Disaster Resilience Policy through the Lens of Culture and Values
With the transition from a descriptive construct to a normative concept, resilience has engendered debate as to its appropriateness and effectiveness as a community planning strategy in addressing existing and future threats. In some measure the questions raised are because the role of cultural values in resilience construction has not been fully explored. As communities, cities, and regions strive to enhance resilience, a greater understanding of the importance of cultural values is required. The authors adopt two metaphors are useful in describing how resilience is construction. They use the metaphors to construct a heuristic that incorporates cultural values in resilience construction in a very transparent manner. The heuristic draws upon the theoretical work in cultural values by Mary Douglas, the enhancement of that work by Kahan and others, and by integrating the two into recent work in resilience on assemblage theory.