Community resilience and social support relationships – An analytical approach and research results based on long-term series analysis
of communities affected by the red sludge disaster Cover Image

Közösségi reziliencia és segítségnyújtás – a vörösiszap-katasztrófa károsultjainak hosszú távú vizsgálata példáján
Community resilience and social support relationships – An analytical approach and research results based on long-term series analysis of communities affected by the red sludge disaster

Author(s): Anna Mária Bartal, Zoltán Kmetty
Subject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: Debreceni Egyetem Politikatudományi és Szociológiai Intézet
Keywords: community resilience; social support; patterns of social support patterns; types of social support

Summary/Abstract: One of the most serious consequences of disasters is the disruption or even the loss of social support relationships. Hence, this paper analyses the social support relationships in the framework of community resilience based on face-to-face interviews with direct (180 people) and indirect (180 people) victims of the red sludge disaster, using data for 2013 and 2020. (Hungary, Devecser district). The focus was analysed according to four types of social support relationship: reciprocal, donor to recipient and incomplete/disintegrated. At the time of the disaster, we identified a high level of support activity and a strong reciprocal-donor type of aid model. In contrast, in 2013, we found an incomplete/disintegrated - reciprocal model with low support activity, and in 2020, a reciprocal- incomplete/disintegrated model with medium activity. Based on a detailed statistical analysis of different social support types among the red sludge disaster’s victims the paper explores and presents the social support activities and their various patterns with respect to their roles in the resilience of communities. The different patterns of social supports relationships that emerged in each period examined varied widely, though – with different intensity – they were primarily influenced by the fact how people were affected by disaster’s damages (directly and indirectly). Nevertheless, by 2020, other factors, such as residence, age, and economic activity had already an equally strong impact on different types of social support relationships as the affectedness by the disaster of 2010. We found that communities responded to the red sludge disaster in 2010 and to the Covid-19 epidemic in 2020 in a reactive way by activating their social support relationship.

  • Issue Year: 11/2022
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 6-31
  • Page Count: 26
  • Language: Hungarian