Disaster Risk Culture for Crisis Management: Early Insights from the French Context

Abstract

This paper examines how citizen participation is shaped within French disaster risk culture in the context of climate change and the rise of emerging risks. While public policies increasingly promote citizens as active contributors to their own safety, institutional frameworks continue to limit participatory possibilities in crisis management. Drawing on preliminary findings from the ATEST research project, the study combines exploratory interviews with crisis-management actors and a sociological approach inspired by the sociology of participation. The paper argues that disaster risk culture should be understood not only through individual preparedness but also as a socially and institutionally structured process, in which participatory mechanisms determine who is granted access to crisis management and on what terms. This work in progress proposes an analytical framework to better understand the conditions under which a shared disaster risk culture may emerge between citizens and institutions at the territorial level.