Community Resilience Through Cultural Heritage: Practices, Livelihoods, Economic and Legal Pluralism in Times of Crisis

This article argues that community resilience is deeply embedded in living and material cultural heritage, customary governance, and local social practices, rather than generated solely through formal external interventions. In response to natural, social, or economic disruptions, communities mobilize heritage-based livelihoods, reciprocal exchanges, and custodianship to meet immediate needs and organize recovery. Drawing on a qualitative comparative analysis of global case studies and institutional analogues, the article advances four linked claims: (1) heritage practices constitute embedded resilience by safeguarding memory and social cohesion; (2) heritage-based livelihoods and plural economies support survival through identity, trust, and reciprocity; (3) recovery yields durable social outcomes when heritage is treated as social infrastructure rather than merely a physical asset requiring technical conservation; and (4) these practices operate in legally plural settings where formal recovery policy often overlooks customary authority and living traditions. The article concludes that cultural heritage must be reframed as community-driven social infrastructure for resilience, requiring crisis-recovery governance to recognize community participation, living heritage, and legal pluralism.