Community Social Capital and Disaster Resilience in Rural Indonesia: An Integrative Social Science Review
Abstract
Disaster outcomes in rural Indonesia are shaped not only by the intensity of hazards but also by the social relationships through which communities communicate, cooperate, and access resources. This integrative review examined how community social capital contributes to disaster resilience in rural Indonesia and under what conditions it fails to do so. A purposive corpus of 39 sources (22 peer-reviewed articles, 5 scholarly books or chapters, 3 national regulations, and 9 institutional documents) was identified through 150 database, giving priority to publications from 2016 to 2026 while retaining foundational works. The sources were synthesized thematically using four analytical categories: bonding, bridging, and linking social capital, and participatory knowledge. The synthesis indicated that bonding ties accelerate information sharing, mutual assistance, and psychosocial support in the first hours after a hazard strikes, although most of this evidence comes from outside Indonesia. However, dense internal networks may exclude women, migrants, persons with disabilities, poor households, and other groups with weaker access to community institutions. Bridging and linking relationships are therefore needed to widen participation and to connect villages with government agencies, health services, humanitarian organizations, and technical expertise. Local knowledge was most useful when it was documented and integrated with scientific risk information through participatory planning. Situation reports from the 2025–2026 floods and landslides in Sumatra are consistent with the need for multisectoral coordination and institutional learning. The review proposes a social resilience chain, a conceptual framework not yet tested empirically, that links trust, communication, coordination, collective action, and reflective learning, and concludes that rural resilience is a social process requiring investment in relationships alongside infrastructure and early-warning systems.