Disaster recovery and structural inequalities: a case study of community assertion for justice

Formal interventions are rationalised to be irreplaceable, especially with marginalised communities that are presumed to lack capacity. It is event-centric and differs considerably from the community's experience of disaster risk and recovery within the everyday context. Thus, community engagement with multiple formal institutions that often fail to address the recovery needs of the most marginalised, is inevitable. These contradictions lead to varied forms of community assertion towards addressing structural inequalities and injustices.

This paper explores these contradictions by drawing from the work of scholars who recognize the limits of procedural justice and push for distributive justice, especially by focusing on grassroots processes using the lens of the politics of neo-liberalism and ontology of possibilities