Homemaking in communities recovering from disaster 2005 to 2025

This report summarises findings from a collaborative scoping project in Malawi on the topic of homemaking following extreme weather events.

We worked with communities that have been displaced temporarily or permanently from their original homes by recent flooding and landslide events.

Focus group discussions incorporating visual explorations of ‘home’ were held with community members at sites in four districts of southern Malawi, and their testimonies of impact, response, needs and hopes were complemented with discussions at a workshop with national stakeholders from government, NGOs and universities. Through this exploratory research, we aimed to better understand people’s key expectations/aspirations for recreating a sense of home in their new or reconstructed dwellings, the extent to which this has been or is being realised presently, and the conditions required in order to achieve a holistic sense of home.

Key in this is discussion that includes, but goes beyond, questions of the material construction and provision of hard infrastructure to consider more intangible, environmental and symbolic aspects of homemaking.

The study engages with an increasing concern globally among agencies that are undertaking resettlement and reconstruction interventions on how to support a more holistic approach to homemaking for disaster-affected communities.

Authors

Roger Few, University of East Anglia
Evance Mwathunga, University of Malawi
Nicole A.L. Manley, The British Geological Survey, UK
Catherine Jere, University of East Anglia

Download the full report (PDF) or read below:

Homemaking in communities recovering from disaster 2005 to 2025

Research contributions

Annock Gabriel Chiwona, Geological Surveys Department, Malawi; Dyson Moses, The British Geological Survey, UK; Grace Yambeni, University of Malawi; Dorothy Tembo, University of Malawi; Olivier Moles, CRAterre, France; Susanne Sargeant, The British Geological Survey, UK.