Cultural Resilience

Culture is comprised of shared rules, beliefs, and attitudes, which shape our perception and interpretation of life events. Culture shapes our thought processes and understanding through distinctive linguistic interpretation, forged by experience and environment. It also facilitates our creation of a unique and comprehensive view of our relationships to other beings. The logical outcome of this formulation of cultural ecology is the assumption that others perceive the world in a like manner, and this in turn spurs us to form interpersonal relations with those who are perceived to be culturally similar. How we understand and exhibit culture, therefore, influences how we comprehend experience and express our discoveries to others in order to create and maintain a common world view.

1 Cultural resiliency

We live in a small world of ever-increasing connectivity, with both cooperation and conflict occurring on a global scale. Individuals, companies, and communities are linked through worldwide systems of communication, transportation, and commerce. Similarly, individual products and services are linked to the global value chains in which they are created, delivered, and used. .Because sustainable development involves a complex interplay between economic, environmental and socio-cultural considerations, it follows that for a country to achieve sustainable development it must consider all these issues in making short- and long-term development plans. However, environmental considerations cannot be appreciated if there is lack of up-to-date information, knowledge, tools and skills to address the various issues. Therefore, if the needs of the present generation are to be satisfied without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, capacity building should be central to the sustainable development agenda.

Community well-being draws its definition from the WHO’s articulation of the right to health: “The right to health embraces a wide range of socio-economic factors that promote conditions in which people can lead a healthy life, and extends to the underlying determinants of health, such as food and nutrition, housing, access to safe and potable water and adequate sanitation, safe and healthy working conditions, and a healthy environment” (Comments on the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights ,2000). As such it includes physical and mental health, social health, economic health, cultural, and environmental health. Ryan-Nicholls & Racher (2004) define community well-being or wellness as the “ability of a community to balance between various barriers to health and those things that support health.

Cultural resiliency is the capability of individuals, families, groups, and communities to cope successfully in the face of significant adversity and risk. This capability changes over time, is enhanced by protective factors in the individual/system and the environment, and contributes to the maintenance and enhancement of health.

Resilience has been linked to social support community cohesion, self-esteem and self-efficacy, social capital. At the community level, resilience is linked to the economic and political context and the strength of a community’s social institutions and social networks. At the individual or household level, it is associated with economic, cultural and social resources. Lack of civil engagement and community identity and social cohesion have been identified as contributing to a nation’s ability and willingness to recover from unexpected threats and traumatic events. Community cohesion draws on shared experiences, a common sense of worth and an expressed collective identity, sustained by shared values and beliefs. In this study collective resilience refers to the bonds and networks of relationships, reciprocity, trust, and community norms which hold communities together. These bonds provide support and protection for individuals, and also facilitate the recovery process. These social bonds are frequently referred to as social networks or social capital. As with resilience, the definition of social capital is contested, but it generally means the social networks, norms, trust and resources embedded in a shared social structure, which enable people to cooperate effectively in pursuit of their common interests and shared objectives. Social capital may be bonding, bridging or linking. Bonding social capital refers to relationships among similar people and groups. Bridging social capital describes social networks across place, class, gender, ethnicity and religion. Linking social capital relates to vertical networks of trust across power or authority relationships. Different meanings are attached to social capital depending on one’s ideological positioning.