Bonding, bridging, and linking: photovoice for resilience through social capital

Recognizing the social factors of resilience research, an increasing number of scholars have begun to investigate how social capital plays a role in achieving community resilience. These studies typically apply structured interviews and quantitative analyses to situate social capital in disaster management. However, such approaches often fail to present the grounded lens of disadvantaged populations. Through visual narratives, unstructured observations, and semi-structured interviews, this research illuminates how disadvantaged populations bond, bridge, and link social capital to prepare, respond, adapt, and rebuild facing ongoing disasters. In this research, I examine different types of social capital in three disadvantaged communities of metropolitan Manila and Cebu. The majority of disadvantage participants were female; participants from one of the involved communities were mostly deaf. This research applies a mixed-method qualitative analysis with an emphasis on the photovoice approach. The photovoice approach integrated with social media demonstrates an engaging local lens seldom revealed by other methods. It presents how social capital is generated and leveraged beyond the geographical boundaries and possibly the power structure. This project is perhaps the first photovoice research to visualize social capital for resilience studies. It explores social capital in disaster settings under the context of less-developed countries that have been rarely discussed in the current literature. The empirical guidance of utilizing social capital for resilience building, especially the forms of bridging and linking, fills one of the major knowledge gaps in the field. Furthermore, the application of photovoice offers rich insight about resilience studies, providing inclusive data collection as well as transparent resilience governance.