Vulnerability to Natural Hazards

Author(s)

Mark Coeckelbergh

Abstract

Risk analysis and risk management are ways for humans to cope with natural disaster risk. This chapter connects discussions about risk with reflections on nature, technology, vulnerability, and modernity. In particular, it raises questions regarding the natural/human distinction and how human societies and cultures
(should) cope with risk. How “natural” are hazards, given human interventions in
and interpretations of events, and what are the limitations of “objective” modern
approaches to risk? The chapter argues that coping with risk related to natural
disasters should be sensitive to the social and cultural dimensions of risk. For this
purpose it proposes the concept of “vulnerability transformations”. It focuses on the experience and phenomenology of natural hazards in relation to existential vulnerability, and, taking a cross-cultural perspective, shows that apart from modern scientific thinking there are also other, less modern ways to cope with natural hazards.

Organisation(s)

External organisation(s)

De Montfort University

Pages

27-41

No. of pages

15

Publication date

2016

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

603119 Social philosophy, 107007 Risk research

Portal url

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/f6c462d7-19a3-4abd-ac0a-e30136c696f2