Fragmented recoveries and proactive adaptability: new paradigm shifts and theoretical directions to unpacking recovery processes and behavioural change

The nature of shocks and crisis is highly diverse; crises and shocks tend to conglomerate rather than occur as single events. People and places are affected differently and have distinct abilities and resources to respond, cope and recover. Key here are path-dependent socio-economic living conditions along with pre-existent intersectional burdens that are constitutive of the everyday abilities of people and places to recover, to some extent, from shocks. There is not one type of recovery, but several parallel recovery processes. Such recoveries are deeply fragmented and reflect the harsh realities of inequitable societies which are simultaneously risk and recovery societies. Places, people, and policy are unprepared for new crises that would have similar (or worse) impacts than the COVID-19 pandemic. New theoretical development is required to characterise the new paradigm of recovery society which is based on understanding how society responds in practice to the direct, indirect, induced, and latent impacts of shocks and hazards.