This chapter seeks to discuss society's responses to natural disasters caused by sudden alterations in the behavior patterns of natural phenomena, primarily draughts and floods. Focusing on the concrete case of Mozambique, it considers that, parallel to the State's formal response, of doubtful efficacy, there are informal responses based on diversified and fragmentary local knowledges that operate in a community context, and that a tense relationship of confrontation is established between these two responses.

The formal response is intimately related with the political nature of the State itself: first, we have the State inscribed within the colonial logic of depletion of raw materials and exploitation of labor; then, the post-colonial socialist State that reserved the role of motor of development for itself; and lastly, the current neoliberal State which facilitates market performance. The common denominator of States of such apparently diverse natures, in responding to the effects of natural catastrophes, is a positivistic outlook, extremely centralized, which marginalizes popular participation and which is localized at the level of reaction (more than at the level of prevention). Informal, practical, and ritualized knowledges have been historically weakened by this confrontation, which has placed the subjects that produce and apply them in a marginal and subaltern position, both in society and in the formal structure of knowledge.

Finally, the chapter concludes that a social response capable of minimizing the effects of natural disasters can only result from a new context in which the relation of confrontation between formal and informal knowledges (and of marginalization and subalternization of the latter by the former) is replaced by a relation of cooperation in which the former assume a posture of integration of popular knowledge, mobilizing rural communities for common ends, and focusing above all on preventive actions. This can only be achieved if and when profound changes in the performance and nature of the current neoliberal State take place.