"How do you retreat?

Case Studies on Relocation

Roberto E. Barrios Associate Professor Department of Anthropology Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Resilience is a Relationship
Anthropological perspectives on community resilience
Communities do not remain unchanged over time: membership, practice, values Communities exist and take shape in relationship to a broader world that extends beyond their boundaries in space and time What intra and extra community relationships enhance or undermine resilience?

Relocation
A movement in space. But what is space? Henri Lefebvre:
Space is not a neutral backdrop of human action. It is a social product and its production involves three moments: The lived, the conceived and the perceived.

Setha Low
Socially produced space Socially constructed space Embodiment: The person is a spatio-temporal formation that realizes space in the act of bodily movement.

Lessons Learned
People are not isolated entities, they live in meaningful relationships to other people and households, their surrounding environment and the built environment. Resettlement projects must recognize the importance of these relationships. Not doing so undermines community resilience.

Post-Mitch Honduras: Two Communities, Two Outcomes

Limon de la Cerca Widespread delinquency, street gang activity Home construction: Singleroom 25 sq. m. structures, no columns Land Parcels: 200 sq. m, randomly distributed Incompletion of funded projects: Electrification Social fragmentation Marcelino Champagnat No street gang graffiti Larger 35 sq. m. houses with internal partitions Land Parcels: 400 sq. m. Completed electrification Effective collaboration of community residents and aid workers

Examples
Limon de la Cerca, Choluteca Honduras
Post-Hurricane Mitch relocation site for 900 affected families. From 22 to 1 to 2 Relocation and political culture Social polarization Household distribution practices ignored social networks among disaster survivors. Rupture of social networks had deleterious effects on community resilience
Violence Childcare Gender

Lived and Conceived Spaces

Limon de la Cerca, Choluteca Honduras

Families were given minimal land parcels (1300 sq ft) and minimal housing units (260 sq ft) that were not adequate for resettled households (median household size=7) Land parcels were not sufficient for animal husbandry and household gardens which were customary prior to the disaster Housing units were not suited for environmental conditions of the site, causing more deaths in the aftermath of the disaster.

Why?
Political culture: The moral economy of giving Minimal aid for marginal people Ideas about modernization on the part of NGO project managers and local government officials Cost-benefit analysis and budget as a means of assessing relocation success. Lesson: Successful relocation requires unfettered giving and epistemic flexibility

Epistemic Rigidity/Epistemic Flexibility

Marcelino: The importance of resistance and accommodation

Marcelino Champagnat: Housing

1,100 residents, 330 homes, with internal partitions for 4 living spaces, 40 and 35 sq. m. floor plans Plastered facades 400 sq. m. land parcels Clothes washing basins No street gang graffiti

Examples
San Juan de Grijalva, Chiapas, Mexico
Community resettled after a landslide near the Peitas Hydroelectric Dam, Chiapas, Mexico. Resettlement site attempts to transform subsistence farmers into entrepreneurs and wage laborers. Resettlement site upsets household ecologies (meaningful and material relationships to other people and environment)

San Juan de Grijalva Today

Resettlement site built as part of the sustainable rural cities program of the state of Chiapas. Resettlement site breaks connections to agricultural lands and other sources of subsistence economy (river). Minimal housing units and land parcels limit animal husbandry

San Juan de Grijalva today

Resettlement site makes residents dependent on middlemen and political patronage. Widespread unemployment, failed entrepreneurial activity. Residents have become underemployed wage laborers Housing structures ignored local architectural vernacular.

Lessons Learned
Successful relocation involves more than the movement of individuals away from natural hazards. Successful relocation involves the reproduction of meaningful relationships among people (communities), natural environment, and the built environment in ways that make sense to community members (the social production of space).

Lessons Learned
Successful community relocation requires a suspension of the moral economy of aid. Fiscal transparency and efficiency is important, but it is not an adequate means of project evaluation. Successful community relocation must be evaluated using local categories. Example: Hallarse, to find oneself at ease.

Lessons Learned
In both examples community resilience was undermined by NGO and government agency policies and practices that attempted to radically transform people and their spaces.