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"How do you retreat? Case

Studies on RelocationRoberto E. Barrios

Associate Professor

Department of AnthropologySouthern Illinois University Carbondale

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Resilience is a Relationship

Anthropological perspectives on community

resilience

Communities do not remain unchanged over time:

membership, practice, values

Communities exist and take shape in relationship

to a broader world that extends beyond their

boundaries in space and time What intra and extra community relationships

enhance or undermine resilience?

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Relocation

A movement in space. But what is space?

Henri Lefebvre: Space is not a neutral backdrop of human action. It is

a social product and its production involves threemoments: The lived, the conceived and the perceived.

Setha Low Socially produced space

Socially constructed space

Embodiment: The person is a spatio-temporalformation that realizes space in the act of bodilymovement.

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Lessons Learned

People are not isolated entities, they live in

meaningful relationships to other people and

households, their surrounding environment

and the built environment.

Resettlement projects must recognize the

importance of these relationships. Not doing

so undermines community resilience.

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Post-Mitch Honduras: Two

Communities, Two Outcomes Limon de la Cerca

Widespread delinquency,street gang activity

Home construction: Single-room 25 sq. m. structures,no columns

Land Parcels: 200 sq. m,randomly distributed

Incompletion of fundedprojects: Electrification

Social fragmentation

Marcelino Champagnat

No street gang graffiti Larger 35 sq. m. houses

with internal partitions Land Parcels: 400 sq. m.

Completed electrification Effective collaboration of

community residents andaid workers

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Examples

Limon de la Cerca, Choluteca Honduras Post-Hurricane Mitch relocation site for

900 affected families.

From 22 to 1 to 2

Relocation and political culture

Social polarization Household distribution practices ignored

social networks among disastersurvivors.

Rupture of social networks haddeleterious effects on community

resilience Violence

Childcare

Gender

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Limon de la Cerca, Choluteca

Honduras

Families were given minimal land parcels (1300sq ft) and minimal housing units (260 sq ft) thatwere not adequate for resettled households

(median household size=7) Land parcels were not sufficient for animal

husbandry and household gardens which werecustomary prior to the disaster

Housing units were not suited for environmentalconditions of the site, causing more deaths in theaftermath of the disaster.

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Why?

Political culture: The moral economy of giving

Minimal aid for marginal people

Ideas about modernization on the part of NGO

project managers and local governmentofficials

Cost-benefit analysis and budget as a means

of assessing relocation success. Lesson: Successful relocation requires

unfettered giving and epistemic flexibility

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Epistemic Rigidity/Epistemic Flexibility

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Marcelino: The importance of

resistance and accommodation

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Marcelino Champagnat: Housing

1,100 residents, 330 homes, with internal

partitions for 4 living spaces, 40 and 35 sq. m.

floor plans

Plastered facades

400 sq. m. land parcels

Clothes washing basins

No street gang graffiti

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Examples

San Juan de Grijalva, Chiapas, Mexico Community resettled after a landslide near the Peitas

Hydroelectric Dam, Chiapas, Mexico.

Resettlement site attempts to transform subsistence farmersinto entrepreneurs and wage laborers. Resettlement site upsets

household ecologies (meaningful and material relationships toother people and environment)

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San Juan de Grijalva Today

Resettlement site built as partof the sustainable rural citiesprogram of the state of

Chiapas. Resettlement site breaks

connections to agriculturallands and other sources of

subsistence economy (river). Minimal housing units and land

parcels limit animal husbandry

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San Juan de Grijalva today

Resettlement site makesresidents dependent onmiddlemen and politicalpatronage.

Widespread unemployment,failed entrepreneurial activity.Residents have becomeunderemployed wage

laborers Housing structures ignored

local architectural vernacular.

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Lessons Learned

Successful relocation involves more than themovement of individuals away from naturalhazards.

Successful relocation involves thereproduction of meaningful relationshipsamong people (communities), naturalenvironment, and the built environment inways that make sense to community members(the social production of space).

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Lessons Learned

Successful community relocation requires a

suspension of the moral economy of aid.

Fiscal transparency and efficiency is

important, but it is not an adequate means of

project evaluation.

Successful community relocation must be

evaluated using local categories. Example:

Hallarse, to find oneself at ease.

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Lessons Learned

In both examples community resilience was

undermined by NGO and government agency

policies and practices that attempted to

radically transform people and their spaces.