Cultural psychology of coping with disasters: the case of an earthquake in Java, Indonesia

This book addresses a gap in psychological studies and takes cultural factors into consideration with an innovative framework for studying culture-specific concepts of vulnerability and local forms of resilience. Instead of focusing on post-disaster pathology or standard themes of coping, it argues that planners and practitioners need to be sensitized to local practices, values, beliefs, social structures, and dynamics, in order for disaster aid and risk reduction to be sustainable and effective.

Expert contributors both build on and transcend traditional clinical ideas to analyze four distinct dimensions of coping: material, social, life conduct, and religious. Extensive findings on the 2006 Java earthquake illustrate both concepts and methods in real-world detail. And a chapter on villagers' visions of their future ably demonstrates the balance between the personal and the collective in coping. Included in the coverage: (i) methodological basis of a culture-specific coping approach; (ii) research ethics: between formal norms and intentions; (iii) suffering, healing, and the discourse of trauma; (iv) disaster aid distribution and social conflicts; (iv) critical perspectives on gender mainstreaming in disaster contexts; plus (v) a multidimensional framework for analyzing the coping process.