ABSTRACT
Current understanding of risk is limited by a failure to appreciate the role of power. Power relations have to be considered when attempting to understand risk perception and behaviour, local group risk reduction initiatives and participation in municipal safety programs, and also when addressing national and international risk management policy and risk creation. To illuminate risk-scape and process fully at the granular, fine scale of the individual and group as well as larger scales, power needs to be treated as central in a number of different, non-mutually exclusive, forms. Considering a very general definition of power as the ability to influence someone else’s behaviour, the friend of disaster studies needs to inquire into sources and the exercise of power in the social, economic, political, administrative, and ideological domains.
