engleski

Using a mixed methods lens to explore resilience to crisis situations across social classes in Croatia

In the sociological tradition, the “slippery” concept of “class” has been used to theorise and research social inequalities ; however, there has been a gap in class analysis in Croatia since the late 1980s. Our project “Social stratification in Croatia: structural and subjective aspects”, funded by the Croatian Science Foundation, aims to contribute to filling this research gap by empirically exploring social stratification in Croatia through different social class theoretical lenses, with a particular objective to identify the vulnerability and resilience of households and individuals occupying different class positions in the context of actual or potential economic and environmental crisis situations. Drawing on Adger (2000), our working definition of resilience is the capacity of individuals and households to cope with external stresses and disturbances. Our presentation focuses on the methodology we propose for researching the interaction between social class and resilience. In order to identify what resources and infrastructure are available or not available to different social classes for coping with actual or potential economic and environmental crisis situations, as well as how these are drawn on in practice, we propose a mixed-methods research design. In the first instance a questionnaire will be administered to a representative sample of working-age people in Croatia. Questions will be asked about their knowledge and understanding of economic and environmental risks, their economic and cultural assets, social networks and political engagement, their skills and abilities, health and wellbeing, as well as their access to common goods. In the second stage, 75 life story interviews with women and men living in different regions of Croatia and occupying different class positions will be conducted. The goal, in its most general sense, is to capture life stories of class belonging, with particular reference to how people have coped, are coping or think they might cope in crisis situations such as economic hardship or environmental disasters such as floods or droughts. Inspired by Liebenberg and Theron’s (2015) paper on innovative qualitative explorations of resilience, a timeline approach is suggested as a way of structuring participants’ life stories. Those participating in the interviews would be selected based on their questionnaire responses and willingness to participate in interviews. It is expected that interviewees would include people in a range of occupations such as chief executive officers, engineers, artists, waiters, secretaries, factory workers and doctors. An overall practical aim of the project is to inform policies from national to local level on how to build resilience.

social class, resilience, natural disasters, financial difficulties

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