1. How Culture Affects Resilience and Vulnerability
for an Immigrant Community
after a Major Environmental Disaster:
Vietnamese-Americans in post-Katrina New Orleans
Migration, Environment and Climate: What risk inequalities? October 22-23, 2018
Mark VanLandingham, Ph.D.
Tulane University
School of Public Health
& Tropical Medicine 1

3. Photo by the author, 2006.

5. Recovery of Vietnamese-Americans post-Katrina
Dimensions and measures of recovery
Abramson et al.
Measures I use
Housing stability
Rates of return
Physical health
Levels and changes in physical health
Mental health
Levels and changes in general mental health and depression; post-disaster PTSD
Economic stability
Post-disaster economic behavior
Social role adaptation
Community mobilization

6. Resilience
The process of “linking a set of adaptive capacities to a positive trajectory of functioning and adaptation after a disturbance.”
Dimensions
Economic development (MV: economic capital)
Social capital (MV: social capital)
Information and communication (MV: human capital and communication infrastructure)
Community competence (MV: human capital)
Norris et al. 2008

7. The mismatch:

8. Could culture be the missing piece?

9. Why is culture left out of these paradigms of recovery and resilience?

12. Why is culture left out of these paradigms of recovery and resilience?

13. Why is culture left out of these paradigms of recovery and resilience?
Culture confounders: Elements of social structure that might influence resilience and post-disaster recovery but are independent from – and often confused with – culture.

14. Could culture be the a missing piece?

15. A narrative of survival
An enduring account of repeatedly overcoming adversity.
Source:

16. Next steps: efforts to quantify and operationalize
Culture
symbolic systems of beliefs, values, and shared understandings that render the world meaningful and intelligible for a particular group of people (Beldo 2010)
Cultural Consensus
Ethnic Capital
Community Resilience
Recovery
Community Competence
Information and Communication
Economic Resources
Social Connection
Mental health
Physical health
Housing stability
Economic stability
Social role adaptations
Individual competence in providing the culturally appropriate answer to a series of related questions
Degree of affiliation and perceived benefit from affiliation with a particular ethnic group

17. Conclusions Culture matters in post-disaster recovery.
Vietnamese-American culture left this community well-positioned for a robust recovery after Katrina.
Culture is often over-simplified.
Culture results from history.
Culture is dynamic.
Culture is often confused with other elements of social structure.

18. Conclusions
Culture should be measurable if it is to be effectively leveraged as a useful construct in disaster research.