Involving Local Communities in Flood Risk Management – Urban and Rural Case Studies
This paper will discuss how changes in policy in the United Kingdom (UK) put an increasing emphasis on the involvement of local communities in the flood risk management process. Yet little is known about local communities and how they operate in our modern, mobile society. In fact many claim that local communities are being destroyed by increasing mobility and globalization. Is there a local community we can engage in the flood risk management process? If so, how can this be done? This research starts to address these questions by exploring both the social, collective responses to flooding and in turn the effect that flooding has on local social relations. This has been done through interviews with both residents and flood professionals in urban and rural locations in Yorkshire. While there were differences between the rural and urban areas, similar underlying processes were identified. There was not a single, straightforward ‘local community’ to be engaged. Rather there was a complex mix of overlapping networks and interests, where conflict as well as cooperation is possible. A number of key underlying factors were identified. To involve ‘local communities’ will require an evaluation of these in each location, whether urban or rural.
Globalization and belonging
Global Change and Local Belonging The Limits of Local Attachment Parenting, Education and Elective Belonging Suburbia and the Aura of Place The Ambivalence of Urban Identity 'Manchester, So Much to Answer For' Work Cultures and Social Ties Mediascapes in the Mediation of the Local and the Global Cosmopolitanism, Diaspora and Global Reflexivity
Developing sociological arguments through community studies
This paper argues that community studies remain an effective medium for the development of sociological arguments, despite well-known criticisms of the genre. Several features of community studies help to explain the continuing popularity of the approach among researchers and audiences, even though they are at odds with the discipline's supposed 'McDonaldization'. First, community studies have the capability of 'placing' sociological arguments. Secondly, community studies have the capacity to illustrate the meaning of macro-level trends for people's everyday lives. Thirdly, community studies facilitate holistic treatments of the social relations under investigation through their emphasis on context. Fourthly, the community studies format is prized for its accessibility, achieved through a narrative style which plays down conventional researcher/ reader hierarchies without losing analytical sharpness. Recent research monographs and other studies are drawn upon to illustrate these points. They show that while the community studies tradition has necessarily evolved conceptually and methodologically, it has continuing relevance to the sociological enterprise.