Natural Disasters, Social Resilience, and Religiosity

Abstract

Objective: Recognize and analyze the role that popular religiosity plays in the development of the resilience of families and the community affected by the Pedernales earthquake, comparing speeches made orally and in social networks.

Development: A qualitative ethnographic study was used with an initial sample of 38 people in the initial field immersion and subsequent determination of a group of 13 key informants to whom a semi-structured interview was applied. Subsequently, the analysis of the collected narratives was carried out.

Results: For one group of participants, the earthquake was a divine punishment, a response to the transgressions that demanded offerings as an attempt to remedy "sins". The collected discourse connotes the anguish of an unfinished construction of the Self, besieged by a communal nostalgia, which provokes a pessimism of developmentalism, manifested in the "malaise of culture", which expresses itself socially in a culture dominated by instinct of death.

Conclusions: The identified discourse makes us think of Ecuadorian society as a more existentialist than idealist society. It opposes the hegemonic discourse based on idealist philosophies. Cultural and religious attachments modify the vulnerability of the population, which can be a community strategy for the development of resilience. The positivist approach to vulnerability or risk leaves out social imaginary and symbolic value, which shapes the response of communities to a natural or unnatural danger, now and in the future.