Resilience Community Action Societal Transformation

Resilience, Community Action and Societal Transformation is a unique collection bridging research, theory and practical action to create more resilient societies. It includes accounts from people and organizations on the front line of efforts to build community resilience; cutting-edge theory and analysis from engaged scholar-activists; and commentary from sympathetic researchers. Its content ranges from first-hand accounts of the Transition Movement in the UK, Canada and Spain, to theoretical reflections on resilience theory and the shifts in mindsets and perspectives required for transitions to sustainability. The book contains substantive contributions from activists and activist-scholars such as Lorenzo Chelleri (Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy), Juan del Rio (Transition Spain), Naresh Giangrande (Transition Network), Maja G�pel (Wuppertal Institute), Thomas Henfrey (Transition Research Network), Justin Kenrick (Forest People's Programme), Glen Kuecker (University of Indiana), Cheryl Lyon (Transition Peterborough Ontario) and Gesa Maschowski (Transition Bonn), along with briefing notes from noted experts in resilience. The result is a compelling cocktail of insights, ideas and action points likely to define the scientific and practical fields of community resilience for years to come.

Ecosystems of Resilience Practices: Contributions for Sustainability and Climate Change Adaptation focuses on resilience in action by exploring and providing approaches, perspectives, toolboxes, and theoretical discourses for the improvement and enhancement of territorial and community resilience practices towards sustainability and climate change mitigation/adaptation. The book develops a set of tools and design criteria to support the dissemination of resilience practices. This new toolset will support the expansion and reinforcement of resilience practices and the building of solutions related to climate change. The book is divided into three sections: Section one investigates the contribution this kind of resilience approach could have on sustainable development goals as related to climate change. It also includes other environmental challenges such as ecosystem resilience in the face of climate change. Chapters dedicated to exploring the issues for a renovated governance of territorial transformation processes are included. Section two focuses on the eco-systems of resilience practices characterization, including discourses on international networking of transitions initiatives. Section three presents operative guidelines, instruments, and proposals for the resilience practices "stabilization," "blooming," and "up scaling," aiming at a more effective and consistent contribution of resilience practices in reaching sustainability, adaptation goals, and scenarios at local and global scales. Focuses on resilience practices, including effective transformation processes providing an overview of practices goals, sectors, and solutions to problems raised Includes toolboxes and solutions showing the reader a systematic and stable approach, moving from a conceptual framework to actual practice Presents a multilevel and multidisciplinary approach, allowing the reader to understand how to integrate and reconnect discourses on risk management, climate change, and social, economic, and creative innovation

This book will prepare social workers, psychologists, and counselors for psychosocial work with individuals and groups who are experiencing distress and trauma resulting from historical and current sociopolitical oppression and violence. Sociopolitical oppression is a sustained, systematic catastrophe, which results from social targeting and discrimination such as racism, sexism and misogyny, homophobia, and anti-immigrant fervor. The consequences are profound and debilitating. In some ways, they are similar to reactions to a single event disaster (e.g., hurricane, earthquake, terrorist attack) but even more insidious because the social targeting and harassment have been ongoing and will continue. As a guide for direct clinical practice, this book offers new models for understanding the nature and consequences of sociopolitical disasters as well as guiding a range of interventions – clinical, psychoeducational, advocacy, and social justice – for use on a micro, mezzo, and macro level. Drawing on indigenous and BIPOC knowledge and scholarship and using case studies from around the world, it criticizes while also adapting and integrating knowledge and theory from the fields of disaster mental health, psychosocial capacity building, trauma therapy, psychodynamic theory, cognitive behavioral theories, and theories of resilience and positive psychology, linking them to an understanding of historical and social oppression, social justice, and intergroup conflict and reconciliation. The book offers critiques of dominant Western, Eurocentric visions of personhood and models of intervention and questions assumptions about the roles of "client" and "worker," proposing more egalitarian, collaborative relationships and extensive use of training of trainers. It will prepare graduate students and practitioners across the helping professions for work that promotes the collective and individual strength and efficacy of affected people, while also responding directly to vulnerability, stress, and trauma.

Solidarity economy-based alternative spaces result from an interface among structural factors, institutional regimes and forms of collective action that mobilise narratives of change, collective identities and non-capitalist economic practices. This book analyses how solidarity economy initiatives develop alternative spatialities as counterpower to mainstream economy. Based on case studies in Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, it elaborates on how different scales of solidarity economy-based alternative spaces result from an interface among structural factors, institutional regimes and forms of collective action that mobilise narratives of change, collective identities and non-capitalist economic practices.

In the devastation that follows a major disaster, there is a need for multiple sectors to unite and devote new resources to support the rebuilding of infrastructure, the provision of health and social services, the restoration of care delivery systems, and other critical recovery needs. In some cases, billions of dollars from public, private and charitable sources are invested to help communities recover. National rhetoric often characterizes these efforts as a "return to normal." But for many American communities, pre-disaster conditions are far from optimal. Large segments of the U.S. population suffer from preventable health problems, experience inequitable access to services, and rely on overburdened health systems. A return to pre-event conditions in such cases may be short-sighted given the high costs - both economic and social - of poor health. Instead, it is important to understand that the disaster recovery process offers a series of unique and valuable opportunities to improve on the status quo. Capitalizing on these opportunities can advance the long-term health, resilience, and sustainability of communities - thereby better preparing them for future challenges. Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters identifies and recommends recovery practices and novel programs most likely to impact overall community public health and contribute to resiliency for future incidents. This book makes the case that disaster recovery should be guided by a healthy community vision, where health considerations are integrated into all aspects of recovery planning before and after a disaster, and funding streams are leveraged in a coordinated manner and applied to health improvement priorities in order to meet human recovery needs and create healthy built and natural environments. The conceptual framework presented in Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters lays the groundwork to achieve this goal and provides operational guidance for multiple sectors involved in community planning and disaster recovery. Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters calls for actions at multiple levels to facilitate recovery strategies that optimize community health. With a shared healthy community vision, strategic planning that prioritizes health, and coordinated implementation, disaster recovery can result in a communities that are healthier, more livable places for current and future generations to grow and thrive - communities that are better prepared for future adversities.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Pathways of Human Development uses theoretical perspectives from developmental, social, and behavioral sciences to examine the many ways that individuals, families, and communities intersect and interface. Focusing on the impact of change on human development, including its antecedents, processes, and consequences, the chapters examine a range of topics such as health and adaptation; social anxiety disorder; protective factors and risk behaviors; parent-child relationships; adolescent sexuality; intergenerational relationships; family stress and adaptation; and community resilience. By extending human development theorizing across these pivotal life-changing issues, this volume offers a comprehensive map of the trajectories of development among individuals, families, and communities.

How will the ecological and economic crises of the 21st century transform health systems and human wellbeing?

The rapidly changing nature of life in Canadian rural communities is more than a simple response to economic conditions. People living in rural places are part of a new social agenda characterized by transformation of livelihoods, landscapes, and social relations, inviting us to reconsider the meanings of community, culture, and citizenship. This volume presents the work of researchers from a variety of fields who explore social transformation in rural settlements across the country. The essays collectively generate a nuanced portrait of how local forms of action, adaptation, identity, and imagination are reshaping aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities of rural Canada.

This book examines, through an interdisciplinary lens, the relationship between political dissent and processes of designing. In the past twenty years, theorists of social movements have noted a diversity of visual and performative manifestations taking place in protest, while the fields of design, broadly defined, have been characterized by a growing interest in activism. The book’s premise stems from the recognition that material engagement and artifacts have the capacity to articulate political arguments or establish positions of disagreement. Its contributors look at a wide array of material practices generated by both professional and nonprofessional design actors around the globe, exploring case studies that vary from street protests and encampments to design pedagogy and community-empowerment projects. For students and scholars of design studies, urbanism, visual culture, politics, and social movements, this book opens up new perspectives on design and its place in contemporary politics.