Abstract

This chapter is about communities and their roles in disaster risk reduction and management. The concept of community is used in very different, sometimes loose and often contested ways (e.g. Walmsley 2006). The concept’s origin can be traced to the German sociological literature on Gemeinschaft in the late nineteenth century. Community then referred to a small aggregate of people, often located away from centres of power but sharing a common and continuous way of life, similar beliefs, close ties, trust and frequent interactions. In the twentieth century the concept spread to a large array of social sciences, which eventually had a tremendous influence on policy and practice in the areas of development studies and disaster risk reduction (DRR). Since the 1960s, development and disaster workers have often considered community-scale initiatives as an alternative or necessary complement to globalised top-down development and disaster management practices.