Mapping Vulnerability: Disasters, Development and People

Front Cover
Greg Bankoff, Georg Frerks, Dorothea Hilhorst
Earthscan, 2013 M06 17 - 256 pages
Raging floods, massive storms and cataclysmic earthquakes: every year up to 340 million people are affected by these and other disasters, which cause loss of life and damage to personal property, agriculture, and infrastructure. So what can be done? The key to understanding the causes of disasters and mitigating their impacts is the concept of 'vulnerability'. Mapping Vulnerability analyses 'vulnerability' as a concept central to the way we understand disasters and their magnitude and impact. Written and edited by a distinguished group of disaster scholars and practitioners, this book is a counterbalance to those technocratic approaches that limit themselves to simply looking at disasters as natural phenomena. Through the notion of vulnerability, the authors stress the importance of social processes and human-environmental interactions as causal agents in the making of disasters. They critically examine what renders communities unsafe - a condition, they argue, that depends primarily on the relative position of advantage or disadvantage that a particular group occupies within a society's social order. The book also looks at vulnerability in terms of its relationship to development and its impact on policy and people's lives, through consideration of selected case studies drawn from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Mapping Vulnerability is essential reading for academics, students, policymakers and practitioners in disaster studies, geography, development studies, economics, environmental studies and sociology.

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Contents

Mapping Vulnerability
1
Theorizing Vulnerability in a Globalized World A Political Ecological Perspective
10
The Historical Geography of Disaster Vulnerability and Local Knowledge in Western Discourse
25
The Need for Rethinking the Concepts of Vulnerability and Risk from a Holistic Perspective A Necessary Review and Criticism for Effective Risk Ma...
37
Complexity and Diversity Unlocking Social Domains of Disaster Response
52
The Lower Lempa River Valley El Salvador Risk Reduction and Development Project
67
El Niņo Events Forecasts and Decisionmaking
83
Vulnerable Regions versus Vulnerable People An Ethiopian Case Study
99
Vulnerability Reduction A Task for the Vulnerable People Themselves
145
Macroeconomic Concepts of Vulnerability Dynamics Complexity and Public Policy
159
Gendering Vulnerability Analysis Towards a More Nuanced Approach
174
Assessment of Capability and Vulnerability
183
Vulnerability Analysis as a Means of Strengthening Policy Formulation and Policy Practice
194
Notes
206
References
212
Index
233

From Vulnerability to Empowerment
115
Progress in Analysis of Social Vulnerability and Capacity
128

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