Crisis and disaster research has extensively contributed to theoretical, conceptual, methodological and empirical advances in the understanding of resilience, vulnerability, social capital and risk awareness. These concepts identify complex social phenomena, which are intensified, in both positive and negative terms, by crises and disasters.However, the accumulation of knowledge about these notions has produced a vast range of definitions, which affects the way they are used in the study of crises and disasters. This paper sets a research agenda, by promoting a conceptual model to help simplify and make more researchable these complex concepts. This model stems from a triangulation of methods, with the goal of providing more researchable definitions of these notions and of illustrating linkages among them, seldom addressed in the way this model suggests, in the context of the crisis management cycle.
While there is still a vast body of scholarly research in crisis and disaster management that considers social capital an asset for lessening negative impacts from crises, this paper investigates an underexplored aspect of social capital-its microlevel positive and negative instances in the crisis response-a quite neglected phase of the crisis management cycle when it comes to studying the role of social capital. To underline social capital's doubleedged aspects, this paper draws from the handful of studies that focus on individual social capital in crisis response, to systematize their findings according to bonding, bridging, and linking social capital and positive and negative impacts. In addition, the paper considers these findings to analyze the 2011 Utøya terrorist attack in Norway, to uncover new positive and negative effects of individual social capital, thus contributing to pushing the research agenda toward a more critical appraisal of individual social capital.
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