This article problematizes the representation of older disaster survivors in the disaster management strategy after the February 6, 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquake. This strategy has not allowed older people to cope with the problems they’ve encountered after the disaster. According to official data, after the earthquake in which more than 48,000 people lost their lives, the planning and services considered all older people as vulnerable and ignored the resilience mechanisms and various needs and demands of the older disaster survivors in rural areas. A false representation of disaster survivors was created, and all intervention and recovery activities were based on this representation. This strategy homogenized the experiences of disaster survivors, viewing all of them as dependent human beings (Uyan-Semerci, Durmuş et al., 2023, p. 528), thus rendering the contributions that individuals can make towards increasing social resilience after the disaster invisible.

The disaster management strategy, which standardized the experiences and needs of older disaster victims, ignored the relationship between social stratification and disaster impact levels. However, “vulnerability (i.e., disaster vulnerability) is socially constructed” (Duruel & Avşar Arık, 2023, p. 106). Therefore, the effects of disaster on the older population should be evaluated where social positions such as economic class, age, immigration, marital status, and gender intersect. Poverty, being female, lack of education, social isolation and loneliness in tent cities, and prejudices against older populations affect older people’s disaster vulnerability levels in different ways (Duruel & Avşar Arık, 2023, p. 107; Akçakaya & Kim, 2020, p. 4). Disaster management plans define the concept of resilience as opposite of vulnerability. Resilience is defined as the goal of planning and services for reconstructing social order after a disaster. However, the pre disaster vulnerabilities of older people in rural areas prevent them from accessing the support, and services provided in the post-disaster period. In addition, older people in rural areas can benefit from their cultural values, knowledge, social roles, material and social capital, and gender to implement tactics that will reduce their level of disaster vulnerability in post-disaster reconstruction processes. Therefore, when focusing on the differing experiences and needs of the older population in relation to disaster management and recovery, not all older people are considered equally vulnerable.

Developing a sociological and anthropological approach focused on the processes of social interaction after a disaster will allow one to understand how disaster governance reproduces or transforms social inequalities, as well as the tactics individuals develop to increase their own resilience. This article proposes a new theoretical approach for analyzing the interactions in daily life that are considered unimportant and unquestioned in the processes of disaster management. The tactics older individuals in rural areas use to make sense of the post-disaster world are important for showing how individual 155 society relations have been transformed after a disaster and for making disaster planning  that is inclusive and well-suited to the structure of older people’s resilience. The article will first present a theoretical perspective on interpreting the post-disaster daily life interactions of older disaster survivors, their place in disaster planning based on the pre-disaster social structure, and the resilience tactics they develop by making use of Michel de Certeau’s concepts of strategy and tactics and Harold Garfinkel’s ethnomethodological approach. The article will then give reference to anthropological studies in the relevant literature, NGO reports, and media news about older disaster victims to explain the power and authority relations that affect the daily interactions of older people living in rural areas after the disaster, their spatial memories, changing roles, perceptions of old age, and the daily resistance tactics they’ve developed at the intersection of cultural values.

Method

 This article uses thematic analysis, a qualitative research design. “Thematic analysis is the general name given to qualitative data analysis methods consisting of the processes of creating patterns (themes) over qualitative data, making sense of these patterns and reporting them” (Hınız and Yavuz, 2023, p.398). This method aims to provide a more comprehensive understanding and explanation of the research topic and to develop a new perspective to explain social reality. This method, in which the researcher critically interprets the data, determines certain codes and themes and reveals new meaning can also be defined as “the process of creating meaning between the data, the researcher and the reader” (Hınız and Yavuz, 2023, p.393). It makes possible to both detect similarities and differences in the data and develop new perspectives on the research topic (Çarıkçı et al., 2024, p.137). Thus, it might be useful to develop a theory that explains the experiences in a specific context. It also aims to provide a detailed explanation of the research topic and develop a new perspective on it.

This article aimed to develop a new theoretical approach to the experiences of older disaster survivors in rural areas by correlating the core category of the phenomenon of old age and disaster in rural areas with disaster planning and the everyday interactions of older disaster survivors. This article evaluates the Kahramanmaraş earthquake and the phenomenon of old age in rural areas in its own social context and proposes a new theoretical perspective on interpreting their daily experiences after the earthquake. Studies in literature, the reports of civil society organizations, and public institutions, and political documents on the disaster management are used to select categories and themes on topic. The article identified important themes such as the daily interactions of older disaster survivors in rural areas, the power relations between different actors, spatial memory, cultural values, and changing social roles. These themes are used to develop an alternative theoretical approach for explaining the local meanings of the 156 disaster phenomenon for older people in rural areas.

 Findings

Earthquake Resilience and Everyday Life

 This article has attempted to interpret the daily interactions and resilience levels of older disaster survivors in rural areas by synthesizing two theoretical approaches that focus on how individuals act in daily life: Harold Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology and Michel de Certeau’s strategy-tactic distinction. In accordance with Garfinkel’s agency approach the disaster management strategy assumes that everyone in society has a common stock of knowledge and background about older people and that all actors responsible for disaster management use the same representation, one that views older people as vulnerable and dependent. A common perception of older people’s post disaster vulnerability was created through the typification of older disaster victims, and this typification is used to provide services and to initiate communications and interactions. However, de Certeau stated that this planning strategy and daily interactions are not independent of social stratification and power relations in society. Therefore, the fact that older disaster victims in rural areas have been excluded from planning, intervention, and recovery processes is not a coincidence. However, de Certeau also stated that older disaster survivors in rural areas are able to increase their level of resilience by developing certain tactics against the disaster management strategy. During a disaster, individuals reevaluate their stock of knowledge, regulate their interactions, and develop new tactics to cope with existing problems after an earthquake.

 The Tactics Older People in Rural Areas Use in Daily Life for Fighting Disaster

 Social Structure, Power Relations, and Daily Interactions in the Disaster Manage ment Process in Rural Areas

 When looking at the daily interactions of civil society organizations, public institutions, and the muhtars [village headmen] who took part in the relief efforts after the Kahramanmaraş earthquake with older people in rural areas, older refugees and disaster survivors living in rural areas were seen to encounter more discrimination about accessing food and health services. While services facilitated the access of older people living in tent cities to shelters, toilets, water, food, medicine, and medical devices, these services ignored the unique demands and needs of older people living in rural areas and older refugees. The effects of the disaster on older refugees and older people living in rural areas increased their vulnerability levels, which resulted in the reproduction of pre-disaster social stratification and inequalities. The background prejudices and perceptions that guided the interactions with these marginalized older groups negatively affected their access to aid and services in rural areas.

 Spatial Memories and Resilience of Older Disaster Victims in Rural Areas

Contextual assessments enable us to understand how individuals construct their own disaster survivor identities through the memories they create in their daily lives regarding before, during, and after the disaster. These older individuals might nurture hope in their daily lives for reconstructing the space and their routines through their memories on the disaster. After the Kahramanmaraş earthquake of February 6, 2023, older people in rural areas resisted the government’s disaster management plan by insisting on living amidst the destruction; by not abandoning their villages, animals, and fields; and by creating a local alternative memory related to the space through the details of their daily lives in the post-disaster space. The older people who refused to leave their villages and move to tent cities did not abandon their animals or agricultural f ields. They also did not accept being moved to nursing homes in different provinces. They demonstrated individual resilience against the effects of the earthquake through the spatial memory they had established amidst the destruction.

 Older Disaster Survivors in Rural Areas, Cultural Values, New Roles, and Resilience

Conducting new studies that examine the new active roles of older individuals regarding the post-earthquake processes in rural areas is essential in the context of Turkey. These studies will demonstrate how older people in rural areas, who are objectified in the disaster management plan, actively participate in the processes of disaster management. Studies should investigate how the elderly in rural areas guide the community based on their past knowledge, their experiences in search and rescue operations, how they join to the distribution of aid, and which new roles older individuals have undertaken in recovery processes (e.g., childcare, dispute settelement). These studies will reveal the daily interactions of older disaster victims in rural areas as active subjects who are able to reduce the negative effects of a disaster on rural community. For example, the interview conducted with the Kahramanmaraş Pazarcık ASHB District Directorate shows that many older people lived alone in rural areas and that these older disaster survivors did not want to be sent to a nursing home (65+ Older People Rights Association, 2023a). The argument has been made that elderly care should be undertaken by families due to traditional values in rural districts. Another case expressed the desire for older individuals to be placed in nursing homes to reduce the number of people in households that increased due to migration from urban to rural areas after the disaster in Şehitkamil, Gaziantep (65+ Older People Rights Association, 2023b). Therefore, the disaster experiences of older individuals should be contextualized, and disaster planning should consider how the social status, cultural values, and internal migration pattern of older individuals in rural areas affect these experiences.

 Conclusion and Discussion 

 In Turkey, the disaster planning strategy represents all older disaster survivors as dependent and vulnerable. The services that are provided are based on this typology and ignore older people’s disaster experiences, needs, and demands, which vary based on their social status, living space, and social and economic capital. Based on this typology, the services provided after the Kahramanmaraş earthquake have aimed to increase the resilience of older people in tent cities and container homes in city centers by meeting basic needs such as evacuation, shelter, health, and food and providing them with psychological support. The limited services provided in tent cities (e.g., toilets, bathrooms, food, medicine, psychological support) were also not provided in an age-friendly manner. In addition, the disaster management plans did not include the unique needs and demands of older disaster survivors in rural areas and ignored their resilience levels, which differ from the resilience levels of older people in the city. Thus, the pre-disaster socioeconomic structure, power, and authority relations in society have affected older people’s levels of vulnerability and resilience in post-disaster reconstruction processes in society.

Garfinkel’s ethnomethodological approach to how individuals construct society in their daily interactions with reference to the concepts of contextuality and agency and Michel de Certeau’s sociological approach to everyday life regarding the potential of individuals to transform strategy through their daily tactics allows one to make sense of the complexity of the experiences of disaster survivors and to make inclusive disaster planning. Thus, disaster planning should consider the active roles played by older people in rural areas in post-disaster intervention, recovery, and reconstruction processes; the discrimination they encounter in their daily interactions; and the tactics they develop. If the planning is not designed in accordance with the resilience levels of older people in the context of disaster, social inequalities will be reproduced, and intervention plans that represent older people as vulnerable human beings will fail.