Friendly With Disaster: The Construction of Social Reality of the Bengawan Solo River Basin Community

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume III, Issue VI, June 2019 | ISSN 2454–6186

Friendly With Disaster: The Construction of Social Reality of the Bengawan Solo River Basin Community

Mondry^1*, Darsono Wisadirana², Sanggar Kanto³ & Zulkarnain Nasution⁴

^1,2,3Departement of Sociology at Faculty of Social Science and Political Science, Universitas Brawijaya, Indonesia.
⁴Faculty of Education Science, State University of Malang, Indonesia
*Corresponding Author

Abstract:-The floods come every rainy season every year into their homes. Even in the village of Sumbangtimun, in addition to inundating houses, floods also inundate the agricultural lands of the people. Yet they consider everything as normal and no longer something that is considered a disaster.
Such an attitude occurs because the understanding of the people in both locations is different from the general Indonesian people. The construction of the social reality that they obtained from the previous generation was as such. For them, something new is called a disaster if the losses that have occurred are related to life or human beings or large material losses or both, while the flood of Bengawan Solo is not as such.
At first glance, the Bengawan Solo flood did not cause great harm nor casualties. However, if analyzed in depth, the attitude of the people who consider the problem of the Bengawan Solo floodslightly is actually a mistake. Many losses occur due to this attitude.

Keywords: disaster, floods, Bengawan Solo, social construction

I. INTRODUCTION

Indonesia is a country with a large population.Beck (1998) also stated that this country also has risks of disasters, including natural disasters. There have been frequent disasters in this country, both small and large. The Indonesian people certainly still remember the tsunami in Aceh, the eruption of Mount Sinabung, and the eruption of Mount Agung. The most recent ones have been the Lombok earthquake, as well as the earthquake and tsunami in Palu and its surroundings.
Natural disasters are certainly detrimental to the community, because they cause loss of life and property. There are disasters that occur at any time with different locations, but there are also natural disasters that are continuous or come at a fixed time every year. One of the natural disasters that regularly afflicts Indonesia is the flood of Bengawan Solo.
The Bengawan Solo floods as a natural disaster occurs every year and inundates 20 second-level regions in Central Java and East Java Provinces,consisting of 17 regencies and 3 cities.One of these is Bojonegoro Regency; even in 2007, there have been major floods that drowned the district.

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