Community Reconstruction After an Earthquake: Dialectical Sociology in Action

Rossi develops a theory of the roles of action (social actor) and structure (sociopolitical resources, cultural resources, and economic resources) in disaster studies, using the data on community reconstruction after the 1980 earthquake in Southern Italy as a preliminary test of the theory. The focus of the study is not the response during the emergency period which immediately followed the earthquake, but the long-term recovery and reconstruction of the 44 communities which were officially classified as the most heavily damaged. Aspects of the post-earthquake industrialization of the region are also considered, since the physical reconstruction of the destroyed communities is inevitably connected with their socioeconomic development. Rossi outlines and tests a new framework which permits prediction of the different speeds of community reconstruction, and provides a dialectic theory of the interrelationship between structural and action principles of social action.