Abstract
The conventional wisdom of disaster studies focused on the state and civil society as the outside helper in the reconstruction stage. The two aspects, however, largely neglect the subjective responses of victims and local communities. In the name of resilience, recent studies have turned to the effects of local community in disaster relief. According to the dataset of 921 Chi-Chi Earthquake in Taiwan and the my fieldwork after the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake in China, I develop four ideal-type of communities—(1) strong state vs. strong community, (2) weak state vs. strong community, (3) strong state vs. weak community, (4) and weak state vs. weak community—and find that the performances of reconstruction, from the best to the worst, follow the same sequence. This comparative study displays how informal institutions in local community help affected populations overcome the collection action barriers and shape the process of rebuilding houses. I argue that the social resilience of different community determines the effect and efficiency of the housing reconstruction project. The more resilient community, the better construction. In contrast, the strong state top-down reconstruction project may damage the performances by destroy social networks in local communities.