Can the Bonding Social Capital be Used to Mitigate

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known as barangay chairman, who is elected during an election held for such ... 2 Purok leaders in the Philippines are usually community volunteers who usually ... collaboration was seen by the people as an effective way to deal with crisis.
Can the Bonding Social Capital be Used to Mitigate the Impact of Natural Hazard?: The Case of a Flood-Prone Urban Community in Central Visayas, Philippines SIMEON C. BERNADOS, JR*1a, LANDONN A. OCAMPO1b, EDWIN A. PILAPIL1a, NEMIA F. ZAMORA1a 1a

College of Arts and Sciences, Cebu Technological University, Cebu City, Philippines College of Engineering, Cebu Technological University, Cebu City, Philippines * Corresponding Author: [email protected] 1b

ABSTRACT To illustrate the influence of bonding social capital in the development initiatives of local communities and to contribute to the on-going theoretical debate on the effects of bonding social capital to communities, the cultural variable was used in the analysis using post-disaster recovery experience of a community. By using the interview transcripts and conversation notes for this essay, people’s cultural and other circumstances determined the social formation processes as responses to their circumstantial needs. The ethno-political organization (purok), the cooperative work (pintakasi) and the smooth interpersonal relationship (hugoy-hugoy) were cultural factors that explicate the strength of the bonding social capital. This paper concluded that the inclusion of cultural variable in the bonding social capital discussion is feasible and found out that flood-prone community relied on their social capital with much expectation from the bonding social capital. Keywords: disaster-risk management, climate change, flood-prone communities, traditional practice, ethnopolitical organization, resiliency, cultural practice, traditional knowledge

INTRODUCTION With typhoons getting stronger and floods and landslides becoming part of the weather fore-cast, governments have already acknowledged the impact of climate change on the lives of people and their communities (Aldrich & Meyer, 2014). Typhoons and floods can destroy crops and human lives, pose infrastructural damages to properties, and can even transform communities (Kien, 2011). As a defense against these harmful effects on the lives of people,

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technologies were developed to track the path of typhoons and to forecast their strengths and potencies, to protect ultimately human lives. Engineering solutions become a one-size-fit-all solution against climate change. While engineering solutions may become practical in mitigating the impact of natural dis-aster, people’s adaptive ability to face the insurmountable impact of nature is part of the equation for resiliency or survival. Empirical studies have shown that even with the absence of engineering solutions, communities were able to adapt to certain conditions and develop survival strategies (Lei, Wang, Yaojie, Yuanyuan, & Sheng, 2014), and the better way to learn survival strategies from natural disasters is learning from people practicing them (Ifejika, Speranza & Imme, 2013). The significance of studying people’s survival strategies could help in the programming of activities, from pre-disaster preparations to post-disaster rehabilitation and it is on note that human adaptive capacity can be incorporated into the design of disaster and risk reduction plans and strategies (Aldrich & Meyer, 2014). Studies on local knowledge systems as mitigation schemes against the impact of natural hazard always highlights people’s experiences, and these knowledge systems required very detailed understandings of local environments formed and acquired over very long period of time (Adams, 2013; Ekanayake, Prince, Sumathipala, Siribaddana, & Morgan, 2013; Hawkins & Maurer, 2010). These studies demonstrated that people, in the face of unsurmountable challenges, were able to develop survival strategies, learned to cope with the situations, and even embarked on projects that developed their communities (bun Ku, 2015).

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Moreover, these local knowledge sytems also included the set of quality and quantity of social relations formed during the process of interactions. This set of quality and quantity of relationships, norms, and trust, known as social capital, is the social glue that binds communities in the pursuit of common objectives (Aldrich & Meyer, 2014; Baron & Gomez, 2013). Social capital theory was applied to numerous undertakings such as agricultural production, access to credit facilities, health, education, and nutrition, and marketing management (Chaskin, Goerge, Skyles, & Guiltnan, 2006; Krom, 2017; Sessin-Dilascio, Prager, Irvine, & De Almeida Sinisgalli, 2015). In these studies, dimensions of social capital e.g. trust, cohesion, reciprocity, and empowerment, were in relation to productivity and wellness. In some other studies, the the-ory was used in disaster research studies (Bauer et al., 2013; Field, 2017; Nakagawa & Shaw, 2004; Reininger et al., 2013; Sanyal & Routray, 2016) such as climate change mitigation initiatives, disaster-risk management programs, and post-disaster community rebuilding efforts. Studies on these areas were placed on people’s post-disaster responses, the bureaucracy on the distribution of relief assistance, and documentation of community resiliency efforts. However, in all these studies, cultural variables were not given space in the analytical models especially the lived experiences of communities in the postdisaster rehabilitation efforts. It is along this line that this paper fills in the gap. At this point, we will be discussing the post-disaster activities of a local community using one of a flooding incident that hit the area in the light of the social capital theory. Three questions guided us in this discussion, to wit: a) can

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the bonding social capital be a positive tool to mitigate the impact of floods? b) what

specific

dimension

of

social

capital

influences

the

post-disaster

rehabilitation activities of the local community? and c) what particular cultural trait operates in the use of their social capital? This paper will be organized according to these following themes: a) inquiry on the place of culture in the social capital framework as a mitigation against natural hazards, b) the role of culture in the formation of the bonding social capital in the context of post-disaster initiatives, and finally, c) a discussion on the need of inclusion of culture in the social capital research.

WHERE IS CULTURE IN THE SOCIAL CAPITAL FRAMEWORK? The vulnerability of people to natural disaster is partly attributed to their stock of social capital (Matous, 2008), implying that the expanse of social capital (SC) determines the chance of survival which is an outcome of the relationships and trust among individuals and within the community (Aldrich & Meyer, 2014; Putnam, 1995; Ryu, 2017; Yamaguchi, Kim, Oshio, & Akutsu, 2017). The empirical studies proved that pre-disaster preparation is associated with high perception of trust and strong structural social capital (Luo & Menec, 2018; Reininger et al., 2013). Moreover, social capital is dynamic; it needs to be renewed, otherwise, it becomes depleted, and only through social participation that it can be renewed and expanded (Coleman, 1988; Putnam, 1995). More than this, Putnam (1995) and Harper (2001) remarked that social capital has three levels namely, a) bonding social capital, b) bridging social capital, and c) linking social capital.

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Levels of social capital were precisely discussed by Aldrich and Meyer (2014) explicating the multiple roles of bonding social capital as recognized in the literature, to wit: the creation of shared identities and personal reputation (Babaei, Ahmad, & Gill, 2012); the development of local reciprocity and particularized trust; and the provision of emotional proximity, social support and crisis aid (Gittel & Vidal, 1998; Murphy, 2002; Putnam, 1995). However, due to the potential strength of the ties that may develop, the bonding social capital can produce elitism producing cognitive lock-in or may create a reactionary ideology or sectarianism (Harper, 2001; Widman, 2005; Woolcock & Narayan, 2000). The paper of Pillai, Hodgkinson, Kalyanaram, and Nair (2017) discussed the negative effects of a strong bonding social capital giving rise to the term the “dark” or downside of the theory, which has been one of the many criticisms of Putnam’s conceptualization of social capital (Kabayama, Watanabe, Ryuno, & Kamide, 2017; Ryu, 2017; Woolcock & Narayan, 2000). Bridging social capital, referring to relations between groups or individual possessing

heterogeneous

characteristics

(Sorensen,

2016),

connects

individuals or communities to the welfare provider especially in the access of social services (Agnitsch, Flora, & Ryan, 2006; Krom, 2017; Schweisfurth, Davies, Symaco, & Valiente, 2018). Agnitsch discussed that the access of social services or participation from any developmental activities was shown to be the interaction between high bond-ing social capital and bridging social capital which, according to Krom, determines people’s gains or losses from such participation. Thus, if both bonding and bridging social capital is low, participation on

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developmental activities or access of services is low, thus to maximize participation, bridging social capital need be increased (Schweisfurth et al, 2018). Linking social capital (SC) refers to relations between individuals and groups in different social strata in a hierarchy where power, social status and wealth are accessed by different groups. The concept includes the individuals’ or groups’ capacity to leverage resources, ideas and information from formal institutions beyond the community (Aldrich, Page, & Paul, 2016). In the studies of He and Meng (2015) and Sundquist and Yang (2007), linking social capital was associated with the self-rated health and could be utilized in the health policy framework to strengthen health policy and health systems (Ogden, Morisson, & Hardee, 2014). This model was used by Mason (2016) where linking SC was used to provide healthcare access to irregular migrants with low literacy, low numeracy, and limited cultural assimilation in a European metropolitan area. Analyses of social capital in the development initiatives have been made on the three levels of social capital – bonding social capital, bridging social capital, and linking social capital. Recent studies, however, have placed the focus on the bonding social capital in areas of managerial and corporate settings (Ryu, 2017), self-rated health (He & Meng, 2015), and neighborhood poverty and mental health (Caughy, O’Campo, & Muntaner, 2003). Although the influence of bonding social capital was extensively studied, yet objections made against the strong bonding capital can be construed as the exclusion of the cultural variables in the analysis (Leonard, 2004). For instance, Pillai et al. (2017) and Ryu (2017) on the contention that strong bonding social capital leads to cognitive ossification; Story

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and Carpiano (2017) and Olives-Villalonga and Kawachi (2017) on the bonding social capital’s negative association with the preventive care in India, and Osterling (2007) on the exposition that mistrust, lack of mutual support, and solidarity were caused by the strong bonding social capital, are some of the few evidences that strong bonding social capital has negative side. On the other hand, the inclusion of culture in the discussion and analysis of social relations was defended by Tubadji, Kourtit, and Nijkamp (2014) arguing that cultural underpinnings can help shed light on some issues that statistical models cannot explain of which the significance of the phenomena can be “statistically captured only when the local predominant preferences are also taken into consideration and interacted with bonding and bridging individual preferences” (p. 314). This present discussion highlights the contribution of strong bonding social capital in disaster risk reduction management (DRRM) framework exploring the ethno-cultural practices that revolved around people’s responses to natural disasters (Hinton, 2015; Lin, 2007). People’s responses on natural disaster known as adaptive capacity are outcomes of experiences and knowledge acquired through time and passed across generations. Hence, the inclusion of these cultural variables into DRRM framework can give fresh insight on the management of DRRM program and activities (Bernados, 2017). The studies of Takenoshita (2015), Yila, Weber, and Neef (2013), and Yamaguchi et al. (2017) are some few studies under this framework. Takenoshita reported the use of the Brazilian migrants of the family-based bonding SC to adapt to the new environment and in the access of resources of the host community e.g. health

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services, education, and job promotion; Yamaguchi investigated the role of the value of tolerance in the Japanese society as a response to the pluralities existing in their communities as a result of in-migration because tolerance as an SC is related to trust and “is more directly relevant to people’s attitudes toward social control of the deeds of others” (p. 50); James and Paton (2015) examined the speedy restoration of the Taiwanese community after a calamity, arguing that this speedy restoration was brought about the Taiwanese belief on the Hakka spirit, the force behind self-reliance. The Hakka spirit is characterized by frugality, diligence, self-reliance, responsibility, and persistence. As a mitigating response to natural hazards, it is the result of the “shared values, norms, attitudes, beliefs, reciprocal sup-port, and mutual assistance” (p.220), the purpose of which is the restoration of people’s lives back to normal without much dependence on external aids and assistance (Yila et al., 2013), thereby resulting to enhanced recovery and restoration (Fois & Forino, 2014; Ray, 2017).

THE INTERVIEWS AND THE CASUAL CONVERSATIONS Source of Data. The data of the project “Social Capital and the Survival Strategies of the Flood-Prone Communities in Cebu City” were used in this article. The project identified the social capital and the survival strategies of the flood-prone communities in Cebu City, Philippines. The flood that hit an urban community was the worst case, according to the perception of the survivors. The data used in this article consisted of the interview transcripts and the casual conversation notes with the project participants. The conversation notes were

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distinct from the interview transcripts, for these were notes on any topics of discussion but related to the flooding incident that transpires during the casual talk we had with the research participants. Aside from these data, other sources of information were also consulted, and these were reports from the media and the official statement of the disaster-risk reduction management office in the locality as publicly communicated through the tri-media and social media. Data Gathered. A total of 28 interview transcripts were used in this essay. These transcripts focused on the descriptions of the community dynamics during the flood incident which included strategies of community organization, peculiarities of interests, perceptions about current events, the causes of flood and their impact on the community and lives of individuals, the people’s coping strategies, and finally the different activities concerning the post-disaster rehabilitation initiatives. The flood incident being the point of reference in the investigation was the July 2016 flood which caused heavy damage – on both lives and properties – to the community and household. Data Gathering Procedure. The use of snowball approach or referral method was used in the recruitment of research participants. We begin by requesting trusted acquaintances to introduce us to the survivors who would agree to become research participants. When they would agree, the informed consent form was given to them, explaining to them their rights, duties, and responsibilities and the provision of the non-disclosure of their identities. Interview sessions would commence only when the informed consent forms were signed, and schedules were set.

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The place of the interview sessions was usually agreed upon, and most frequently, it was held at the research participants’ residences or at the evacuation center or temporary shelter. All inter-views were held in Cebuano, the local language of the place. Interviews and conversations were audio-recorded, and after the session, the recordings were replayed in the presence of the research participants to assure the authenticity of the recordings. When the research participants approved the recordings, transcriptions were then commenced. Data Analysis. The 28 interview transcripts were grouped into 7 files referred to as primary documents (PDs). Content analysis was used in the analysis of the interview transcripts and conversation notes with the aid of Atlas.ti7, a qualitative data analysis software (QDAS). During the analysis, a four-phase method was used – Reading of the whole PDs to get theme as phase 1; phase 2 is the repeat of phase 1 but at this time, taking notes of the thematic content of the PDs; phase 3, with the aid of Atlas.ti7, the coding of the PDs and its subsequent memo was undertaken; phase 4 is structuring the conceptual framework by building the relationships between codes and memos. THE BONDING SOCIAL CAPITAL IN THE POST-DISASTER REHABILITATION INITIATIVES The discussion on this section would point out the significance of cultural trait in the post disaster rehabilitation initiatives in the community. We would like to emphasize here the contribution of the ethno-political structure – the purok – in the environmental management mechanism of the community. The discussion includes the character traits of community organization through the purok system

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and the dimension of the relationship formed in the purok. “Yes, we know each other.” The Purok System, Its Trust and Mutual Assistance in the Post-Disaster Rehabilitation Initiatives Research participants reported that the community was organized through the purok system which was established “a long time ago”. This time reference indicated that the purok existed before they became local residents in the area. They claimed that they knew everybody in the purok, and that mostly, the purok mates were their relatives or members of their kins. “What is important is that we know each other very well”, as aptly expressed in the narratives. In the context of their experience, the purok is personally defined and one’s association with the purok is determined by such personal definition. Hence, a high level of trust is expected from these relational ties. In an interview, the transcript says: “In our purok, we see to it that everybody knows everybody. We know each other here. My friends are my relatives. My neighbors are members of my kin. We trust each other, and I fully trust my friends and relatives. In our community, we trust everybody for either they are my friends, families, or my relatives. We trust my friends because they are my cousins and immediate relatives”.

In 1978, the former Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos instituted the purok1 system of governance to monitor and supervise the implementation of the different programs of the national government e.g. health and sanitation, peace and order through the local government and the barangay units (Austin, 1994). It is a unique strategy of governing villages into smaller segments for greater participation (Borchgrevink, 2002). As an ethno-political structure, a purok is a cluster of 20-50 households, headed by a volunteer deliberately chosen by the 1 Purok is a subdivision of a barangay in the Philippines. A barangay is the smallest political administrative unit in the Philippines, headed by a barangay captain and council elected by their constituents.

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members to link between the purok and the local government or barangay. Purok leaders are local residents in the purok they supervise. Furthermore, a form of commonalities identifies a purok such as, neighborliness traits, acquaintance, the number of years as residents, and kin-based relations to mention a few. Aside from these traits and characteristics, physical boundaries identify purok members. As explained by Austin: “The significance of a clearly defined boundaries is that every resident is linked to a community of citizens that pave the way for or optimizes cooperation or participation in numerous self-help voluntary programs for which Filipinos are well known” (p.358). Thus, every individual or household is a member of a purok. In this manner, interpersonal relationships existed in a purok and the social capital formed thereat is within the bounds of the purok system i.e. kin-based, faith-based, and other social ties homogenously defined. In this manner, social acceptance was based on interpersonal knowledge and either affinal or consanguinal ties marked the social relations established in every purok. In this way, any individual who can establish connection either through kinship, regardless the relational distance, or who can vouch friendship with anybody from the purok, is not considered a total outsider. During the post-disaster recovery efforts, research participants reported that they have conducted community-initiated activities right after the flood, among others, assistance in housecleaning activities and repairs, clean-up activities, proper garbage disposal, and the distribution of subsistence assistance. “Since everybody was affected, we helped each other” was the major theme in their selfhelp initiatives. In doing these activities, research participants narrated that they were able to have some “bonding moments” with their purok-mates which strengthen the relationship. According to one of the research participants:

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“We have so much trust in our purok-mates. If we will not trust each other, whom shall we trust? We trust our families, friends, and relatives. That’s why we look for each others’ welfare and safety. We help each other in times of crises, emergency cases and other needs. . . . . . Every time there would be heavy rains and we are flooded, we voluntereed in the evacuation operations and in the distribution of the relief goods to the affected households. We initiated short-term post-disaster recovery and communitybuilding activities.”

“We are accountable with each other:” Cohesion and Reciprocity in the PostDisaster Rehabilitation Initiatives A purok is a miniature community being given charge of a territory to look after. Its leadership is discretionarily bestowed by the purok members and mostly voluntary. In some cases, a purok leader is designated by a village leader locally known as barangay chairman, who is elected during an election held for such purpose. As discussed by the research participants, the purok leaders2, together with their residents, planned for the development of the locality and welfare for its residents.

Research participants

narrated that

during

the

post-disaster

rehabilitation undertakings, the purok called a pintakasi3 to implement some activities like community clean-up drive, waste disposal, community beautification activities, peace and order implementation, community sanitation drive, and many others. Re-search participants narrated that they participated in the pintakasi without reservation or a compulsion for a return service, payment, reward or favor. Research participants narrated:

2

Purok leaders in the Philippines are usually community volunteers who usually resided within the community they are serving. 3

Pintakasi is the local term for voluntary collective work or mutual collaboration in the implementation of

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“During that flood, while the water was rising fast, I immediately announced for evacuation. I gathered everything that can be use like blankets and mats and handed them over to my neighbor. By the time the water was already waist-deep, the children, women, and the elderly were already in the evacuation hall. On the following day, we shared food with each other. . . All of us helped in the relief operations especially in the distribution of relief goods to the affected household. We also helped in community re-building, cleaning homes, and helped in doing some repair. Everybody contributed something to bring our lives back to normally as fast as we could. We do not leave anybody alone helpless for they are all my relatives, friends, and neighbors. We have to help each other for we are accountable with each other”.

The narration points out a salient feature of the purok – the self-help feature – and the pintakasi is such a manifestation of this feature. The self-help is the ability of the community to solve its problems by using the community’s resources without relying too much on external aid. The main goal of this feature is the reliance of one’s self or capability to effect change according to his/her means. Self-help is manifested on a family’s ability to use its resources to overcome a crisis or to solve a problem without asking assistance from external sources. In a much larger scale, self-help became the primary tool for recovery from every disaster precisely because of people’s experience in getting through the difficult process of securing assistance from the government due to the bureaucratic procedures. Thus, to speed-up the recovery process, mutual collaboration was seen by the people as an effective way to deal with crisis situations. As explained by one of the research participants: “If you can do it on your own, then do it. Although, there may be some available assistance, we do not have to depend so much on them. We might disrupt some of their activities. We might as well do it by ourselves, if it can be done. They, too, have

community-initiated activities.

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worries to tend to. We might add to some of their worries. We should be a help to them, not a burden. If we ask help from the government, governmental procedures take time. Thus, we have first to do it on our own, later, with the assistance from the government or other donor.”

These results have been supported by the study of Goulding (2017). The authors reported that disasters can bring up other windows of opportunities and can change people’s priorities in life. Citing the experiences in Japan, the authors maintained that disasters can bring whole new perspectives of relationships and give importance to traditional values. The insight given by the authors was that people should value resources from within rather than rely on dole-outs or wait for dole-out to come. “We have to get along well with others”: Smooth Interpersonal Relationship in the Post-Disaster Rehabilitation Initiatives With the purok at the front of community governance, bonded in some forms of relational ties, research participants explained that maintaining rapport is foremost in the list of concerns of purok members. In achieving this aim, to-getalong-well-with-others, locally known as pakighugoy-hugoy was the primary strategy to maintain harmony in the community. This relational transaction is expressed in the narratives as: “We have to get along well with others. We have to exercise diplomacia”. Described as the avoidance of conflict and promotion of rapport, this is pakighugoy-hugoy, a Filipino trait, referred to in Philippine sociology as the smooth interpersonal relationship (SIR). Characterized as a “facility at getting along with others in such a way as to avoid outward signs of conflict” (Lynch, 1962, p. 89), SIR encourages the avoidance of either direct or indirect confrontation. To be confrontational or adversarial is frowned upon by the community. Maintaining accord is the main

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goal of SIR; harmonious relationship, fellowship, and empathy should be promoted by the community members. Interview transcipt during an interview session on the topic of community’s involvement to environmental protection, participants narrated as: “We know very well that it is not good to throw our garbage on canals and creeks. Most of the times, we observe that it is not properly observed and followed. The after-math of the flood is a massive amount of garbage found on our streets. Where does this garbage come from? Of course from household. . . Can I reprimand my relatives? Yes, but in its most subtle and indirect way. To confront them directly will not bring any good. I have to maintain my good relationship with them. I should not criticize them. I have to get along well with them. Maintain that relationship. The best I can do is to pick up those garbage, remove the debris on the creek, clean the canals or declog the drainage. I set the example, and soon they follow.” We interpret this narrative as SIR being an outcome of bonding social capital. As a strategy for environmental conservation, research participants shared that SIR forms community solidarity which is needed for the environmental protection initiatives. The interview transcript again elucidated this point: Researcher: “You’ve seen people throwing anything into your surrounding, and yet you do nothing?” Informant: “I showed them an example of a clean surrounding. Together with my family and very, very close friends, we conducted community clean-up with the approval of course with the purok leader. With only four of us at the start, the immediate neighborhood followed suit. We went around the purok. If there are garbage, we pick them up and put them in the appropriate bin. Everybody does the same.” Researcher: “So, what happens then?”

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Informant: “A pintakasi was called for the purpose of cleaning the surrounding. People tried hard to maintain this. You see (pointing to the vicinity as the point of reference), no more garbage. . . It seems everyone cooperates. The place is comparatively cleaner than before. . .”

Viewed as a value of being able to place oneself in someone else’s humanity, empathy brings the positive side of SIR (Jocano, 2001); SIR can be a tool for national development. If managed well, it can promote team work and nation building. The use of the purok system in the disaster-risk management program in the Philippines has been successfully proven as reported by the social media and other information channel. According to the report: “Because if you’re a barangay without a purok system, you won’t be able to reach everyone. You cannot get all the participation but if you have the small units, the small organizations that are in groups, it gets easier. . . Even without an advisory, through the communication with barangay officers that there is a typhoon, the purok officers were ready to man the fort. They didn’t need to wait for a barangay official to visit and help them. That’s the beauty of the system. They have self-reliance to do their prepared-ness. Puroks educate their members on disasters. They know who are vulnerable to calamities. But above all, puroks bring people together. Purok meetings allow locals to interact with their neighbors and gain each other’s trust (Ranada, 2017).”

THE NEED FOR THE INCLUSION OF CULTURAL VARIABLES IN SOCIAL CAPITAL RESEARCH The inclusion of the cultural variables in the analytic models facilitates the design and implementation of the post-disaster rehabilitation efforts of communities (Fois & Forino, 2014; Ray, 2017). In our findings, we believe that the purok is the tangible outcome of the relationships and its dimensions formed in the community e.g. mutual assistance or collaboration demonstrated as pintakasi

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(mutual collaboration), trust, cohesion, and the smooth interpersonal relation. The purok is the visible form of a strong bonding social capital. A strong bonding social capital has a strong purok, and a weak bonding social capital may have weak purok. In the discussion, it is demonstrated that the purok life revolved around mutual assistance or mutual collaboration. Without mutual collaboration or cooperation, the purok will disintegrate for it is an essential ingredient for the survival of the purok. Mutual collaboration fosters cooperation, and cooperation nurtures mutual assistance. In the process of doing mutual assistance, the mutual indebtedness is developed forming a reciprocal relation. In the local term, it is called as utang kabubut-on a concept which is different from the western concept of reciprocity (Mauss, 1988). It stems from one’s free will to give a favor or service to another without compulsion for a return gift or favor Kaut (1961). For the dynamics of utang kabobot-on, the significance and timeliness of the assistance extended is acknowledged, and because of this, the act of assistance cannot be equally reciprocated because such act becomes a conditio sine qua non in meeting the felt need. It is in this instance that utang kabobot-on begets trust and loyalty to the giver; it becomes a “social debit system” where the community members maintain a virtual “savings account of indebtedness” which all acts of socially acceptable deeds are accounted for and honored. In this sense, utang kabubuton bonds every individual to the purok and bonding trust is all the more strengthened by reciprocity.

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Furthermore, utang kabubut-on facilitates pakighugoy-hugoy or smooth interpersonal relation-ship (SIR). Viewed as a “facility at getting along with others in such a way as to avoid outward signs of conflict”, (Lynch, 1962, p. 89), SIR maintains harmony in the community. It is shown as the avoidance to offend others and an abhorrence to be confrontational or frank. With these two cultural dimensions present in the bonding social capital – utang kabubut-on and pakighugoy-hugoy – covering social transaction in every purok, communitybased development initiatives like climate change mitigation and health program can be facilitated through the bonding social capital. The narration has it all: “I am indebted to everyone else in this place. I could not imagine myself if others would not have helped me in my needs. I cannot repay the good deeds. The best I could do is to give back to them – being a loyal friend – anticipating others’ needs. During emergency situations, helping one another can do a lot. Just help. . . do not give comments. . . It cannot do any good. . ..”

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