The Centrality of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to Community and Crisis Response

Abstract

Organizations and communities of practice have increasingly focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion, the field of community development among them. Striving to engage the whole citizenry to ensure decisions and actions are reflective of the local population’s full diversity is core to ‘community’ and its development. This notion is not based on an idealistic picture of complete local harmony but instead a fundamental need to value and bring together diverse bodies of knowledge, skills, experiences, perspectives, and resources to increase the adaptive capacity of a place. This is most visible in times of threat or crisis when there is a need for immediate, collective response. This chapter explores the centrality of diversity, equity, and inclusion to community emergence and community resilience from an interactional approach. From this perspective, it is the dynamic interaction between diverse local groups that enables innovative problem solving and an adaptive capacity to respond to and recover from crises. We begin with an overview of interactional theory and how it posits the emergence of community. Like community emergence, community resilience is a process by which localities use their adaptive capacities to respond, adapt, and recover from threats or crises.