How Local Communities Overcome Disaster and Crisis

Maeva Mila ()
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Maeva Mila: Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with the Ethnographic Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria

Comparative Southeast European Studies, 2023, vol. 71, issue 1, 96-118

Abstract: The study considers disaster as a social phenomenon that affects individuals, communities, and societies. It focuses on a specific technological catastrophe—a train explosion in the village of Hitrino in Shumen region, Bulgaria, that killed seven, left 23 injured, and demolished 23 houses. The article describes and analyses the local community’s reactions based on fieldwork, i.e. ethnographic and sociological surveys conducted in 2018 to 2019. Attention is paid to the behaviour, management, and methods of coping with the short-term and long-term consequences of the disaster on individual, group, and institutional levels, as well as to the changes in social and ethnic relations. Hitrino is defined as a community in crisis in relation to the degree of its ability to develop a local strategy in advance, and due to the experience it accumulated. The study shows that disaster recovery strategies must include work with local communities which play a key role in reducing the negative impact of catastrophe.

Keywords: disaster; crisis; train explosion; management; vulnerability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:soeuro:v:71:y:2023:i:1:p:96-118:n:10

DOI: 10.1515/soeu-2021-0068

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