Emergence of Social Cohesion after a disaster. (With reference to two flood affected locations in Colombo District-Sri Lanka)

摘要

Natural disasters that strike without prior warning bring drastic situations. Unexpected disasters may destruct people's daily routine and they may lose their physical assets. Thus aftermaths of disasters can also affect both short-term and long-term physical and psychological life of affected people. Recent history about disasters occurred in Sri Lanka shows that non-victims of disaster tend to sense that such stressful situations as 'our' problem rather than 'their' problem. Such shared collective feeling will create a social cohesion within catastrophic situations. During May 2016 Sri Lanka went through severe flooding condition, it affected 172,000 people in Colombo district. Throughout this flood, various random people all over country, other organizations and government with tri-forces united in an overwhelming sense to help these victimized people. The aim of this study was to understand how social cohesion emerges after a sudden disaster and how social cohesion is helpful to rebuild affected people's life. Two highly flooded areas, namely Ambathale in Kolonnawa Divisional Secretariat and Egodawatte in Athurugiriya Divisional Secretariat were selected as the sample location. Using each area's GramaNiladhari Officers registration out of the total population 15% selected using simple random sampling method and both quantitative and qualitative data were collected using questionnaires, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. Study was conducted in two stages, first half of the study was conducted in two months after those affected people returned to their places and next part of the study conducted after five months. Outcome of the study reveals that social integration can be emerged as a latent function of a disaster and it also played important role in recovery process of victims. It showed that receiving helping hands or in other words experiencing collective behaviour for continuously more than three months from non-victims lessen the psycho- social tension which might have arose in affected people. Other than that study also showed cultural values played a significant role