Different Theoretical Approaches to Social Vulnerability to Natural Hazards

Document Type : Review Paper

Authors

1 Faculty Member, Natural Research Institute for Science Policy

2 Master of Geography and Rural Planning

Abstract

So far, literature on the vulnerability of communities against natural hazards has been emphasized on three intellectual paradigms. The first view of natural hazards is "God's action" that believe natural hazards are either a punishment of God against human sins, or an apocalypse, or an opportunity to propagate religion and bring people closer to God. With the occurrence of the Lisbon earthquake in Portugal, for the first time, this viewpoint was questioned, and the concepts of "nature" and "natural forces" replaced the concept of "supernaturalism." This development was the starting point of the second approach, which referred to natural hazards as "the act of nature." This approach, in the words of Tobin and Montes, relates the entire responsibility of natural disasters to the processes of the geophysical world and searches for the root of massive deaths and devastation resulting from disasters in the forces of nature. In this approach, natural disasters are seen as random (accidental) phenomena that are morally unsustainable and ineffective. These events are incidental events that go beyond human control. In short, the emphasis is on the fact that nature is becoming a negative and evil phenomenon. In response to the deficiencies of these two approaches, the third approach emerges, which looks at the process of becoming a natural disaster to disaster as "community action." According to this approach, "disasters are social events": they are rooted in patterns of human habitation, socio-political processes, the system of beliefs in societies and technological errors. Their effects are not randomly distributed in the community. In contrast, the consequences of these devastating events find order in line with axes such as class, race, and gender. In this paper, with a detailed description of the assumptions and logic of each of these approaches, we try to show that dealing with natural hazards requires going beyond the existing discussions and achieving a mixed theory that addresses issues such as the physical quality of society (including Its structural and non-structural dimensions), the question of the institutional order of the society, the issue of social participation, the issue of cultural beliefs, the question of economic order, and finally the issue of justice.

Keywords

References

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Popularization of Science
Volume 8, Issue 1 - Serial Number 12
September 2017
Pages 61-78

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