Living with floods and coping with vulnerability

Purpose Using Anthropological methodology to achieve an understanding from a "local point of view" the purpose of this paper is to explore how safety is established in what clearly is, at least from the outside, a risky everyday. Floods are a recurring problem for people in Jakarta. However, for poor families living on river banks in the city center the floods also constitute a necessary condition to create a viable livelihood. The floods keep land grabbers and urban developers at bay and keep costs for living low. For the families living in these areas there is a constant "trade off" between safety and risk taking with the purpose to create a living.