Disaster scholars have long complained that their field is theory light: they are much better at doing and saying than analyzing. The paucity of theory doubtless reflects an understandable focus on case studies and practical solutions. Yet this works against big picture thinking. Consequently, both our comprehension of social suffering and our ability to mitigate it are fragmented. Communitas is exemplary here. This refers to the improvisational acts of mutual help, collective feeling and utopian desires that emerge in the wake of disasters. It has been observed for as long as there has been a sociology of disasters. Within the field, there have been numerous efforts to name and describe it. Yet there has been far less enthusiasm to theorize it, which means that the disaster literature has not adequately explained the social conditions under which communitas arises (or fails to). In this article, we synthesize numerous case studies to do so. This takes us beyond simple statements of what communitas is and what it should be called, to considerations of the conditions under which it emerges, how it should be conceptualized, the factors that might prevent communitas, and how we might encourage it. While primarily a theoretical work, the identification of communitas’ facilitators and barriers have practical import for disaster risk reduction (DRR) policy as communitas has frequently proven to be a positive and potent force.

灾难学者长期以来一直抱怨他们的领域缺乏理论：他们更擅长做和说，而不是分析。理论的缺乏无疑反映出对案例研究和实际解决方案的关注是可以理解的。但这不利于大局思维。因此，我们对社会苦难的理解和减轻社会苦难的能力都是支离破碎的。 Communitas 在此堪称典范。这是指灾难发生后出现的即兴互助、集体情感和乌托邦愿望的行为。自从灾害社会学出现以来，人们就一直在观察这一现象。在该领域内，人们为命名和描述它做出了许多努力。然而，将其理论化的热情却远远不够，这意味着灾难文献没有充分解释社区产生（或未能）的社会条件。在本文中，我们综合了大量案例研究来实现这一目标。这让我们超越了对共同体是什么以及它应该被称为什么的简单陈述，而是考虑它出现的条件、它应该如何概念化、可能阻止共同体的因素以及我们如何鼓励它。虽然主要是一项理论工作，但社区的促进因素和障碍的识别对于减少灾害风险（DRR）政策具有实际意义，因为社区经常被证明是一种积极而强大的力量。