Resilience, Home-based Enterprises and Social Assets in Post- Disaster Recovery: A Study from Indonesia

This study explores the resilience and rapid recovery of Home-based Enterprises (HBE’s) in a post-earthquake situation. The study focuses on social assets, human capital and capabilities at both household and neighbourhood level. Despite extensive literature on post-disaster management and HBE’s, this study is unique in examining the recovery of HBE’s in a post-disaster situation. Based on the case of the 2006 post-earthquake situation in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, particularly in the Kasongan ceramic area, this research is designed to investigate how HBE households coped in the recovery situation in terms of social assets at the household and neighbourhood levels. Thus, the four aims of this study are, firstly, to assess the importance of the context in which resilience takes place, particularly as related to HBE’s and Post-Disaster Responses, and, secondly, to examine the coping strategies of HBE households with reference to the dominant capitals of the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach. The third aim is to examine the key factors which emerged in the resilience of HBE’s, and finally to examine the extension of the human capital concept in human assets based on capabilities. The Sustainable Livelihood Approach is used as an analytical framework to understand coping responses and the contributing capitals in the recovery situation. Qualitative and case study methods were employed, as the nature of the inquiry required a deep explanation. Based on multiple data sources, including 58 interviewees from HBE households in the Kasongan ceramic HBE area, this study used both primary and secondary data in an inductive, interpretative and iterative way. Resilience of HBE’s is affected not only by networking, skill and education levels, but also local character, creativity and flexibility of households. The findings of this study not only support existing studies, particularly the importance of social capital in the post-disaster context, they also extend existing interpretations of the importance of people as the main factor in recovery. In accordance with the concept of human capability being more than the concept of human capital, this study looks at ‘social assets’, as these are rather more than ‘social capital’. Therefore, this study promotes the importance of social assets in addition to social capital, both at the household and neighbourhood levels. Another contribution is that it extends existing studies which until now have mostly been based on small enterprises in low-income households, to include middle and high profile HBE’s as well as the networks and linkages between them.