Reproductive crisis, care and sustainment in disaster contexts. Community experiences after the earthquake in Ecuador

Abstract

The article addresses the communalization of care and the life sustainment under the conditions of crisis. Based on ethnographic research on the processes of reproduction in a peri-urban costal site of Manabí, Ecuador following the earthquake of 2016, the authors discuss the potentials and limitations of community action. The practice of community-based care is re-constituted when the normality of daily life - e.g., shelter, food, health, education and water - collapses. Embedded in a historical context of labor and territorial exploitation combined with limited state action, the population sets in motion dynamics of cooperation and co-management on multiple fronts that supplants that which previously existed. With regard to the feminist literature on care, community and the commons and that on vulnerability, risk and disasters, the central question behind the reflection is: what insights does a period of crisis provide on community-based practices in social reproduction?