Rural Risk and Disaster Management from a Relational Approach

This article emphasizes the significance of relational concepts in understanding Disaster Management (DM) in rural areas. Specifically, we turn to the concepts of relational place and peripheralization to illustrate how places derive meaning from their relationships with other places and argue for a deeper understanding of how these dynamics influence DM professionals’ experiences of their work and of peripheralization. Despite extensive research on DM, place is often treated as a neutral backdrop rather than as an active agent that shapes professionals’ work. To explore the role of place in DM, we draw on interviews with professionals from four municipalities in northern Sweden, characterized by expansive geographies, declining populations, and a decreasing tax base. By employing the concept of relational place, we show how DM professionals perceive laws and regulations as ill-adapted to their contexts and their work as diverging from broader societal norms. We also illustrate how feelings of peripheralization, understood as a process rather than a static condition, are linked to the political, financial, and social dimensions of DM. Through this article, we aim to broaden the discourse on DM by providing insights into the unique challenges faced in rural contexts, emphasizing how these intersect with professionals’ understandings of place.