The Relationship Between Risk Perception and Social Interaction

Risk perception is one of the significant factors influencing individual action to response and reduces the risk, (Smith, et. al. 2013). Although, most of the theoretical perspectives on risk emphasis on the individual unit of analysis, some recent research has calculated community experience to risk or disaster. For instance, research from Masuda & Garvin (2006) suggests that risk perceptions were connected within the minds of individuals and revealed as people’s sense of belonging in their community. According to cultural theory and perspectives, risk perception can be translated as a reflection of the social context of an individual (Sjoberg, 2000). Risk perception is a social construction that affected by several factors in which risk was culturally embedded, such as experience, the structure of economics and politics, environment, personal exposures to hazard, and community process (Fitchen et. al, 1987, Flint & Luloff, 2005).

Putting the [local] Community First!

Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) promised that the model would facilitate linkages between natural resources conservation and community well-being. However, there has frequently fallen short of expectations and many criticisms stressing on the “failure” implementation of CBNRM (Leach, et, al. 1999., Stone & Nyaupane, 2014). Some critics argue that CBNRM privileges the former over the latter and it represents the extension of neoliberalism into the exploitation of nature. In the beginning, CBNRM idea is based on the principal that if conservation and development can be achieved simultaneously and the interests of both could be served. A CBNRM project also designed to facilitating one or two communities to organize themselves so that they get benefits from the utilization of local natural resources as well as actively involved in the conservation activities (inclusion of the community in conservation agenda).

Rethinking Community: Places, Rituals, and Social Relations

“Community” is a word that pleasant to be felt. For myself, there is a good feeling, sense, and imagination when hearing community. I feel like being part of something that completes me as a human being. Hearing these words may bring our imagination on things that are interesting in our lives, such as the place where we were born, the family where we grew up, the school where we meet playmates, a religion in which we hold, and to the work that we enjoy being surrounded by peoples that have in common with us. This word brings us to the places and people with all the different routine and ritual. Our relationship with the place, people, and environment subsequently continue to shape our identity today and in the future.

A.  Community, Place, and Technology

Communities often refer to the group of people in a particular place. For example, people who live in a small town, rural, urban, churches, mosques, schools and places in other physical association. The shared sense of place involves relationships with people, culture, and environment (Flora, 2016:14). The sense of community that inherent to the place defined by some sociologists, such as Robert Park, Earnest Burgess, Roderick McKenzie, and Louis Wirth from the Chicago School of Social Ecology. Their early work, which was published in 1925, examines the urban settlement of the City of Chicago. They provided the simplest possible description of a community as a collection of people occupying a more or less clearly defined area, but a community is more than that. A community is not only a collection of people, but it is a collective of institutions. Not people, but institutions, are final and decisive in distinguishing the community from other social constellations (Halsall, 2014:93).