Paper short abstract:

This research investigates post-earthquake community-led reconstruction as a mechanism to achieve democratic social transformation, by simultaneously contesting socio-economic inequalities and unjust power relations, and challenging weak responses from a state characterised by political fragility.

Paper long abstract:

Nepal is classified as a post-conflict fragile state, highly vulnerable to disaster risk and political instability. The 2015 earthquake caused significant loss of lives, housing and public infrastructure. While reconstruction from government and intergovernmental agencies has been slow, bureaucratic and lacking in empathy, seeds of innovation have been evident in community responses, at times facilitated by local NGOs and agencies. This paper is based on recent fieldwork in severely earthquake-affected districts in Nepal, to address the question: To what extent and in what ways can community-led reconstruction in post-earthquake Nepal lead to democratic social transformation? Social inequalities, for example gender and caste, have been challenged in contexts where communities have come together in emergency relief efforts, and community reconstruction committees have subsequently been formed targeting equal numbers of women and men. Land rights groups have organised to address the specific problems faced by the landless. The earthquake produced a social rupture as well as a geophysical one, and there is a discernible desire not to go back to the status quo ante, but to address existing social divisions and unjust power relations through the greater expression of marginalised groups. This paper examines the potential to transform disaster into opportunity, from the village-level upwards, through community-based reconstruction. This inclusive and local approach emerges not simply as self-help, but as transformative community self-organisation that seeks more equitable access to public services, a re-ordering of the relation with government and a confrontation of injustices and exclusions that deepen disaster risk, poverty and underdevelopment.