The Bengkulu premonition: cultural pluralism and hybridity in disaster risk reduction

Knowledge, coping strategies, and expertise that have accumulated within indigenous communities in response to repeated hazard events, are an important part of disaster risk reduction. There is a tendency, however, for indigenous societies to be treated as if they are separate from and contrast sharply with modern industrial societies. Increasingly, globalisation means local cultures are produced through the inter-relationship of local traditions and global processes, and by the mixing of cultures that can result. In November and December 2007, a premonition from a Brazilian mystic circulated Bengkulu City foretelling of a destructive tsunamigenic earthquake that would hit the city on the 23 December of that year. Thankfully the earthquake did not occur, but the rumour caused considerable alarm among residents of the city. This paper examines the premonition and demonstrates the insight it gives into the hybrid and plural ways in which local people make sense of and respond to earthquake and tsunami hazards.