Go Out and Reconnect Dynamics of Social Capital and Place in Post-3.11 Community Resilience

This article contributes to research on community resilience by discussing the relationship of sense of place and social capital. On 11 March 2011, Japan was struck by the Great East Japan Disaster, also known as the 3.11 disaster, which greatly damaged, if not entirely destroyed, built environments and dislocated pre-disaster community networks. Although researchers have increasingly emphasised the importance of social capital to community resilience, the reconstruction of people-place relations in postdisaster settings has remained understudied. Based on an analysis of data collected during eight months of ethnographic fieldwork on long-term recovery in Yamamoto, Japan, this article explains how locals there have renegotiated social networks and their sense of place during their temporal, spatial, and social reorientation following the disaster. Overall, the findings reveal how community resilience can be characterised by a co-constructive relationship of sense of place and social capital.