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• Social vulnerability and interpersonal support in disaster experienced Hungarian settlements

  27-53

  András Molnár

  Views:

  58

  Natural disasters unequally affect poor and wealthy populations, which can be observed everywhere regardless of the economic performance of the respective country. Paradigms focusing on physical hazards and response can not be considered, while social, political and cultural causes are rarely mentioned in the discussions around particular disaster events. Marginalized households and communities, and populations with less income are more affected by disasters. A significant proportion of Hungary’s settlements are deprived or otherwise marginalized, which makes it necessary to raise social and economic questions related to disasters, and investigate them from a spatial aspect. This study is based on case studies of five disaster-affected settlements and encompasses a social vulnerability approach. The research is based on interviews with key informants involved in response to the respective disasters and broadened with an experiment to use the Interpersonal Support Evaluation List as an instrument to investigate community resilience. The ISEL is capable of observing the individuals’ self-perception of themselves in their communities and how they can rely on others in their environment. The survey, with the participation of 103 people, discovered discrepancies in the level and structure of interpersonal support, which is tangible based on the interviews.

• Community resilience and social support relationships – An analytical approach and research results based on long-term series analysis of communities affected by the red sludge disaster

  6-31

  Anna Mária Bartal

  Zoltán Kmetty

  Views:

  51

  vOne of the most serious consequences of disasters is the disruption or even the loss of social
  support relationships. Hence, this paper analyses the social support relationships in the
  framework of community resilience based on face-to-face interviews with direct (180 people)
  and indirect (180 people) victims of the red sludge disaster, using data for 2013 and 2020.
  (Hungary, Devecser district).
  The focus was analysed according to four types of social support relationship: reciprocal,
  donor to recipient and incomplete/disintegrated. At the time of the disaster, we identified a high
  level of support activity and a strong reciprocal-donor type of aid model. In contrast, in 2013, we
  found an incomplete/disintegrated - reciprocal model with low support activity, and in 2020, a
  reciprocal- incomplete/disintegrated model with medium activity.
  Based on a detailed statistical analysis of different social support types among the red
  sludge disaster’s victims the paper explores and presents the social support activities and
  their various patterns with respect to their roles in the resilience of communities. The different
  patterns of social supports relationships that emerged in each period examined varied widely,
  though – with different intensity – they were primarily influenced by the fact how people were
  affected by disaster’s damages (directly and indirectly). Nevertheless, by 2020, other factors,
  such as residence, age, and economic activity had already an equally strong impact on different
  types of social support relationships as the affectedness by the disaster of 2010. We found that
  communities responded to the red sludge disaster in 2010 and to the Covid-19 epidemic in 2020
  in a reactive way by activating their social support relationship.