Abstract
If individual and social features of psychological phenomena are understood as co-constituting and permeating each other, coping becomes a social phenomenon that extends traditional understandings of social support dynamics in mainstream psychology. In order to thoroughly investigate the social settings and interactions in crises, this chapter gives an overview of the multiple agent groups (or agents) involved in the coping process. Socioculturally specific ideals and practices are highlighted to explore the communal dynamics of a village struck by a disaster. Communal coping efforts, power dynamics, and the renegotiations of social values and practices are all examined. Overall, the social dimension is understood as a resource that may foster coping processes and as a source of resource loss that can hinder coping processes. The chapter closes with narratives about the conservation and transformation of communal resources.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The topic of social conflicts, potentially or actually arising out of aid distribution processes, will be covered in Chap. 14.
- 2.
Occasionally, deceased ancestors were described as being supportive by providing advice and strength via dreams.
- 3.
In Chap. 9, the appearance and disappearance of specific agent groups over time are highlighted.
- 4.
This list does not express disparate categories: for example, receiving money secures one’s livelihood, mitigates financial worries, and thus has an emotionally calming effect, as well as signifying being cared for.
- 5.
The abbreviated term harmony-ideal will be used synonymously with ideal of harmony and togetherness.
- 6.
- 7.
This contrasts with a Western view that each individual has the right to express his or her unique standpoint and opinion.
- 8.
The broader community was denoted as orang awam, literally meaning layman, and orang kecil, literally meaning little people.
- 9.
Cooperative actions on a communal level were called gotong royong, kerja bakti (literally, devoted work), sambatan (derived from Javanese, depicting mutual assistance), and sumbangan (literally, contribution).
- 10.
PKK stands for Program Kesejahteraan Keluarga, the Program for Family Welfare, which is a government program to improve family welfare within hamlets. PKK groups are governed by the wife of the hamlet head, an arrangement that represents hierarchical structures in village life and reinforces a gender-separated distribution of tasks. All PKK participants are married women and their activities relate to increasing family income and improving health.
- 11.
Another possible—but apolitical—conceptualization of social coping dimensions refers to the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of social networks (Barth 1998).
- 12.
- 13.
Expressed in Indonesian by sahabat (close friend), teman (friend), etc.
- 14.
In order to offer this power-critical assessment, our analysis, therefore, emphasizes a timeline perspective that highlights these (complex) processes instead of states.
- 15.
Whether these privately acquired aid goods were distributed privately or publicly, made a difference to perceptions of injustice (see Chap. 14).
- 16.
The reasons given were old age, a lack of linguistic competence in Indonesia needed in order to communicate with donors, injury to oneself, fulfilling caring tasks for (injured) family members, and fear.
- 17.
Bowen (1986) describes impressively, how discourses of communal self-help were instrumentalized politically during Suharto’s “New Order”.
- 18.
This indicates shared (but age- and gender-differentiated) responsibilities for family members in need, as it was the younger generation or women who were usually responsible for providing this type of assistance.
- 19.
Other relatives and friends who were expected to help, however, were not available due to other responsibilities such as work. Their inability to attend in person could be compensated for by money, a common strategy also applied in ordinary daily routines.
- 20.
Hobfoll (1986) called this phenomenon rumor mills.
- 21.
Hobfoll (1986) called a similar phenomenon the pressure cooker, that is when people tend to exchange experiences of a terrible event due to their same background experience.
- 22.
Rescuing oneself at the expense of others was reported by some interviewees as having troubling effects. For example, a son described rescuing his injured father from the debris and protecting him from the sun by covering him with a coconut leaf. However, when he had to leave him behind to escape from the expected tsunami, troublesome feelings of guilt followed.
- 23.
For example, new pengajian groups to recite the Quran were formed in several hamlets. In Sido Kabul, new micro-credit groups (arisan) were established in accordance with the types of business involved. Women in the same business, but not necessarily from the same neighborhood (RT), started to meet and established new connections.
- 24.
A neighborhood head (Pak RT), on the other hand, discussed these changes within an alternative discourse that invoked the social responsibilities of the rich toward poorer community members and an appeal to the rich to be generous.
- 25.
Supporters of the current hamlet head, however, claimed that opponents would feel hurt as their candidate lost, and thus they would withdraw socially. No connection to corruption or attempted bribery was claimed.
- 26.
Problematic or challenging transformations were hardly reported, usually only in the context of long-term effects of injury and extreme suffering (see Chap. 13).
- 27.
The term communal used in this chapter, therefore, does not denote a religious community, a school community, or a political community.
- 28.
Although Oliver-Smith originally referred to disaster-affected people only, the concept can be broadened to include a universal tendency to provide support to others in times of disaster. It then depicts a solidarity that increasingly turns global, with mass media and its emergency appeals to raise money for disaster survivors.
References
Bankoff, G. (2007). The historical geography of disaster: ‘Vulnerability’ and ‘local knowledge’. In G. Bankoff, G. Frerks, & D. Hilhorst (Eds.), Mapping vulnerability (pp. 25–36). London: Earthscan.
Barth, S. (1998). Soziale Netzwerke und soziale Unterstützung. http://www.stephan-barth.de/Homepage-Aufsaetze/Soziale%20Unterstuetzung.pdf. Accessed 27 May 2011.
Bhandari, R. B., Knottnerus, J. D., & Okada, N. (2011). Urban ritual events and coping with disaster risk: A case study of Lalitpur, Nepal. Journal of Applied Social Science, 5(2), 13–32.
Bowen, J. R. (1986). On the political construction of tradition: Gotong-royong in Indonesia. Journal of Asian Studies, 45(3). 545–561.
Christensen, A. D., & Larsen, J. E. (2008). Gender, class, and family: Men and gender equality in a Danish context. Social Politics – International Studies in Gender State and Society, 15(1), 1–26.
Delica-Willison, Z., & Gaillard, J. C. (2012). Community action and disaster. In B. Wisner, J. C. Gaillard, & I. Kelman (Eds.), Handbook of hazards and disaster risk reduction (pp. 711–722). London: Routledge.
Frailing, K. (2007). The myth of a disaster myth: Potential looting should be part of disaster plans. Natural Hazards Observer, 16(4), 3–4.
Gordon, R. (2009). Community impact of disaster and community recovery. http://www.psychology.org.au/inpsych/community_impact/. Accessed 27 Feb 2013.
Grootaert, C., Narayan, D., Nyhan, J. V., & Woolcock, M. (2004). Measuring social capital. An integrated questionnaire. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank.
Hamengku Buwono X. (2008). Learning from the 27 May 2006 earthquake. In D. Karnawati (Ed.), The Yogyakarta earthquake of May 27, 2006 (pp. xi–xviii). Belmont: Star Publishing Company.
Hermanns, H., & Hermanns-Konopka, A. (2010). Dialogical self theory: Positioning and counter-positioning in a globalizing society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hobfoll, S. E. (1986). Stress, social support, and women. Washington, D.C.: Hemisphere.
Kagan, C., Burton, M., Duckett, P., Lawthom, R., & Siddiquee, A. (2011). Critical community psychology. West Sussex: Blackwell.
Kaniasty, K., & Norris, F. H. (1993). A test of the support deterioration model in the context of natural disaster. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64(3), 395–408.
Lyons, R. F., Mickelson, K. D., Sullivan, M. J., & Coyne, J. C. (1998). Coping as a communal process. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 15(5), 579–605.
Manfield, P. (2007). Java Earthquake 2006/7: Part I: Early recovery. Jakarta: UN Humanitarian Coordinator/Resident Coordinator’s Office. http://www.humanitarianreform.org/humanitarianreform/Portals/1/cluster%20approach%20page/Evaluation/Evaluation%20for%20Early%20Recovery%20in%20Java%20v5.pdf. Accessed 27 Aug 2008.
McMillan, D. W., & Chavis, D. M. (1986). Sense of community: A definition and theory. Journal of Community Psychology, 14(1), 6–23.
Oliver-Smith, A. (1999a). The brotherhood of pain: Theoretical and applied perspectives on post-disaster solidarity. In A. Oliver-Smith, & S. M. Hoffman (Eds.), The angry earth (pp. 156–172). New York: Routledge.
Oliver-Smith, A. (1999b). Peru’s five hundred year earthquake: Vulnerability in historical perspective. In A. Oliver-Smith, & S. M. Hoffman (Eds.), The angry earth (pp. 74–88). New York: Routledge.
Ophiyandri, T., Amaratunga, D., & Pathirage, C. (2010). Community based post disaster housing reconstruction: Indonesian perspective. http://usir.salford.ac.uk/9761/1/536.pdf. Accessed 05 Oct 2011.
Prainsack, B., & Buyx, A. (2012). Understanding solidarity (with a little help from your friends). Response to Dawson and Verweij. Public Health Ethics, 5(2), 206–210.
Schlehe, J. (2006). Nach dem Erdbeben auf Java: Kulturelle Polarisierungen, soziale Solidarität und Abgrenzung. Internationales Asienforum, 37(3–4), 213–237.
Schwarzer, R., & Knoll, N. (2007). Functional roles of social support within the stress and coping process: A theoretical and empirical overview. International Journal of Psychology, 42(4), 243–252.
The Government of Yogyakarta Special Province (2008). Reconstruction based on local wisdom (Saiyeg Saeko Kapti). In D. Karnawati (Ed.), The Yogyakarta earthquake of May 27, 2006 (pp. 25.1–25.8). Belmont: Star Publishing Company.
Wright, K. M., Ursano, R. J., Bartone, P. T., & Ingraham, L. H. (1990). The shared experience of catastrophe: An expanded classification of the disaster community. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 60(1), 35–42.
Acknowledgement
The editors would like to thank Robert Parkin for his assistance in editing this chapter.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Schwarz, S. (2014). The Social Dimension of Coping: Communal Negotiations of Social Benefits and Burdens. In: Zaumseil, M., Schwarz, S., von Vacano, M., Sullivan, G., Prawitasari-Hadiyono, J. (eds) Cultural Psychology of Coping with Disasters. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9354-9_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9354-9_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-9353-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-9354-9
eBook Packages: Behavioral ScienceBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)