Defining Community: Debates and implications for bushfire policy

Fire Note 88: The increasing use of the term “community” can be seen as part of an international trend in disaster management towards formally recognising the importance of community power, resilient communities and encouraging links between communities and government institutions.

However a potential difficulty with the trend towards integrating “community” into policy discourse is that the term itself often remains vague and undefined. 

This Fire Note offers a brief outline of sociological understandings of community and applies them to the context of bushfire preparedness in Australia, drawing on research conducted as part of the Bushfire CRC Extension Effective Communications: Communities and Bushfire project.