Family in War and Conflict: Using Social Capital for Survival in War Tom Cyprus

When a state collapses due to conflict, civilians may no longer be able to rely on state institutions to provide basic human needs such as food, health, housing and employment. Accordingly, people tend to shift from state-provided services toward family-centered forms of social capital that are especially useful as coping mechanisms in crisis situations. This paper explores the survival strategies of Turkish Cypriot families during the war conditions of 1963/4-74. On the basis of a Key Informant Survey it attempts to empirically document the forms of social capital utilized in wartime. There is a large volume of literature on social capital, but the particular type of social capital of relevance in the Turkish Cypriot case reported below is non-formal type in conditions of war and ethnic conflict.