Flirting with danger: practice dilemmas for community development in disaster recovery

This article takes as its focus the contribution of community development to disaster recovery. It examines the experiences of community development officers employed in response to a series of devastating natural disasters within the state of Queensland, Australia. Utilizing the lens of the “dilemmatic space,” the article reveals three practice dilemmas for community development workers in disaster recovery: the struggle over discourse, the difficulties of dual accountabilities, and the challenges of legitimacy in intervention. The article concludes by examining the implications of these findings and the need for what is called ecological or organic practice to be applied to the disaster recovery context.