ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes a hybrid form of collaborative intervention in community-based disaster prevention learning for local children and residents; this was conducted in Kobe City, Japan—the city that suffered severe damage during the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake that occurred on January 17, 1995. As part of the implementation of the community-based disaster prevention learning program, an intermediary nonprofit organization formed a hybrid coalition composed of architectural and town planning experts, the local government, the local community, municipal elementary schools, and universities. The hybrid coalition aims to facilitate and expand disaster prevention education for local children and residents and raise a new type of agency for future town planning to prevent or reduce disaster damage. The notion of negotiated knotworking is particularly promising as a tool for analyzing newly emerging practices of flexible, fluid, and impromptu collaboration between multiple activity systems. Therefore, based on the principle of hybridity of collaborative and participatory interventions, this chapter theoretically frames a knotworking agency as an intermediate theoretical concept applied to analyze and discuss findings from intervention efforts in the hybrid learning activity regarding disaster prevention learning.
