著者

萩原 優騎

出版者

国際基督教大学

雑誌

社会科学ジャーナル = The Journal of Social Science (ISSN:04542134)

巻号頁・発行日

no.82, pp.25-45, 2016-09-30

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Resilience became a keyword to consider the situation after the GreatEast Japan Earthquake. However, defining resilience is not easy because of thevariety of its definitions. Therefore it is necessary to compare the definitionin one field with that in the other. It will be impossible to gain a deeperunderstanding of necessary conditions of resilience without such a review. Thepurpose of this paper is to form the foundation to design a resilient communitywith this kind of method mainly based on the views of sociology.One of the most famous definitions of resilience is the one by C. S.Holling. He tried to define resilience by comparing it with stability. Stabilityis the ability of a system to return to an equilibrium state after a temporarydisturbance. On the other hand, resilience is the ability of a system to absorbchange and disturbance and still maintain the same relationships betweenpopulations or state variables. According to Andrew Zolli and Ann MarieHealy, many definitions of resilience rest on one of two essential aspects:continuity and recovery in the face of change. They defined resilience as thecapacity of a system to maintain its core purpose and integrity in the face ofdramatically changed circumstances.Defining community is also indispensable. Junichi Saito definedcommunity as intermediate groups between individuals and nations.Community tended to be evaluated negatively because of its exclusivity andhomogeneity. However, today it means various relationships among peoplethrough the process of collaboration to rebuild their life. The other characterof the contemporary community is it is under the influence of globalization.There are many problems beyond the boundaries such as global environmentalproblems. Making much of plurality and individuality is important because thediscussion without going into specifics will not be useful to solve the problemsin each area. Besides, it is also necessary to consider how to connect theindividual efforts with one another to tackle global issues.However, such kind of efforts has some problems. Efforts of people maybe convenient for the government to reduce costs of their control. As a result,people will function as subcontractors of the government without knowingit. Another problem is the static views of people. They may think the presentsituation is self-evident. They do not assume the situation can change becauseof the lack of critical thinking. It is essential for them to be aware how thepresent situation has been formed to reconsider the actual state. The otherproblem is the difficulty of communication between the experts and the lay.The role of a transitional leader to mediate specialized knowledge of theexperts and local knowledge of the lay will be important to achieve a betterdecision-making.Considering these points is a necessary condition to design a resilientcommunity. They will be presented by the researchers who take part in adecision-making process to support to improve the situation. Moreover, it isalso important to be aware the participation of researchers itself may affect adecision-making process, as Niklas Luhmann pointed out.