Can the Bonding Social Capital be Used to Mitigate the Impact of Natural Hazards?

Abstract

To illustrate the influence of bonding social capital in the development initiatives of local communities and to contribute to the on-going theoretical debate on the effects of bonding social capital to communities, the cultural variable was used in the analysis using post-disaster recovery experience of a community. By using interview transcripts and conversation notes for this work, people's cultural and circumstances determined the social formation processes as responses to their circumstantial needs. The ethno-political organization (purok), the cooperative work (pintakasi) and the smooth interpersonal relationship (hugoy-hugoy) were cultural factors that explicate the strength of the bonding social capital. This article concluded that the inclusion of a cultural variable in the bonding social capital discussion is relevant and found that a flood-prone community, and those communities which are susceptible to natural hazards, relied on their social capital with greater expectations from the bonding social capital.