Cultivating disaster resilience in rural Oklahoma: Community disenfranchisement and relational aspects of social capital

Journal of Rural Studies 73 (2020) 105–113

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Cultivating disaster resilience in rural Oklahoma: Community disenfranchisement and relational aspects of social capital

T

Adam M. Strauba,∗, Benjamin J. Grayb, Liesel Ashley Ritchiec, Duane A. Gillc a

Department of Sociology, Oklahoma State University, 431 Murray, Stillwater, OK, 74078, USA Department of Society and Conservation, WA Franke College of Forestry and Conservation, University of Montana, USA c Department of Sociology, Oklahoma State University, USA b

A R T I C LE I N FO

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Rural communities Social capital Vulnerability Resilience Disaster preparedness Qualitative research

In the last two decades, social capital has become a crucial concept in the study of vulnerability and resilience in disaster research. While most of this scholarly attention has focused on the recovery phase of the disaster management cycle, this article focuses on the often neglected phase of disaster preparedness. Using more than 180 in-depth interviews with community members involved in emergency management conducted from 2014 to 2018, we explore the relationship between various forms of social capital in communities across the state of Oklahoma. Here, stakeholder perceptions describe a deteriorating relationship between rural communities and urban centers due to failed expectations of trust and reciprocity. Oklahoma's divisive social arrangement is the historical product of geographic distance, a statewide financial crisis, and conservative economic policy. This collective sense of community disenfranchisement creates social solidarity across rural Oklahoma, paving the way for the formation of informal networks that stitch together resources in order to cultivate resilience. The findings suggest that while these rural communities do become more resilient by forming new inter-community relationships, their insulation from diverse social networks in urban areas makes them more vulnerable. This research enhances understanding of the relational dimensions of social capital. Additionally, it gleans perspective on how emergency management in financially strapped, rural communities use social relationships to navigate economic challenges in a geography under constant threat from a variety of natural hazards.

1. Introduction Vulnerability and resilience have been two entwined theoretical concepts that have, separately and in tandem, experienced a meteoric rise in popularity in disaster research over the past two decades. Much of this research has been dedicated to the construction of scales and indices to objectively measure these concepts (for examples see Cutter, 2003, 2016a,b; Rygel et al. 2006). Qualitative research has contributed as a method that illuminates the particularities and nuance of vulnerability and resilience as social conditions that manifest themselves differently in specific places (Bolin and Kurtz 2018). Both methodological positions combat an essentialist approach that obscures the collision of historical, physical, and social dynamics at a particular temporal and spatial moment, as well as the complex ways in which society responds to these events in differentiated ways long after the hazard

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event has passed. Using in-depth interviews with community members involved with emergency management and other data collected from a five-year project studying how Oklahoma communities plan for, respond to, recover from, and mitigate natural environmental events, we focus on how rural communities are simultaneously vulnerable and resilient to natural hazard events. By investigating community stakeholders’ perceptions of social capital as a historical product of relations across the rural/urban divide, we argue that communities become resilient as a consequence of their state of vulnerability. More specifically, deficiencies in crucial forms of “bridging” and “linking” social capital provide an impetus to supplement those deficiencies by enhancing relationships across rural communities (Narayan, 1999). We refer to this phenomenon as constellations of bonding social capital. It is the intent of this research to demonstrate the interrelated nature of vulnerability

Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (A.M. Straub).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2019.12.010 Received 5 December 2018; Received in revised form 13 September 2019; Accepted 12 December 2019 0743-0167/ © 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

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well as introduces a new method of applying it to disaster research.

and resilience through social capital theory for communities at risk of exposure to natural hazards and to demonstrate the importance of considering these relational dimensions in future vulnerability and resilience research.1

1.2.1. Origins and definitions of social capital Broadly, social capital exists as pathways through which individual and institutional actors engage in social action, exchange resources, and create (more or less) stable connections within the structural fabric of society. According to Putnam (2000), the earliest use of the term social capital was by Hanifan (1916) who described it as “good will, fellowship, sympathy, and social intercourse among the individuals and families who make up a social unit” (p. 19). Social capital was established as a means to explain how individuals and social groups gained access to land, labor, and other forms of physical capital (Woolcock, 2001). Moreover, when compared to other less tangible forms of capital such as cultural or human capital, which an actor possesses, social capital provides the connective tissue that constitutes structured relations between social actors (Portes, 1998). The broad use of social capital as a sociological concept was popularized by Coleman (1988) and Bourdieu (1985), the latter positing:

1.1. Vulnerability and resilience Wisner et al. (2004: 11) provide one of the most comprehensive definitions of vulnerability, defining it as “… the characteristics of a person or group and their situation that influence their capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist, and recover from the impact of a natural hazard” (emphasis in original). Characteristics, they argue, are variable across space and time. Others define it broadly as a combination of effects from exposure to a natural hazard, proclivity to resulting harm, and how effected individuals or groups cope or adapt to the outcome (Turner et al., 2003; Bolin and Kurtz 2018). Thus, scholars appear to have reached an implicit consensus in asserting that vulnerability is constituted by the interaction of biophysical factors and social dimensions—interactions which vary across space and time (Bolin and Kurtz 2018; Cutter, 2016b; Cutter and Emrich, 2006; and Hearn Morrow and Gillis Peacock, 1997). And while physical vulnerability is somewhat easy to identify by considering past hazard events, “the social aspects of hazard vulnerability are a bit more complicated given their temporal and spatial variability” (Cutter and Emrich, 2006: 104). The scientific community at large has commonly used resilience across disciplinary contexts to detail characteristics that enhance a subject's ability to withstand an array of stressors and return to a state of normalcy (Tierney, 2014). Similarly, Holling (1973 as cited in Kendra et al., 2018: 89) defines resilience as “a measure of the persistence of systems and their ability to absorb change and disturbance and still maintain the same relationship between populations or state variables.” For many scholars, organizational resilience has been an expression of reliability as a means to manage risk. Maintenance of communication, improvisation, a clear set of responsibilities for stakeholders, and allowing for power to be shifted to decision makers close to crises are critical to maintaining the functional capacity of a given organization (Kendra et al., 2018). Community resilience is of central interest to disaster research and often incorporates or overlaps with individual and organizational resilience. Due to this complexity—and echoing many of the same dimensions introduced and discussed at length in literature pertaining to vulnerability—disaster resilience must be a creative process, able to adapt and change; pliable to account for contextual variation over space and time (Bolin and Kurtz 2018).

Social capital is the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession on a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition—or in other words, to membership in a group—which provides each of its members with backing of the collectively-owned capital, a credential which entitles them to credit (p. 248–249). Here, social capital has two principal components: the first being the social relationship between individuals themselves, and the second is demonstrated through the amount and quality of the goods transferred through these associations (Portes, 1998). Therefore, through social capital, social actors may gain other types of resources (e.g., economic, human, physical, and political) through the construction and maintenance of these networks of social exchange. While this explicit complexity is theoretically meaningful, it is important to distinguish between the resources and the relationships themselves to avoid tautological arguments (Portes, 1998). This distinction is made explicit in Bourdieu's treatment centering on a social actor's ability to accrue resources through group association and the intentional development of social networks that make access to those resources possible. Rationalizing the existence and modus operandi of social capital is not sufficient for explaining how they are sustained or changed over time. Trust and reciprocity within these systems of exchange are necessary for their development and maintenance. Putnam (2000) recognized this complexity in the term, defining social capital as “connections among individuals’ social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them” (p. 19). Paxton (1999) further developed the discourse of such relations by distinguishing between quantitative/objective associations between social agents and qualitative/subjective awareness and understanding of those associations. The latter distinction is of key importance to processual aspects of social capital and can help to account for changes in its strength, direction, and membership. Social capital is often characterized by unspecified obligations and uncertain time horizons, which inherently lead to perceptions of failed expectations and damage to structures of social capital that enable these processes of exchange (Bourdieu, 1977). The development of social capital focusing specifically on trust and norms of reciprocity was consistent with Granovetter’s (1977) discussion of weak and strong ties. The latter details the relations of closelyknit kinship groups while the former discusses engagement in diverse, external community associations. Burt (1992) extends the discussion beyond this distinction, detailing how plugging into other networks creates new opportunities to obtain resources, expanding social capital. Multiple distinctive forms of social capital necessitated the development of a typology of social capital for theoretical coherence and pragmatic utility. The first of these is “bonding” social capital, which “refers to

1.2. Social capital While some scholars suggest that findings from early disaster research fit within the integrated model of Social Capital Theory, explicit utilization of social capital was virtually absent from disaster research until the late 1990s (Ritchie, 2004). However, the past two decades have seen a meteoric rise in the incorporation of this conceptual schema as a means to understand the particularities of relational social dynamics and how those relationships lead to specific outcomes before, during, and after a disaster (Ritchie and Gill, 2018; see also Meyer, 2018). In the following section, we present the origins and development of the concept of social capital. Next, we demonstrate its prolific adoption in the field of disaster research and the ways in which this particular project contributes to the broader social capital literature as 1 The authors chose to focus on the dynamics of social capital specifically, but understand the value in other approaches such as the community capitals framework for investigating community resilience as it explains the integration and interrelationship found between many forms of capital including built, financial, political, social, human, cultural, and natural capital (Flora and Flora, 2013).

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unfettered access to material and social resources due to high levels of trust and expectations of reciprocity. This is extremely important in poor, rural communities as these intense social bonds serve crucial roles in risk management, protection, and solidarity functions (Kozel and Parker, 2000). The lack of diversity in this network leads to diminishing social returns and must be diversified through bridging and linking social capital in order to gain access to a wider array of resources provided through external networks and formal institutions (Woolcock and Narayan, 2000).

networks formed from perceived, shared identity relations” (Szreter, 2002: 576). Generally, bonding social capital is formed between individuals and groups that are similar in both ascribed characteristics and social conditions. Common social conditions tend to formulate strong relations through social solidarity constructed around a shared identity. This “bounded solidarity” was discussed in detail by Marx, who stressed its development as an emergent cognitive product of shared conditions rather than reducible to shared inherent characteristics. Although bounded solidarity does contribute to the development of social capital—which can have positive outcomes in terms of upward economic social mobility—it can also have deleterious effects (Waldinger, 1995). The nature of bonding social capital as creating strong social solidarity due to sameness, conversely results in exclusivity, insulating social enclaves from individuals or groups who do not espouse a fundamental identity. Empirical research demonstrates the isolationism of bonding social capital, particularly in poor and rural communities that have limited access to formal institutions or other diverse social groups that might expand the availability of external resources (Woolcock, 2001). Forging social relationships with social actors beyond those defined by close-knit social ties is typically labeled “bridging” capital. In contrast to bonding social capital, bridging social capital identifies connections with groups different or external to one's community (Szreter, 2002; Woolcock, 2001). The association of differentiated members allows each member to benefit from a diverse array of connections and therefore, access to resources unique to their respective, variegated social milieus (Szreter, 2002). The resulting collective engagement facilitates each individual's goals based on mutually beneficial connections and unspoken obligations of trust and reciprocity articulated comprehensively as bridging social capital. The development of the final typology arose from critical reflection on the neglect of power from social capital discourse. “Linking” social capital was therefore integrated to explain vertical dimensions of reciprocity and membership that exist within social and institutional hierarchies. Linking social capital refers to networks of exchange in which those engaged in the transaction are of unequal status and power (Szreter, 2002). Reciprocity in this context is more difficult to explain. Herein, those with power only participate in such relationships because trust is socially enforceable—not expressed as legal or violent recourse, but rather legitimation and esteem placed in that institution. This mirrors Coleman’s (1988) concept of “prescriptive” norms which are those “reinforced by internal and external sanctions and rewards, including social support, status, and honor” (Ritchie and Gill, 2007: 109). Recipients receive necessary resources; donors are rewarded with public approval while hedging against “malfeasance” (Portes, 1998: 9). Establishing distinctions assists scholars in identifying stakeholders in associative social relationships, but the dynamics and interaction between these differentiated forms are largely unexplored. The dynamic relationship between each type is hinted at by Woolcock (2001):

1.2.2. Social capital in disaster research Over the past two decades, the concept of social capital has been applied liberally in disaster research, even at the risk of becoming a catch-all (Meyer, 2018; Ritchie and Gill, 2007, 2018). Typically understood as a less intangible relationship between individuals (informal) and groups, organizations, and institutions (formal), it is described as a way to understand associations, trust, norms, group memberships, and reciprocity in the context of disaster settings. In other words, social capital is a relational dimension between social actors (Putnam, 2000). A treatment of these relational dimensions as a central and principal consideration in the construction and reproduction of social structures makes this framework uniquely suited to study the relationship between vulnerability and resilience. “The truth of the interaction, is not to be found in the interaction itself” (Bourdieu, 2005: 148), but instead the interaction is an expression of power through social relations that preserves the structures that encompass these interactions (Liu and Emirbayer, 2016). When it has been implemented, social capital theory has often been employed in recovery situations following natural disasters (for extensive examples on this research see Meyer, 2018 and Ritchie and Gill, 2018) and has also been argued for use as an integrative framework more broadly in technological disaster research (Ritchie and Gill, 2007). However, we contend that too little attention has been paid to the use of social capital theory as a means to identify vulnerability and resilience prior to disasters, particularly in preparedness and mitigation phases of the disaster management cycle. A recent review of social capital in disaster research revealed that approximately 10% of the 195 publications focused on preparedness in research on social capital in disasters and hazards from 1998 to 2015 (Meyer, 2018; Ritchie and Gill, 2018). Moreover, a survey of this research revealed an almost exclusive focus on evacuation prior to the occurrence of a storm such as a hurricane or tsunami. Slightly less salient (9%) is research using social capital as a means to mitigate and adapt after extreme events and natural hazards (Meyer, 2018). Oklahoma provides a unique opportunity to employ this theoretical framework in such a situation. Oklahoma and much of the Midwestern United States are predisposed to experiencing natural hazard events such as severe thunderstorms, tornados, ice storms, floods, wildfires, and earthquakes. These Midwestern states are also exposed to more gradual, less studied natural risk phenomenon like drought. Perpetual exposure to environmental harms tends to create a culture of preparedness and an expectation of a response. In Oklahoma, it is not a matter of if, but when the next disaster will occur. The ever-present threat of so many diverse and potentially devastating natural hazards alters the “lifescape” of residents and those charged with managing natural hazard events when they occur. “Lifescape change represents psychosocial responses to emphasize involving a disruption of fundamental assumptions about how the world operates” (Ritchie and Gill, 2007: 114; see also Edelstein, 1984). The expectations that result from this cultural lifescape in Oklahoma stress key components of social capital that carry consequences for social actor relationships across multiple scales. Not only do these spatial considerations in social capital theory allow for the study of the relationship between two actors, we argue that these forms of social capital can, and often do, act in relation to one another. For example, a change in linking and bridging capitals between the state and local communities affects bonding capital for

These distinctions (bridging, bonding, and linking) have particular significance for understanding the plight of the poor who typically have a close-knit and intensive stock of bonding social capital that they leverage to “get by”, a modest endowment of the more diffuse and extensive bridging social capital typically deployed by the nonpoor to “get ahead” and almost no linking social capital enabling them to gain sustained access to formal institutions such as banks, insurance agencies, and the courts (p. 75). Implicit in this reading is the suggestion that limited access and engagement with a diverse set of social capital results in adverse socioeconomic outcomes. Conversely, investment in diverse forms of social capital, primarily bridging and linking social capital, facilitates positive social outcomes. Woolcock and Narayan’s (2000) empirical work using social capital as a framework to explain international economic development exhibits these relationships, particularly between bonding and bridging social capitals. Here, bonding capital initially provides 107

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migration, which can result in a loss of networks (bonding, bridging, and linking social capitals), particularly amongst young people and professionals who find it easier to find jobs elsewhere, leaving less educated and less networked residents behind. Out-migration and an aging population increase disaster vulnerability in these spaces by reducing the tax base that serves as the principal funding stream for local emergency managers. The intersection of these climatic, social, and political factors makes Oklahoma an ideal location to study disaster preparedness.

social actors within and across communities. The ways in which these dynamics emerge and manifest themselves are products of historical and social contexts. Ideating social capital as a concept which incorporates considerations for vertical and horizontal distance, while also accounting for social nearness, allows for comprehension of both the depth and breadth of scalar relationships between social actors and across individual and collective units of analysis. Thus, Social Capital Theory provides a theoretical framework uniquely suited for studying constant environmental stress. It also serves as an approach through which to better understand the relationship between vulnerability and resilience and how expressions of these two concepts can be measured in a social context prior to a hazard event.

2. Results The results of our analyses are presented below. Organized thematically, we discuss each theme and its relevance for social capital theory and provide quotes that best capture key community and individual perceptions of relationships between social actors and serve as exemplary reflections of these themes. In the discussion section, we return to synthesize the emergent themes as well as how this thematic discourse demonstrates the applicability, explanatory power, and utility of social capital theory as an integrative framework in disaster research.

1.3. Data and methodology While most studies of social capital have been quantitative, the dynamic and contextually sensitive nature of relations across structural space in the nuanced and complex context of vulnerability and resilience makes a qualitative consideration of social capital theory necessary (Ritchie and Gill, 2007). The Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) in Oklahoma was a five-year project, ending in 2018. This multimillion-dollar interdisciplinary effort to study the current and potential effects of climate change in Oklahoma included contributions from over 50 faculty members and 250 graduate researchers collecting both biophysical and social data. For this article we analyzed data from more than 180 semi-structured interviews and focus groups administered in five different watersheds across the state (Cimarron/Northwest, Washita/Southwest, North Canadian/Northcentral, Oklahoma City/metro, and Kiamichi/Southeast) to yield a robust and diverse collection of stakeholders that have intimate and direct connections to emergency and disaster management. Interviewees were asked a variety of questions, including their experiences with extreme events such as tornados, high winds, floods, wildfires, winter storms, hail, and drought. Other questions focused on barriers to effective emergency management, organizational relationships, available resources, and local definitions of resilience. Interviews ranged from 18 min to more than 3 h, with the average interview lasting 45 min. Interviews were audio recorded by social science researchers and transcribed by a professional transcription service. A team of faculty and graduate students coded these data deductively using relevant literature on the emergency management cycle (Cutter, 2003; Drabek, 1986; Flora and Flora., 2013) and then inductively to account for emergent themes (Corbin and Strauss, 2015; Flora and Flora, 2013; Ritchie and Gill, 2011; Schreier, 2012). From these initial coding frameworks we recoded emergent themes relevant to social capital theory; vertical and horizontal relations between organizations and groups as well as internal individual relationships within and sometimes across groups were of particular interest (Corbin and Strauss, 2015; Jaworski and Coupland, 2014; Schreier, 2012).

2.1. The rural/urban divide and conservative politics The first theme across each watershed in this study is the articulation of rural and urban identities. Study participants often began interviews not only by situating themselves by city, town, or area of residence, but also by urban or rural affiliation in a distinctive, dichotomous fashion. The former (urban) is marked by affiliation with Oklahoma City and the latter (rural) by a marked disassociation from the Capital, Oklahoma City.2 Whereas the principal collective identifier for urban Oklahoma is tied intimately to the City, rural Oklahomans often positioned themselves in a communal sense using the pronoun “we.” Additionally, those in rural communities consistently used physical distance to create conceptual distance between their communities and the City. Trust was also established through these distinctions, as one former member of the state legislature stated that he overcame local resistance to his representation by telling us that “I made a lot of friends with Southeastern Oklahomans when I said ‘the city looked best in my rearview mirror on my way back to Southeastern Oklahoma’.” Conceptual distance is also articulated explicitly through perceptions of economic capital, or lack thereof. Implicitly, the vast majority of interviewees from rural communities expressed their frustration with not having adequate financial resources to prepare for and mitigate against natural hazard events. Urban communities readily discussed the lessons they have learned from past events and the adaptive measures they have instituted to reduce urban vulnerability and bolster resilience—often with little mention of the cost. One such example is a member of Oklahoma City emergency management who discussed newly built early warning infrastructure that was extended to include systems to warn those who are vision or hearing impaired. In contrast, interviewees from a small community of less than 300 in rural Oklahoma discussed the inadequacy of their warning systems. Here, regarding a tornado siren installed in the 1970s, one study participant said, “[the tornado siren is] only effective for two square blocks depending on which way the wind blows.” Both urban and rural interviewees expressed their frustration with the economic situation in Oklahoma. In the City, a member of a key agency that is an integral part of the City's emergency management plan lamented: “We received a 20% cut from DHS [Department of Human Services] this year to the tune of about $90,000.” Another acknowledged the lack of economic resources in rural communities, “… smaller

1.3.1. Study site Oklahoma, a politically conservative state located in the Midwestern United States, provides an extraordinary opportunity to study the social effects of natural disasters. The area is exposed to myriad natural hazard events including tornados, wildfires, hail, extreme winds, tropical storms, ice storms, blizzards, floods, and even earthquakes, natural disasters are part of the ecological and social fabric of Oklahoma. The New York Times identified Oklahoma as one of the states at “highest risk” for natural disasters (The New York Times 2011). In 2013 a report, titled “In the Path of the Storm” confirmed that from 2007 to 2012, large portions of Oklahoma had experienced the highest incidence of weather-related disasters in the country (Environment America, 2013). Socially, 2014 workforce data collected by the Oklahoma Department of Commerce (ODC, 2014) demonstrates shifting spatial demographics in which rural communities are experiencing out-

2 Respondents across all study sites referred to Oklahoma City colloquially as “the City”.

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agencies, volunteer fire departments, EMS [Emergency Medical Services] groups and all that, are just running on dimes daily trying to buy gas …” To confront these challenges, emergency managers and their teams in rural communities often offer individual contributions to make up the difference, as indicated in this quote: “Our employees have just been historically great about pulling out of their own pocketbooks to do whatever they can to supplement.” Although urban centers (i.e., Tulsa and the City) are an obvious place to find rich stores of dense social networks because of diverse populations, other locales offer opportunities for bridging and linking capital. The presence of Oklahoma State University (OSU) in Stillwater creates a space to build, foster, and distribute assets for forming bridging social capital. OSU attracts and produces students, academics, and professionals with a diverse set of knowledge and skills from around the state, country, and world. The concentration of diverse social networks consolidated and situated around the university also creates jobs within the institution and the surrounding community, creating economic capital. As a source of economic, physical, and human capital, OSU coupled with its capacity as a land-grant institution—which makes the dissemination of practical skills in agriculture, science, and engineering central to the institution's mission—serves as an ideal location for social networking. This is perhaps best exemplified by OSU Extension, which provides educational services to rural Oklahoma on topics from 4-H (Head, Heart, Hands, and Health) youth development to animal and plant science, to biosystems and ecology management. However, the impact of these extension programs in the rural communities is diminishing. According to an extension agent in Southwestern Oklahoma, budget cuts of approximately $80,000 per agriculture educator leaves agents without the capacity to adequately serve those communities. These cutbacks have resulted in reducing the number of extension agents by one-third. Much of what these services provide are informal community outreach programs such as the organization of local ranching or farming co-ops. While forming and participating in these community organizations is not “part of their job description,” they provide crucial sites for the formulation of bonding social capital. The extension agent who participated in our study, now reduced to part-time work and serving two counties instead of one, suggests that if the state continues to limit funding, local county finances will have to make up the difference to keep these services running. Rural communities do not receive all of their financial assistance for emergency planning from the state. In fact, the biggest fiscal contributor is local taxes. However, the population density in rural Oklahoma, combined with a conservative taxation philosophy and lower than state average incomes of many of these regions (ODC, 2014), provides very little for emergency managers to work with when they develop or reform individualized plans for their community. Furthermore, the state legislature needs a 75 percent majority to raise taxes in this politically conservative state (OPI, 2018). The locally structured nature of funding streams and the economic realities that these policies create is demonstrated in contrasting discourses offered by urban and rural emergency managers. Emergency management personnel in Oklahoma City discussed planning and preparation as key aspects of disaster management. These priorities are reinforced by emphasizing institutional protocol that necessarily forges connections and relationships among agencies in coordinating disaster management plans, actions, and the deployment of resources and personnel. In contrast, due to a lack of financial and physical resources, emergency managers in rural communities are constrained in their ability to prepare for and mitigate hazard events. In a material sense, this meant that we found great variation in the specificity and rigor of emergency managers’ education and planning for disaster events. While some have quite detailed plans for disasters, most treat disasters as they would any other emergency such as a car accident or a house fire. Consequently, they almost exclusively dedicate their sparse resources (economic and human capital) to response efforts rather than investing in preventative

community preparedness and mitigation strategies. In rural Oklahoma, relationships are personal, informal, and intimate, often calling other community members or people in adjacent communities by their first name, quickly accompanied by a testament to their character or quality. The social closeness inferred by such familiarity in the discourse belies common purpose and identity—i.e., bounded solidarity. This solidarity is reinforced by the unfamiliarity and cultural and spatial distance with which they refer to the “state” or the “City.” This collective community disenfranchisement from the urban and governmental center of the state is best expressed by a rural emergency manager in southeastern Oklahoma: You can go to another small-town our size anywhere in the State of Oklahoma. And the good answer that's probably everyone's going to boil down to having in this same situation is funding for small towns. Big cities get it … But the funding's just not here for the small communities. And there ain't a community in the state of Oklahoma that won't give you that answer. That is the problem. This sentiment is nearly identical to that offered by a local law enforcement officer discussing the allocation of resources toward preparedness after a 2013 tornado struck outside Oklahoma City: And the bottom line is we don't have the finances or the assistance to get the necessary warning devices. That's it. We are in just as much danger as any other town in this state or in the nation as far as when it comes to tornadoes… We're affected just like anybody else, but we don't get the attention because we're a small town in the middle of nowhere. That's the bottom line… [FEMA] went up there in Moore [a suburban community of Oklahoma City] and they were redoing storm sirens. They got hit, they got hit hard. They needed that help. But there was so much money poured into that and leftover and was supposed to be dispersed. And we couldn't get none of it. 2.2. “Reluctant resignation” and the “Oklahoma Spirit” The economic challenges for public assistance programs and staterun organizations are nothing new to Oklahoma. As of 2018—facing a budget crisis and a deficit in excess of two billion dollars—fund allocation for public services like emergency management has been continually and consistently cut back over the past twenty years from already relatively small public sector funding, compared to the rest of the United States (Baker, 2018; Cobb, 2017). Because of this, communities, while frustrated, do not expect their economic relationship with the state to change. These failed expectations become part of the culture. Ritchie (2004) refers to this dimension of vulnerability as a form of “reluctant resignation.” A concept first coined in her work on the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Ritchie (2004; see also Ritchie et al., 2013) detailed a condition that emerged when residents of Alaskan communities, directly impacted by the spill in the Prince William Sound, realized their lives would never return to what they once were. Additionally, the protracted litigation process, classified as a secondary trauma (Gill, 2007), continually reduced compensatory damages resulting in dejection and fatalism. This sentiment to accept the reality of the ongoing situation was termed “reluctant resignation.” While originally constructed as a way to describe the situation in Cordova, Alaska following the Exxon Valdez oil spill, this term can also be applied to individuals and communities that are at risk of a disaster. Oklahomans interviewed for this study expressed similar feelings about the economic situation in the state. In fact, one emergency manager spoke of this mentality almost with a sense of pride as he recited what he noted is an agency motto: “we do the impossible with nothing.” Reluctant resignation is not wholly attributable to economic conditions, however. The geography of the Southern High Plains creates an environment where devastating natural hazard events are a common part of the landscape. Oklahomans construct a fierce individual and collective identity in spite of, or perhaps as a consequence of, these 109

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and first aid. Rural Oklahomans speak of these roles not as exceptional but as part of their duty in the community. In southwestern Oklahoma, a 911 dispatcher by day is also a deputy in the police department. She and her colleagues recalled, “We're all volunteers [firefighters] so we know we work 40, 50 h a week and then… Any extra is on you to take training basically. …..I'm also an EMT.”

dangers. Individual in their sense of pride to choose to live in a dangerous place, they also expressed collective pride in their proclivity to help one another when disaster strikes. A small town bank executive spoke at length regarding what many interviewees have referred to as the “Oklahoma Spirit”: The Oklahoma spirit I think is real. I think it's a very real thing in Oklahoma. My son has worked in Ohio and Indiana. The relationship that people have are different in different areas of the country. He said, ‘I just don't see that they would come together and help anybody in any situation.’ He was up there about two years. He said, ‘They just don't care.’ … In Oklahoma, if somebody's hurting in Moore, Oklahoma, we load up. We'll take equipment up there. We don't know people in Moore… That's just the way Oklahoma is… [After] [t]he Moore tornadoes, they came up, set up shop and fed thousands of people every day out of [their own] pocket.

3. Discussion The collective themes found in these data suggest an intimate relationship between the dynamic and nuanced ways in which vulnerability and resilience are produced in disaster-prone geographies and the relational social dimensions captured by social capital theory. Below, we elaborate on these connections and how the historical and social conditions in Oklahoma that produce vulnerability in urban and, especially, rural communities in Oklahoma facilitate communities to produce or, we suggest, cultivate resilience.

Here, Oklahoma communities move beyond reluctant resignation by tapping into the Oklahoma Spirit to develop reciprocal relationships to begin to combat the threat of disaster.

3.1. Identifying vulnerability in Oklahoma Oklahoma is geographically situated in an area that is predisposed to natural hazards and disasters best characterized by the moniker “tornado alley.” Not relegated to simply high winds and tornados, the state is subject to a variety of diverse environmental dangers such as floods, wildfires, winter storms, hail, earthquakes, and drought. Disaster literature has studied the ways in which disasters are socially constructed and vulnerabilities to those disasters are products of historical, socio-economic inequalities best exemplified by the extensive work conducted after Hurricane Katrina in 2006 (Tierney, 2014). The enduring economic crisis that has come to characterize Oklahoma governance over the past few decades has exacerbated these vulnerabilities by continually making cuts to public services and programs vital to preparation, mitigation, response to, and recovery from, disasters. While urban populations, agencies, and institutions that are obliged to plan and respond to natural hazard events have seen cutbacks, the historical economic challenges faced by Oklahoma have hit rural communities the hardest. A persistent state-level budget crisis trickles down to rural communities that have to find ways to remain effective despite shrinking allocations. Rural Oklahoma's financial situation leaves those in emergency management with little hope of reprieve, and thus, acquiesce to their dire conditions. The cultural mentality, best characterized as reluctant resignation, has resulted in a condition of community disenfranchisement where rural Oklahomans–while frustrated with the lack of resources allocated to them by the state—are resigned to the reality that no change is coming. The collision of biophysical space, extreme environmental events, and a politically conservative economic culture has placed an immense strain on linking capital between state-level apparatuses and local communities. Deficits in diverse vertical relationships are iterative and cyclical creating perpetually worsening situations for local emergency managers in rural Oklahoma. While respondents did mention liaisons from the Department of Emergency Management in Oklahoma City supporting rural communities—and lauded them for their expertise and assistance—we came to understand that the territories in which they operated were too large for consistent and frequent coordination. Instead, state officials were consulted as needed, acting more in a response and recovery capacity than for preparedness. Compounding these effects is a lack of economic opportunities and development in rural communities. This affects rural communities in two ways: (1) transplants to rural Oklahoma are rare without the economic opportunities or investment to create new opportunities to attract them; (2) younger generations leave their communities to pursue economic opportunities rural Oklahoma cannot provide. Emergency managers acknowledge the structured nature of these conditions and the multiple effects that has on their ability to draw on economic,

2.3. Informal networks, volunteerism, and multiplicity of roles The reality of rural conditions produced through economic prudence, risks of natural hazards, and the resultant psychic culture internalized and expressed as the “Oklahoma Spirit,” manifests itself in very particular and practical ways. The familiarity and intimate social ties that rural Oklahoma has both within and between communities create a multitude of informal networks to satisfy deficits borne of conservative economic politics. Without exception, local communities detailed how they share resources through community ties rather than institutional obligation. Examples include the repurposing of a donated oil truck as a fire engine to carry water to structural and wildfires in the Kiamichi River Valley, to “water buffalos” which brought potable water to local communities all over Caddo county in Southwestern, OK. After dramatic flooding in 2011, rural communities navigated the economic challenges of rurality in the Midwest and the perceived institutional neglect by state agencies and funding mechanisms by pooling resources including personnel, equipment, and skilled labor. Another example from southeastern Oklahoma is a fire chief who allows adjacent community volunteer fire departments to use their training facilities in good faith: “What I like about the [structural fire training] facility is that it's open to anybody that wants to use it, and it's free of charge.” Other communities lean on local proprietors and business people in a crisis, extending the network beyond the public sphere to incorporate other entities of the community: “In this situation [with straight-line winds from 80 + miles per hour] we had to use the [local store] here, because they have generators. That store was lit up and operational and everything. We used their parking lot as our command center and got through it.” Naturally, volunteers are a large part of this type of effort and travel from miles around to help. There was no greater example of this than the outpouring of donations and manpower that followed the 2005 F5 tornado spanning 1.3 miles in diameter which stayed on the ground for over 37 min, carving a 17-mile path through heavily populated Moore, OK. As one interviewee commented: “I really think it speaks to the strength of a community and the resilience of a community that volunteers can come forward, help their neighbors. Oklahoma has a wonderful volunteer philosophy. I think in part because we do have so many disasters.” This volunteerism overlaps with another theme in the data, that of versatility. Due to the sheer lack of population—not to mention professional personnel and economic resources—people in rural communities have to perform a multiplicity of roles for their communities to withstand the imposing threat of natural hazard events. Volunteer fire departments dot the landscape in every corner of the state, but many of these volunteers are also trained first responders, tornado spotters, or emergency management technicians trained in CPR 110

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resources—if communities are even aware of their existence or are able to access them through a viable and reliable internet connection (FEMA, 2010)—are considered too little, too late by vulnerable rural communities. As one police chief notes: “one storm coming through here, some of these people wouldn't recover. Even with the help and the support of a community like ours, it'd ruin us. It'd ruin us… If there was a major natural disaster event in this area that would be the thing that ended the town, period (emphasis added).” Rural communities often lack the bandwidth, social capital, and/or human capital to write grant proposals for preparedness funds: “[the City's] got people hired to do it and go after grants and stuff. We don't have that.” The difference between disaster preparedness systems found in urban regions and those stitched together by rural communities is striking. Rural capacity to withstand disasters is further stymied by a dearth of social and human capital required to access and utilize alternative means of preparing for natural hazards. These factors combine to yield a perception of failed expectations of trust in institutions and a collective culture of disenfranchisement among rural communities. Ultimately, this condition can be distilled and understood as a broad threat to ontological security (Ritchie and Gill, 2007). Thus, instead of looking outward, they look inward, cultivating intra-community relationships and creating informal networks of business owners and volunteers. These ties not only embrace the “Oklahoma Spirit” by dropping everything to help their fellow “Okies3” when disaster strikes, but individuals consistently perform multiple roles within their communities to supplement the gaps left by lack of funding and professional personnel. Here, the absence or weak presence of formal institutions force community members to create informal arrangements to compensate (Narayan, 1999). This phenomenon is detailed specifically by Putnam (2000): “Internally, associations and less formal networks of civic engagement instill in their members habits of cooperation and public-spiritedness, as well as the practical skills necessary to partake in public life” (p. 338). These increases in bonding social capital, while important in terms of protection and risk management, still leave much to be desired in terms of building community capacity to withstand the severe weather events typical in the Midwest region. Emergency management then reaches across to similarly affected communities to pool resources, personnel, and professional expertise, joining their own bonding social capital network to other similarly situated groups, creating what we call constellations of bonding social capital. Constellations of bonding social capital differ from bridging capital in two crucial ways. First, resource quantity, quality, and differentiation: constellations of bonding social capital increase the resources available to associated communities but, as opposed to bridging social capital, these resources are more or less homogenous and of equal quality. Second, bounded solidarity: as a consequence of failed expectations of trust and reciprocity across social boundaries (i.e., rural/ urban), constellations of bonding social capital are created between adjacent communities of similar social condition to supplement deficient stores of resources available in poor, rural communities. Overall, constellations of bonding social capital differ from bridging social capital as this formation of new associations does not diversify the network in terms of access to differentiated resources of increased quality. They do, however, stitch together adjacent rural communities to create a store of resources of more or less similar quality, hoping to fill in gaps in equipment or lack of personnel. This process illustrates a theoretical contribution to extant research on the ways that types of social capital are established and how specific populations interact with one another to develop forms of social capital. Bonding social capital is

human, and physical capital: They don't want to move to Southeast Oklahoma. They want big cities and bright lights. We have poor ways, so we do things poorly. It's just hard. I could get one [paramedic] that just wanted to come in and work a shift and leave, but I need more than that. I need somebody that's going to stay here… and I need somebody that's going to be a part of the community… It's been that way ever since I can remember, that people migrate toward cities. The older ones migrate back [to rural Oklahoma]. [But] the older ones are not interested in working. They've all retired… It makes it difficult. Even the most fundamental emergency needs cannot be met, as one police chief describes: But we just can't afford, as a town, with our tax revenue, we can't afford to operate an ambulance. And even having people to be able to stand by and stuff like that, we can't because of the regulations that the state has on operating an ambulance service. We can't even get part-time people here because their regulations are too tight, they're not loose enough. You know, we have an ambulance as a town, we have an ambulance sitting down there. But we can't have part time people because of the regulations. And the money. We just don't have the money. Overall, the narratives of rural emergency managers demonstrate remarkable consistency in their accounts of economic hardship. Feelings of futility articulated here are oftentimes accompanied by frustration directed at urban centers, as discussed earlier in this article. We argue that the striking similarity between our respondents’ comments is indicative of perceptions of community disenfranchisement found across rural landscape, providing further evidence of their solidarity. All of these material factors, as well as community perceptions about them, contribute to an increasingly isolated rural population that is devoid of meaningful economic opportunities and subsequently, deficiencies in economic and human capital. 3.2. Cultivating community resilience These dialectic and dynamic processes, while expanding the gap and deficit in local resources as a result of diminishing linking and bridging capital, produce an interesting process in rural communities. They necessarily must cultivate community resilience in response to the risk and threat of natural hazard events, and as a product of these material conditions and perceptions of community disenfranchisement. The perception in rural Oklahoma is that money for emergency management gets allocated to urban centers and not to rural communities. Community disenfranchisement across the state is a consequence of diminishing linking and bridging social capital that precipitates growth in social solidarity between rural communities. We argue that this is a temporally contingent phenomenon. The formation of informal networks and the subsequent constellations of bonding social capital are initiated by feelings of reluctant resignation and resulting community disenfranchisement. Enriching these social bonds between local communities increases trust, social ties, and expectations of reciprocity. Informal social capital between community members and formal social capital expressed as trust in the arrangements between adjacent communities and their local emergency managers are, in part, a reflection and consequence of perceived violations of trust by urban communities and state/federal authority. Although study participants understand financial constraints—both from state allocations and from insufficient local tax revenue—perceptions are that rural communities are neglected in favor of urban centers. Moreover, while structured pathways and access to funds for emergency management do exist, funds are “provided to primarily address the repair and restoration of public facilities, infrastructure, or services which have been damaged or destroyed” (OEM, 2018: https://ok.emgrants.com). The language here suggests that funds are earmarked for recovery, not preparedness. Such

3 “Okie” is a colloquial term referring primarily to “true” Oklahomans but can also be extended to people who become part of the community. In effect, it is a symbolic badge signifying inclusion into Oklahoman community and broader culture.

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contingent and interdependent. These findings beg other questions: What contexts predispose certain configurations and relationships between forms of social capital? What potential does this hold for investigating the dynamics of other types of capital? Scholars should continue additional lines of inquiry into other contexts that illustrate or highlight different dynamics between forms of social capital. What this analysis does not do is attempt to determine the spatial or geographic limitations of these relationships. Further research should attempt to determine where these clusters of communities begin and end, or if they end at all. They may act as a perpetual tapestry or lattice of informal arrangements—constructed through a contiguous network of adjacent communities—determined by similar conditions of social existence. Here, the location and magnitude of crises precipitated by a natural hazard event could determine the geographic reach of these constellations of bonding social capital. Moreover, research utilizing the interaction of different capitals such as Flora and Flora (2013) community capitals framework, is a logical extension of this project and will undoubtedly yield a rich and robust contribution to explaining these relationships in a more holistic and integrated fashion. Finally, while the findings and conclusions of this piece are qualitative and cannot be generalized to other sites outside the context of Oklahoma, the implications of this research hold interesting possibilities for exploring the utility of using social capital theory and the development of constellations of bonding social capital as a means to explore localized conditions of vulnerability and resilience in other places.4 Of particular interest would be to apply this analytic framework and methodology to exploring pre-disaster vulnerability and resilience in other politically conservative states where similar experiences of community disenfranchisement exist. Government agencies such as FEMA have been increasingly pushing for the privatization of risk, putting the onus on individuals to protect themselves through mechanisms like insurance and investment in private infrastructure, rather than relying on public assistance. Exploring the interaction between this neoliberal approach to disaster risk and community disenfranchisement will undoubtedly become more relevant in the future (Tierney, 2015).

typically discussed as an initial formulation of social capital, established between individuals with strong social ties such as kinship groups or tightly knit communities that, through shared conditions of existence, or what Marx refers to as “bounded solidarity,” have high levels of trust and expectations of reciprocity. Without engagement with diverse socio-economic networks, bonding social capital fails to evolve into bridging and linking capital and leads to exclusion from different, powerful groups and the potential insulation and isolation of a community (Waldinger, 1995). Whether due to geographic distance, class difference, economic paucity, or a dearth of political power, rural Oklahoma communities feel disenfranchised from urban areas such as Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Feelings of disenfranchisement are further legitimated by a lack of resources—financial, equipment, personnel, etc.—dedicated to disaster preparedness and response. Consistent budget cuts to social programs, such as the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management, over the past two decades serve to confirm these fatalistic perceptions which manifest as reluctant resignation. Left with nowhere else to go, they turn to one another. Forming these constellations serves as a potential collective safety-net that communities can turn to if disaster strikes. And although intensifying and extending bonding social capital does help to fill some gaps in emergency preparedness, one of the negative aspects of intense bonding social capital is that it tends to further insulate and isolate rural communities (Portes, 1998). These conditions corroborate the literature in that “relationships of mutual distrust, incomprehension, ignorance, or dislike have come to characterize the relations between rich and poor in contemporary US society …” (Szreter, 2002: 581). Nevertheless, rural communities take pride in these relationships as a means of negotiating nature's ever-present threat to their ontological security, safety, and way of life in rural Oklahoma. Despite the formation of constellations of bonding social capital, communities in rural Oklahoma remain extremely vulnerable to natural hazard events due to the convergence of geographic, climatic, social, economic, and historical factors. However, their reactionary, innovative, and creative praxis of producing and cultivating resilience through constellations of bonding social capital has produced a cultural network that can better manage the environmental dangers that are woven into the fiber of the culture of Oklahoma. The challenge for future research will be to identify the conditions necessary to combine the positive benefits of solidarity, protection, and associated levels of trust and reciprocity inherent in these constellations of bonding social capital and expand their associations to include more diverse networks (Woolcock and Narayan, 2000).

Acknowledgements This research is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. OIA-1301789. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of our funders. Last, we are grateful to the people of Oklahoma for their time, generosity, and investment they have made in this project.

4. Conclusion Appendix A. Supplementary data This article has highlighted the relational dynamics of social capital that provide the necessary conditions to formulate constellations of bonding social capital. However, this analysis does not suggest what the sufficient conditions are for its formation. While much research determines that poor communities are often isolated and more or less trapped in bonding social capital due to a variety of factors (Waldinger, 1995; Portes, 1998; Woolcock, 2001; Szreter, 2002), more research is needed on factors that contribute to and facilitate this newly identified phenomenon. Here, the culture of the “Oklahoma Spirit,” coupled with the remarkable similarity between social conditions in rural Oklahoma, might provide an invitation to explore these dynamics and their impact on the formation of networks via constellations of bonding social capital. Our analysis further enhances literature which has critiqued moralizing conceptualizations of the social capital typology (Portes, 1998), relegating the effects of bonding social capital to “lazy and passive withdrawal into self-indulgent solipsism, extremism, and fatalism” (Szreter, 2002: 582). The intention of this piece is to add nuance and dynamism to the conceptualization of social capital. Not only are forms of social capital not mutually exclusive, they are

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