Estrategias sociales de prevención y adaptación Social ... - La RED

through trans-disciplinary approaches and, in this case, multi-geographic and multi-regional
ones too, so as to be able to observe and know phenomena from a comprehensive viewpoint.
Networks feed on social capital, as maintained by Pierre Bourdieu, the first to articulate
a definition of this concept. 3 In turn, adequately created and articulated networks generate
social capital, defining it as the sum of real or potential resources available to the members of
a durable network of more or less institutionalized relations. Both network and social capital
are indissoluble elements, both from Bourdieu’s perspective and from the perspective later
shaped by James Coleman or Robert Putnam. 4 The generation of social capital or the leveraging
of social capital inside a group is, therefore, the cement needed for deploying networks.
The Network we now call the Resiliency Risk Network (Red Riesgo Resiliencia or rrr
by its Spanish initials), which we have been building these years, has been reinforced by the
organization of workshops and of parallel events, implemented through the support of the
University of Helsinki (Helsinki, May-June 2010), the University of Luxembourg and the
risc Consortium (Luxembourg, November 2010) and of the Peninsular Unit of ciesas
(Mérida, Mexico, February 2011). Through these activities, bridges have been built and
links deployed which will bear fruit in the future work of joint research.
The high point in articulating this Network was the International Seminary we organized
in Mexico City in February 2011, at the seat of ciesas headquarters in Mexico City, which
has also been the seat of the Foncicyt Network Project. Specialists in the topics of rrr from
four countries in the Americas and six European countries took part in this Seminary; a dozen
cases deriving from European, Asian and Latin American examples were presented.
Building a network on adaptive strategies in connection with disasters has resulted in the
construction of a network of networks, through the significant strengthening of several, dispersed
networks that addressed risk, disasters and related topics, and which had previously
existed in different regions and countries. Among the former, we can mention the Network
of Social Studies for the Prevention of Disasters in Latin America (la red), the Habitat in
Risk network connected with the Ibero American Program for Science and Technology for
Development (cyted xiv-g), inter alia. In Europe, there are informal networks of researchers
and networks of non-governmental organizations (ngo) working on questions of risk
and disasters, with a special emphasis on hydro-meteorological hazards. These have become
the main concern of researchers, in particular after the results of the Inter-Governmental
Panel on Climate Change (ipcc); this has been especially the case in Europe after the publication
of Nicholas Stern’s controversial report which, based specifically on the economic impacts
of climate change, stated that scientific evidence pointed to the existence of global risks
3
Pierre Bourdieu (1986), “The Forms of Capital”, in Handbook of Theory and Research of the Soci
ology of Education, John Richardson (comp.), Nueva York, Greenwood Press.
4
Virginia García Acosta (2009), “Prevención de desastres, estrategias adaptativas y capital social”,
in Social Cohesion in Europe and the Americas: Power, Time and Space, Harlan Koff (ed.),
Peter Lang-Editions Scientifiques Internationales/Regional Integration and Social Cohesion
Series, vol. 3, pp. 115-130.
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