ABSTRACT
Solidarity is expressive of one of the fundamental features of humanity; that is, the duality within human life between our individuality and our social being, between self-interest and altruism or pro-social behavior. Vulnerability as a concept emerged in the 1970s and refers to the relationships between people and the total environment, including the physical setting and the sociopolitical structures that frame the conditions in which people live that render them susceptible to hazard impact. Resilience in ecology referred to the capacity of an ecosystem to respond to disturbance by resisting damage and recovering quickly. Resilience was enthusiastically embraced by some, in part, because it addressed human agency, the aspect of self-organization for collective goals that seemed to be elided by the concept of vulnerability. Resilience at the local level is culturally defined and socially enacted. Social constructions of meaning need to be integrated with material analyses of material reconstruction.
