigenous cosmology. Makushi ontology can be characterised as animic - though as I argue, it also incorporates naturalistic and analogic elements. Thus, it is poly-ontological. This study pursues a dual goal: first, to pay heed to the trans-specific domain of living entities revealed in the Makushi ethnoecology, and second, to rethink conventional symbolic frameworks characteristic of anthropological approaches to culture. I explore the application of a more robust approach to sign-flows in nature - Peircian ecosemiotics - that allows for the analysis of plant communication, birdcalls, insect stings, and leaf patterns, as well as human language. In tracing these interspecific webs of signification, conclusions are drawn about the varied ways in which Makushi people engage with and think about their living environment. At the same time, many Makushi multispecies engagements are based on the physical transfer of substances between bodies of different kinds. In order to better account for this pervasive 'substance logic', greater attention must be paid to indigenous notions of corporeality and personhood. In doing so, I propose a dual analytical model that takes both the flows of signs and the flows of substances as its combined objective. This approach enables new conclusions to be drawn about multispecies relationality in indigenous Amazonian cosmologies.

Gabriel Christie (1722-1799), a British military officer, acquired a vast estate in Quebec after the Seven Years war, including five timber-rich seigneuries in the Upper Richelieu Valley, our study area. These were inherited by two of his sons in succession: Napier Christie Burton (1758-1835) and William Plenderleath Christie (1780-1845). An examination of the available deeds of concession for our study area shows the legal framework of the tenure and the seigneurs' survey and land granting policies. Seigneurial rents increased between 1785 and 1820, but it was the accumulation of seigneurial arrears, followed by strict collection practices after 1835, which contributed most to social stratification and unrest. A seigneurial monopoly on mill construction and the use of water power was decentralized after 1815 so that manufactures were established by entrepreneurs with capital who acquired a share of the seigneur's rights through patronage. The seigneur's role in regional development--the rise of villages, settlement, and industrial growth--was significant particularly as a system of clientage which helped shape the social structure.

This paper presents the findings of part of a research project entitled "Population Mobility and Settlement Patterns in the Eastern Cape, 1950 to 1990", which was funded by the Human Sciences Research Council. The part of the project with which this paper is concerned, is the study of resettlement in the Border/Ciskei area of the (new) Eastern Cape Province. It involves two main foci: a) the Whittlesea district of the former Ciskei, where research was done in the resettlement area of Sada (where findings are compared with research done there in 1981) and Dongwe; and b) the Fort Beaufort area, where we looked at the two 'black spot' communities of Upisdraai and Gqugesi which were uprooted and moved to the Fort Beaufort township of Bhofolo in the 1960s, and at the establishment of black citrus farmers in the Kat River Valley in the late 1980s, on previously White owned farms which were bought out by the (then) Ciskei government. In the Conclusion, some important differences are suggested between resettlement in the Eastern Cape and in QwaQwa, one of the areas of South Africa that has been most severely affected by resettlement. Ways in which the South African material may be seen in terms of prevailing models for the analysis of resettlement, and may provide an input for the modification of these approaches, are briefly considered.
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Orientador: Lucia da Costa Ferreira
Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas
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Resumo: Esta tese estuda os conflitos e as alianças relativos à criação, implantação e implementação de uma área natural de proteção integral, o Parque Nacional do Jaú, no estado do Amazonas, Brasil, em cujas teias inserem-se diversos grupos, instituições e indivíduos com diferentes modos de se relacionar com o espaço, com a proposta conservacionista e com as políticas públicas voltadas às áreas naturais protegidas e aos seus quase-sujeitos. Tendemos a ver essas múltiplas influências como potencializadoras da transformação da área do próprio parque e da região do baixo e médio rio Negro naquilo que Marc Augé (2003) denominou de não-lugares. A pesquisa permitiu verificar que tal tendência, entretanto, não se dá de forma absoluta, pois existem iniciativas que visam enfrentar as forças que atuam sinergicamente para isso, embora permaneçam dentro de limites pré-estipulados estruturalmente, tanto no âmbito sócio-político quanto nos âmbitos técnico-científico e jurídico
Abstract: This research studies the conflicts and alliances relative to the creation, implantation and implementation of a natural area of integral protection, the National Park of Jaú, in the State of Amazonas, Brazil, in the webs of which various groups, institutions and individuals with different manners of relationship with the space with the conservationist proposal and with the public policies aim at natural protected areas and to their quasi-subjects. We tend to see these multiple influences as potentializers of the transformation of the area of the park itself and the regions of the low and middle Negro River, which Marc Auge (2003) denominated as non-places. This research permitted the verification of this tendency; however, it does not occur in an absolute form since there are initiatives that have the purpose of facing the forces that act in this synergy, although they remain within the structural pre-stipulated limits, both in the socio-political and the technical-scientific and juridical ambits
Doutorado
Ciencias Sociais
Doutor em Ciências Sociais

The use of community consultation to address socio-environmental degradation is entwined with contested democratic principles polarising views of its role. I frame this problem by examining three democratic paradigms faced with two contemporary problems. The deliberative argument that preferences require enrichment with debate mediates between the liberal-aggregative view that preferences are individual, private and amenable to aggregation and the view that participation in public life is foundational. Viewing consultation as deliberative reconciles the liberal-aggregative view of consultation as the illegitimate elevation of unrepresentative minority groups with the participationist view that consultation constitutes a step towards participatory democracy. Theorists of social reflexivity, however, point to an elided politics of knowledge challenging technoscience's exemption from politically garnered consent. Also neglected by much democratic theory is how functional differentiation renders self-referential legal, political, technoscientific and administrative domains increasingly unaccountable. I employ Habermas' procedural theory that public spheres allow social irritations into the political domain where they can be encoded into laws capable of systemic interjection in response, along with a dialogic extension accommodating the politics of knowledge. I then use this procedural-dialogic deliberative understanding of democracy to elucidate the context and outcomes of the NSW State's consultative strategy. The NSW state, institutionally compelled to underwrite economic growth, implicating itself in that growth's socio-environmental side effects provoking widespread contestation. The resulting Environmental Planning and Assessment Act (1979) and its adjunctive consultative provisions helped highlight the socio-environmental degradation of the Hawkesbury Nepean River Catchment via Western Sydney's urban sprawl, politicising the region. The convenement of a consultative forum to oversee a contaminated site audit within the region facilitated incisive lay critique of the technoscientific underpinnings of administrative underwriting of socio-environmental degradation. The discomforted NSW State tightened environmental policy, gutted the EP&A Act's consultative provisions and removed regional dialogic forums and institutions. I conclude that the socio-economic accord equating economic growth with social progress is both entrenched and besieged, destabilising the political/administrative/technoscientific regime built upon it. This withdrawal of avenues for critique risks deeper estrangement between reflexive society and the NSW State generative of electoral volatility.

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Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES
The objective of this work was to map the path taken by indigenous people to access the benefits and social services offered by the Social Assistance and Social Security policies, in São Gabriel da Cachoeira (AM). The municipality has a territorial extension of 109,184.9 km². Located in the extreme northwest of the state, it borders the west with Colombia and the north with Venezuela. Approximately 95% of the inhabitants are indigenous belonging to more than 30 indigenous group of at least 23 languages. This sociocultural diversity and geographic isolation set several challenges to the implementation of social policies Two methods were used in this research: the ethnography, that required a long stay in the place, the interaction with the subjects, the continuous observation, and a detailed transcription of the information collected; also the research-action-participation (RAP), that proposes to study certain groups through a dialogical relationship between the researcher and the community, in which both are active subjects in the construction of research and knowledge, and that presupposes a devolution to the community. In the case of this work, there was a denunciation report on several situations of violations of social rights, later sent to the Federal Public Ministry of Amazonas. The instruments used included a bibliographical survey, participant and non-participant observation, structured interviews with open and semi-structured questions, field reports, participation in events, holding meetings, formal and informal conversations, tabulation of the information collected and the transformation into quantitative and qualitative data, as well as their analysis. The sample of the universe was 130 people. Of these, 43 were users of the services, 54 users of the Social Security Policy who were not interviewed, but had the attendance observed, 22 were technicians and managers of social services and 11 were members of organized civil society. Fieldwork lasted four months and has led us to reflect that access to social benefits and services by indigenous people poses challenges to every society, especially the indigenous movement, the state and the scientific community
O objetivo deste trabalho foi mapear o caminho percorrido por indígenas para acessar benefícios e serviços sociais ofertados pelas políticas de Assistência e Previdência Social, em São Gabriel da Cachoeira (AM). O município possui uma extensão territorial de 109.184,9 km², está localizado no extremo noroeste do estado, faz fronteira a oeste com a Colômbia e ao norte com a Venezuela. Aproximadamente 95% dos habitantes são indígenas, pertencentes a mais de trinta povos falantes de, no mínimo, 23 línguas. Esta diversidade sociocultural e o isolamento geográfico estabelecem diversos desafios à execução das políticas sociais. Dois métodos foram utilizados nesta pesquisa: a etnografia, que exigiu uma longa permanência no local, a interação com os sujeitos envolvidos, a observação contínua e a transcrição minuciosa das informações coletadas; e a investigação-ação-participação (IAP), que propõe estudar determinados grupos por uma relação dialógica entre pesquisador e comunidade, na qual ambos são sujeitos ativos na construção da investigação e do conhecimento, pressupondo-se uma devolutiva à comunidade. No caso deste trabalho, houve a produção de um relatório denúncia sobre as diversas situações de violações de direitos sociais apuradas, encaminhado ao Ministério Público Federal do Amazonas. Os instrumentos utilizados foram o levantamento bibliográfico, a observação participante e não participante, as entrevistas estruturadas com perguntas abertas e as semiestruturadas, os relatórios de campo, a participação em eventos, a realização de reuniões, as conversas formais e informais, a tabulação das informações coletadas e a transformação em dados quantitativos e qualitativos, bem como sua análise. A amostra do universo foi de 130 pessoas. Destas, 43 eram usuários dos serviços, 54 usuários da Política de Previdência Social que não foram entrevistados, mas tiveram o atendimento observado, 22 eram técnicos e gestores dos serviços sociais e onze eram integrantes da sociedade civil organizada. O trabalho em campo durou quatro meses e nos levou a refletir sobre o acesso aos benefícios e serviços sociais por povos indígenas, que impõe desafios a toda sociedade, sobretudo ao movimento indígena, ao Estado e à comunidade científica

Defence date: 9 October 2014
Examining Board: Professor Kiran Klaus Patel, Maastricht University (EUI Supervisor); Professor Claudia Damasceno Fonseca, EHESS; Professor Christof Mauch, LMU/RCC; Professor Dirk Moses, EUI
This thesis explores the rise and decline of the farming project Vale do Rio Cristalino, run by Volkswagen in the Amazon from 1973 to 1986. This large-scale development project was built within the framework of a colonization program launched by the Brazilian military regime to promote the territorial occupation of the region. Celebrated as a technological revolution in tropical farming, the ‘VW ranch’ was supposed to be a model of civilization in the jungle, to pave the way for the conversion of the Amazon into a modern export economy and to elaborate solutions to overcome hunger in the ‘Third World’. However, this consensual image was tarnished after Cristalino became the subject of various socio-environmental scandals, leading to the mobilization of transnational networks against the project. This thesis analyzes the transformation of Cristalino from a scientifically and politically legitimized project to a space of conflict. It is a multi-layered case study of how a development project was negotiated between different groups of actors and in dialogue with environmental factors. It argues that there were three main reasons for the demise of Cristalino: the conflicting interests behind an apparent consensus of development, a growing awareness of the scarcity of resources, and disappointing results in the area of labor conditions. This historical example leads one to question the loss of authority of the politics of development in Brazil and at the international level from the second half of the 1970s. By showing how a deterministic view of development—which fixed the intensive exploitation of nature as the Amazon’s unique historical outcome—was progressively unravelled, this thesis reveals the process of politicization of a place. With the dismantling of the ‘developmentalist’ consensus, the future of the rain forest became an open issue, negotiated through the prism of multiple projections, viewpoints and scales of intervention.

Tsang Yuk-ha, Eileen.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 246-256).
Abstracts in English and Chinese.
Acknowledgment --- p.i
Abstract --- p.ii-iii
"PROLOGUE Applying a Cultural Perspective for Analyzing New Class Formation, Living Styles and Consumerism in Post-Reform China" --- p.1
"Bringing the ""New Class"" Back in: The Story of Uncle Wong Class Formation, Living Styles and Consumerism in Post-Reform China"
Chapter Chapter ONE --- Conceptualization and Theoretical Framework--- Formation and Culture of the New Class Fraction --- p.5
Chapter 1.1 --- "Dynamic Economy, Declining Party-State"
Chapter 1.2 --- Empirical Puzzles and Theoretical Questions
Chapter 1.3 --- "Methodological Design: Cultural Sociology, Qualitative Method and Documentary Studies"
Chapter 1.4 --- "Theoretical Frameworks and Conceptualization of ""New Class Fraction"""
Chapter 1.5 --- The Importance of Cultural Perspective in Analyzing New Class in Post Reform China
Chapter 1.6 --- The Manifestations of Living Styles and Consumption Patterns
Chapter 1.7 --- Overall Summaries of the Thesis
Chapter Chapter TWO --- The Theoretical Conceptualizations and Understandings for the New Class Fraction in Post-Reform China --- p.20
Chapter 2.1 --- Posing the Problem - The Agenda of Class Analysis
Chapter 2.2 --- "Conceptualizations of Poulantzas's ""Class Fraction"" Theory"
Chapter 2.3 --- Bourdieu's Conceptualizations for the Manifestation of New Class Fractions
Chapter 2.4 --- Class Culture as in the Economic Perspective
Chapter 2.5 --- "New Class Theories in Socialist, Capitalist and Transitional Societies"
Chapter 2.6 --- New Class Theories in Transitional China
Chapter 2.7 --- "The Prospering Groups as ""New Class Fraction"" in Post-Reform China"
Chapter Chapter THREE --- The Fieldsite of the Case Study: Humen Town in the Pearl River Delta --- p.45
Chapter 3.1 --- The Methodological Designs
Chapter 3.2 --- Cultural Studies - The Meaning of Meaning
Chapter 3.3 --- Semiotics as a Theoretical Basis
Chapter 3.4 --- Qualitative Research Method
Chapter 3.5 --- Documentary Studies - Supplementary Data in the Fieldsite
Chapter 3.6 --- The Distinctive Profiles for the New Class Fraction
Chapter 3.7 --- "Economic Hardships, Unforgettable Past"
Chapter 3.8 --- Physical Layout of Humen Town
Chapter 3.9 --- Structures and Infrastructures of Commercial Opportunities in Humen
Chapter Chapter FOUR --- Living Styles and Consumption Patterns among the New Class Fraction --- New Class Boundary and Admission --- p.78
Chapter 4.1 --- Class as no Longer Primarily an Economic Term in Post-Reform China
Chapter 4.2 --- Economic Hardship and the Rise of Consumerism in Post-Reform China
Chapter 4.3 --- Lifestyles and Consumerism for the New Class Fraction in Humen
Chapter a. --- Entertainment Activities
Chapter b. --- Foods
Chapter c. --- Fashions
Chapter d. --- Traveling
Chapter e. --- Cultural Activities
Chapter f. --- Cigarettes and Liquors
Chapter 4.4 --- Living Styles and Consumption Patterns for the Non-New Class Fraction
Chapter Chapter FIVE --- Cultural Capital and Collective Memories for the Formation of New Class Fraction --- p.112
Chapter 5.1 --- Cultural Capital in Bourdieuian Conceptual Framework
Chapter 5.2 --- The Operationalization of Cultural Capital
Chapter 5.3 --- Cultural Capital in Terms of Educational Credentialism
Chapter 5.4 --- Adapting to the Investment Environment in Humen
Chapter 5.5 --- Ambiguities and Incompleteness of Humen's Policies
Chapter 5.6 --- Social Networks and Flexibility for the Formation of New Class Fraction
Chapter 5.7 --- Collective Memories and the Formation of New Class Fraction
Chapter 5.8 --- Collective Memories and Past History of the New Class Fraction
Chapter 5.9 --- Collective Memories as a Lubricant for the Shared Lifestyles
Chapter Chapter SIX --- Collaborative Relationship and Power Struggles of the New Class Fraction --- p.155
Chapter 6.1 --- Autonomous Discourses of the New Class Fraction
Chapter 6.2 --- Institutional Commodiflcation in Humen Town
Chapter 6.3 --- The Rise of the Cadre Entrepreneurial Paths
Chapter 6.4 --- "Collaborative Strategies, Cooperation and Economic Interests"
Chapter 6.5 --- "Power Struggles, Conflicts and Harmonies"
Chapter 6.6 --- Enhancing Expectations: A New Form of Guanxi Network
Epilogue: Rethinking New Class Formation ´ؤ from Economic Exploitation to Cultural Consumerismin Post-Reform China --- p.191
Chapter 7.1 --- Sociological Significance of the Research on New Class Fraction
Chapter 7.2 --- Final Insight: A New Form of New Class Fraction in Post-Reform China
Endnotes --- p.195
Appendix --- p.209
Appendix 1: Tables
Appendix 2: Map of Humen
Appendix 3: Glossary
Appendix 4: Photo Description
Bibliography --- p.246

Through the analysis of relationships between aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities in Upper St'at'imc Territory in British Columbia, this thesis illustrates how bridging and bonding forms of social capital affect vulnerability and cooperation to prepare for disasters in communities characterised by cultural conflict. Social capital is based upon networks of trust and reciprocity, which enable individuals to cooperate to achieve shared goals. In Upper St'at'imc Territory, people are most likely to have close relationships or bonds with those from the same cultural background. The absence of inter-cultural bonds means that bridges linking those less well known to each other (from each culture) are necessary to facilitate cooperation. However, there are few arenas that enable the formation of bridges between aboriginals and non-aboriginals. Pre-existing patterns of social capital between aboriginals and non-aboriginals were played out in BC Hydro's Exercise "Bridge River", a simulation exercise to prepare for a potential dam incident affecting downstream communities. Lack of bridges between the cultures was highlighted by low levels of cultural interaction during the exercise and the establishment of separate emergency operations centers. Nevertheless, the exercise resulted in some aboriginals and non-aboriginals coming into contact with each other and building new bridges. Unfortunately opportunities for strengthening these bridges through regular cultural interaction are limited. This is due to cultural divisions in membership of emergency preparedness organisations as well as wider social and employment networks. The exercise reinforced the strong bonds that enable non-aboriginal emergency responders to work well together. The benefits of these strong bonds are restricted if they result in excluding aboriginal participation in emergency response organisations. Exercise "Bridge River" organisers were unaware of the strong bonds among non-aboriginal emergency responders. This affected their ability to anticipate how these bonds were used during the exercise and resulted in delaying the process. Social capital is essentially a neutral phenomenon, how it is used determines whether or not it is a destructive weapon or a constructive tool for building disaster resilient communities. Nevertheless, social capital can be easily destroyed and bridges burnt by conflict and lack of trust between cultural groups. Understanding a community's social capital will enhance disaster preparedness and mitigation efforts. Inter-cultural social capital produced in one arena can be used to increase cooperation in disaster preparedness. At the same time, disaster preparedness activities can be used as a foundation to strengthen and build bridges between cultures.