Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the gap between theory and practice in community-based approaches to recovery. It's main argument is that there is a lack of 'power' in empowerment in the process that is designed to promote community agency and control over recovery.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses empowerment through community participation in the framework of post-disaster recovery. It explores the gap between theory and practice within community-based approaches that today are widely recognised as the 'best practice' in recovery by inter-governmental organisations, governments and NGOs alike. Community-based approaches are broadly framed as bottom-up processes arguing to improve recovery outcomes by empowering local communities as the agents of their own recovery. Yet, the results of such initiatives are consistently inconsistent. Reports of wide-spread dissatisfaction toward recovery and reconstruction are a staple in almost any post-disaster story.

The research for this paper is based on a 13-month ethnography in Japan, exploring the lived experience of the recovery by local populations in tsunami affected coastal communities. Discussions of participation among the affected populations indicated a conceptual divide in what constituted 'participation' and 'empowerment' that led to a deep sense of dissatisfaction and 'pausing' among communities. This was analysed to illustrate a distinct depolitisation of recovery through the narrative of community-based approaches, where no power was transferred between the authorities and the communities to enable local agency to emerge. The implications of this to the affected communities, and the recovery process itself were severe, and led to dissatisfaction and untapped potential of local vigor, enthusiasm and human capital. The research concluded that the gap between theory and practice in the application of community-based approaches stem from the utilisation of language of empowerment in an environment of powerlessness.