Community resilience and collective agency under significant changes in the natural and built environment: a community capitals framework approach

ABSTRACT

The natural and built environment of rural communities in southwestern Uruguay have been recently impacted by the intensification and expansion of agriculture. A large body of sociological and resilience literature highlights the importance of collective and community responses to stresses created by anthropogenic and/or natural changes. However, what has been less understood is how structural changes and sociopolitical contexts of rural communities impact their responses. Based on semi-structured interviews with key informants, participant observation at local public meetings during 2012 and 2013, and digital spatial analysis (between 2003 and 2016), we use the Community Capitals Framework to explore community resilience and collective agency, in response to multiple stresses in two communities of southwestern Uruguay. Results show multiple stresses affecting community well-being and the nature of sociopolitical contexts (social and political capitals), influenced local responses and access to resources. The analysis centers on structural changes of communities and critical aspects of social and political capitals as well as the needs for scholars and/or practitioners working on community resilience, to incorporate socio-spatial dimensions of inequality to better understand whether, why, and how communities respond to salient disruptions in specific rural settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience
• collective agency
• community capitals
• adaptations

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank local residents of Dolores and Nueva Palmira, students who worked on the spatial analysis of the communities, and the Graduate Program in Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University which provided the Butler Travel Award 2011 to fund part of this research. We also want to thank the anonymous reviewers of this journal who have helped us to improve this article.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at Iowa State University.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Stresses are significant disruptions of communities with negative consequences or impacts at the local level.

2 One questionnaire for Intendencia staff and another (similar) questionnaire for other actors from the market, state, and civil society involved in the communities.

3 Reproduced from Thompson (2018). “Media, Decentralization, and Assemblage Responses to Water Quality Deterioration in Uruguay.” In Agri-environmental Governance as an Assemblage: Multiplicity, Power, and Transformation. Pp. 145-160. Editors: Jérémie Forney, Hugh Campbell, and Chris Rosin. Oxford, U.K.: Taylor & Francis Group. With permission of Informa UK Limited (Licensor) through PLSclear.

4 All the data analyzed for this study is previous to the tornado that affected this community on April 16th 2016.

5 Dolores is under its jurisdiction. This meeting was organized in Mercedes.

6 Percentage of respondents that mentioned changes of the capital (as positive) one or more times (N=23).

7 Percentage of respondents that mentioned changes of the capital (as negative) one or more times (N=20).

8 See also: Farmlandgrab. 2011. “Uruguay’s Farmland Price Jumped Eight Times From 2002 to 2010.” (http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/18368#sthash.l2Dsyu9Z.dpuf)

9 Reproduced from Thompson (2018). With permission of Informa UK Limited (Licensor) through PLSclear.

10 Promoted by the national law N° 18.308: Ordenamiento Territorial y Desarrollo Sostenible (2008).

11 Gates at the urban borders of the community were built with the collaboration of multiple actors to stop heavy transportation used for eucalyptus logs, grains, oilseeds, and machineries.

12 Promoted by the national law N° 18.308: Ordenamiento Territorial y Desarrollo Sostenible (2008).

13 Reproduced from Thompson (2018). With permission of Informa UK Limited (Licensor) through PLSclear.

14 Reproduced from Thompson (2018). With permission of Informa UK Limited (Licensor) through PLSclear.

15 Reproduced from Thompson (2018). With permission of Informa UK Limited (Licensor) through PLSclear.

16 Reproduced from Thompson (2018). With permission of Informa UK Limited (Licensor) through PLSclear.

Additional information

Funding

Part of this work was supported by the Graduate Program in Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University: [Grant Number Butler Travel Award].