‘Vulnerability’ in Disaster Theory and Practice:
From Soup to Taxonomy, then to Analysis and finally Tool
International Work-Conference
Disaster Studies of Wageningen University and Research Centre
29/30 June, 2001
by Ben Wisner
Oberlin College
0. Introduction
This paper is organized around eleven questions provided by the organizers of the work conference “Vulnerability in Disaster Theory and Practice.” The objective is to review the theoretical rigor and context in which the term ‘vulnerability’ has been used in disaster studies and also the concept’s usefulness in the cycle of practical activities including disaster preparedness, early warning, response, recovery, mitigation, and prevention. In the course of what I trust is a logical transition from question to question, I have also tried to identify gaps and problems.
The word “vulnerability” is used in the English hazards and disaster management literature is a very large number of ways. This is not necessarily a matter of ambiguity or semantic drift, but disciplinary focus. Essentially these different uses have invisible, implied adjectives preceding them, hence:
" structural, engineering vulnerability
" lifeline infrastructural vulnerability
" communications system vulnerability
" macro economic vulnerability
" regional economic vulnerability
" commercial vulnerability (including insurance exposure)
" social vulnerability.
Whereas I once worried that these many different uses of the term interfered with or diluted the usefulness of the term, the rise of comprehensive approaches to disaster planning during the IDNDR eases those doubts. Indeed, a comprehensive approach conducted at municipal, county/ parish, state/ provincial, nation, or regional level must include such a wide range of vulnerabilities.
What they all have in common is the core notion of “potential for disruption or harm.” Maps and other assessments of such vulnerabilities can then be combined with assessments of hazards that have been identified. Where there is sufficient probablistic, process knowledge of the particular hazards, statements about risk as the probability (not simply potential) for disruption or harm can result, as in the well know short hand:
(1) Risk = Hazard x Vulnerability
Social vulnerability is one of these categories. The adjective “social” is more widely made explicit by authors these days. The “social” is a very large domain. Check lists based on taxonomies are commonly recommended to planners and also to communities as an aid to self study and action. In this paper I review the various ways that social vulnerability has been theorized and used. I assess the theoretical and practical utility of these formulations and methods used to measure or assess social vulnerability.
1. Debates: ‘Social Vulnerability’ Floated in the Semantic Soup, then generated a Taxonomy, with more flexibility became useful in Situational Analysis, and now, in the hands of the communities, is a Tool
There are four main clusters of approaches to social vulnerability.
First, there are those that continue to follow the former UN Disaster Relief Organization (UNDRO) definition (inspired by an engineering approach): “... the potential for damage or loss” (Alexander, 2000). These approaches tend to consider human beings as one of many “elements” at risk to varying degrees, given hazards with certain characteristics and an array of elements with differing degrees of potential for damage or loss (hence: structural vulnerability of buildings, bridges, health care systems, etc., AND people).
Individual human beings get lost in the process of conceptualizing whole systems (e.g. vulnerable banana exporting economies of the Caribbean, vulnerable food systems of Somali pastoralists), physical structures (e.g. vulnerable roads in the Andes, bridges, the natural gas pipe line serving Wellington, New Zealand, etc.), and administrative networks (e.g. vulnerable health care delivery system of Los Angeles country, where half the hospitals could be shut down by the next earthquake). Moreover, the social vulnerability of groups of people are generally lost in the analytical shuffle by administrators who seek to minimize the “vulnerability” of systems and things. Such under appreciated groups that may (or may not) experience increased social vulnerability to the effects of one or another extreme event include those who self identify (transsexual street youth in West Hollywood) or are identified by language, culture, age (e.g. elderly monolingual Russian immigrants in West Hollywood), or who are marginalized in a variety of ways (who lack economic, political, or social power and participation).
Thus in the community guidelines for “hazard vulnerability assessment” provided by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to it’s “Project Impact” communities, no where appear any particular group of persons or people with certain characteristics. “Vulnerability” is used exclusively to refer to such things as water systems. The only place a category of people appears is toward the end when users of this guide are prompted to think about the community’s major employers and how their workers get to work.[1]
The second cluster includes approaches that does focus on the vulnerability of social groups, and is concerned with the causes of this social vulnerability. These approaches begin from the empirical observation that different groups of human beings often suffering different degrees of death, injury, loss, disruption in the same event, and also experience different degrees of difficulty, success or failure, in the process of recovery (Enarson and Morrow, 1997; Hewitt, 1996; Blaikie et al., 1994; Lavell, 1994; Aysan, 1993; Maskrey, 1989). These approaches tend to break vulnerability down into different kinds (social, economic, environmental, informational vulnerability, etc.), and they tend to work on the basis of empirically developed taxonomies (e.g. the vulnerability of women, children, elderly people, the disabled, ethnic/ racial/ or religious minorities, illegal immigrants, etc., etc.).
For example, Morrow (1999: 10) identifies the following groups as typical of the kinds a vulnerability inventory will reveal:
"Residents of group living facilities
"Elderly, particularly frail elderly
"Physically or mentally disabled
"Renters
"Poor households
"Women-headed households
"Ethnic minorities (by language)
"Recent residents/ immigrants/ migrants
"Large households
"Large concentrations of children/ youth
"The homeless
"Tourists and transients.
Surely the taxonomic approach is a major advance over the conventional use of the term “vulnerable” that casts a net in a crude and undifferentiated way over things, systems, and people. To give one more example of the taxonomic approach, Aysan (1993: 12) earlier identified eight. Each of these acts to undermine capacity for self-protection, blocks or diminishes access to social protection, delays or complicates recovery, or exposes some groups to greater or more frequent hazards than other groups. The usefulness in practical terms of such a list is as a screen to hone or orient the perceptions of planners and service providers and administrators so that relatively ‘invisible’ or ‘voiceless’ groups of people are not neglected before, during, or after disasters. These eight are:
"lack of access to resources (material/ economic vulnerability)
"disintegration of social patterns (social vulnerability)
"degradation of the environment and inability to protect it (ecological vulnerability)
"lack of access to information and knowledge(educational vulnerability)
"lack of public awareness (attitudinal and motivational vulnerability)
"limited access to political power and representation (political vulnerability)
"certain beliefs and customs (cultural vulnerability)
"weak buildings or weak individuals (physical vulnerability).
In a similar way, Lavell (1994:52-61) distinguishes among four interrelated kinds of vulnerability: economic, social, educational and informational, and environmental and Cannon (2000: 47) identifies four “components of vulnerability”:
"initial well-being
"livelihood resilience
"self-protection
"societal protection
"social capital (social cohesion, rivalries, number and strength of
potentially conflicting or cooperating groups).
It was certainly an important advance to rescue human beings from the large, amorphous semantic caldron that mixed the mechanical response of buildings, bridges, and natural gas lines with the ability of a single mother to reestablish a home and livelihood after a hurricane. However, analytically these taxonomies and lists are still rather blunt tools. One may ask, is a tourist always socially vulnerable? Doesn’t it depend on the specific hazard and specific circumstances? Does it also not depend on other characteristics of that or those persons, all of which are capable of change. For example, a tourist who is exhausted after returning from a thirty mile hike will be more vulnerable to a flash flood than one who is sitting in a air conditioned vehicle listening to a flood warning on her radio. The homeless in Tokyo are highly vulnerable to flood emergencies because many of them live along the Sumida river and also to extreme winter weather and typhoons, because of their exposure to the elements and fragile tents (made mostly of blue plastic tarps or cardboard boxes and a collection of umbrellas and blankets). However, they are not highly vulnerable to earthquake as they are generally not exposed to building collapse and are used to the streets and can more easily navigate (unless they are homeless AND mentally or physically disabled) to the nearest green space where they will be protected from fire.
A third kind of approach tries to go beyond these “laundry lists” and “taxonomies” (although I will argue later on that they have had a great deal of practical benefit). This approach can be called “situational”. The key question is not what kind of group a person or family belongs to, but the nature of their daily life, their actual situation (including the way it may have changed recently or may be changing). This approach has a lot in common with the analysis of “household livelihood security” (Sanderson, 2000) or the “access model” utilized by Blaikie et al. (1994).
Situational analysis recognizes two three kinds of contingency. First, social vulnerability is not a permanent property of a person or group but changes in respect to a particular hazard. Muslim women in Bangladesh never climb trees and are reluctant to leave the seclusion of their homes, so they are more vulnerable than men in a flash flood or storm surge. However, Hindu women in parts of India are more able to cross caste boundaries and do casual work and glean fields at times of food emergency. The second kind of contingency concerns the constantly changing daily, seasonal, and yearly circumstances of a person’s situation as regards access to resources and power. Such circumstances change dramatically as the life cycle unfolds, as physiological and anatomical changes accompany childbirth or occupational disease or accident, etc.
Finally, there is the contingency born of the complex interaction of particular overlapping identities and forms of empowerment or marginality. It was not simply women who were prominent among the hundreds who died from heat stroke in Chicago in 1995, but elderly women living on their own on limited incomes. They were afraid to come out to shelters or their lack of mobility inhibited them. They could not afford air conditioning, and they kept their windows closed for fear of thieves.
Situational analysis breaks out human beings in their complexity and also groups of humans from the heterogeneous mass of things and systems said by mainstream planners to be “vulnerable.” Situational analysis also builds upon the wealth of empirical work that has given rise to the taxonomies and lists of vulnerable groups discussed earlier. However, by recognizing complexity, change, and contingency, it provides a more sensitive tool of analysis.
The fourth is different. In this case communities and groups appropriate the concept of vulnerability to inquire into their own expose to damage and loss. The concept becomes a tool in the struggle for resources that are allocated politically. In some parts of Latin America and southern Africa such community based vulnerability assessment has become quite elaborate, utilizing all sorts of techniques to map and make inventories, seasonal calenders, and disaster chronologies (Wisner et al., 1979; Cuny, 1983; Maskrey, 1989; Wisner et al., 1991; Geilfus, 1997; Soto, 1998; von Kotze and Holloway, 1998; Anderson and Woodrow, 1998; Carasco and Garibay, 2000; Plummer, 2000; Turcios et al., 2000; Chiappe and Fernandez, 2000; Wilches-Chaux and Wilches-Chaux, 2001). Pilot projects have shown that lay people in citizen based groups are capable of participating in environmental assessments that involve technology not previously accessible to them, such as geographical information systems (Pickles, 1995; Levin and Weiner, 1997; Liverman et al., 1998; Maskrey, 1998).
Such community efforts may make use of some check lists that derive from work by professionals on taxonomies. Also there are some ways that community based vulnerability assessment resembles situational analysis as conducted by professional planners or employees of NGOs. However, the main difference is that the community defines it’s own vulnerabilities and capabilities; outsiders don’t. They also decide what risks are acceptable to them and which not.
As Morrow remarks (1999, p. 11):
The proposed identification and targeting of at-risk groups does not imply
helplessness or lack of agency on their part. ... Just because neighbourhoods
have been disenfranchised in the past does not mean they are unwilling or
unable to be an important part of the process. There are many notable ex-
amples of grassroots action on the part of poor, elderly, and/ or minority
communities ..., and of women making a difference in post-disaster decisions
and outcomes... Planners and managers who make full use of citizen exper-
tise and energy will more effectively improve safety and survival chances of
their communities.
The employment of the concept of social vulnerability as a tool in and by the community also involves a thorough analysis with and by the residents of their own resources and capacities/ capabilities. Although this “other side” of the vulnerability coin is sometimes present in checklists, taxonomies, and to a greater degree, externally produced situational analyses, it is in the hands of local people that the logic of their situation, the phenomenology of their living over time with risks, that forces them to be aware of and to discuss their strengths, capabilities, as well as their weaknesses and needs (Wisner, 1988; Anderson and Woodrow, 1998).[2]
The first three of these four approaches structuralist. As far as I am concerned, that is excellent. I believe strongly that the constructionist approaches inspired by post modernism only have a place in disaster studies and practice as a heuristic or corrective lens (Harvey, 1989 & 1996). Recently during field work in Mexico City I was told repeatedly that people are more afraid of bottled gas explosions, violent crime, death in a public transport accident than of earthquakes. It is important to listen to the people affected and to try to see things from their point of view. However, extreme forms of pomo interpretation are not helpful, and absurd. I have heard someone refer to an earthquake as a “spectacle”. It well may have that role in the viewer ratings of CNN, but that in no way erodes the “reality” of the earthquake disaster experienced by the people affected in Gujarat.
The view that the first three interpretations of social vulnerability represent an imposed, western discourse on reality is doubtless true. This kind of “disaster discourse” shares much with other forms of “development discourse” (Rahema and Bawtree, 1997; Escobar, 1997; Crush, 1995; Wisner and Yapa, 1995). However, I would argue that disaster researchers and practitioners who adopt a social vulnerability perspective are doing something a bit different. As Hewitt puts it in his excellent essay, “Sustainable Disasters: Perspectives on powers in the discourse of calamity (1995, p. 125);
We feel obliged to speak of missing persons or unheard voices; of ‘hidden damage’
and ‘shadow risks’ and, more severely, of ‘silent’ or ‘quiet violence’. ... We identify
‘voiceless and ‘invisible’ presences; conditions and people ignored or marginalized.
Issues are found to be ‘hidden’, ‘masked’. ‘obfuscated’ or redescribed to suit other
– also often ‘hidden’ – agendas.
Despite the difficulties and contradictions involved in “speaking for” other human beings, much of the work on social vulnerability tries to break out of the hegemonic “development” and “disaster” discourses by providing space for alternative, subaltern stories and voices. And the fourth of these approaches to social vulnerability, the one that seeks to use that concept as a tool for empowerment and self knowledge, is the best expression of the attempt to break out.
2. Local Knowledge, Perceptions and Coping Practices
I view social vulnerability to some extent as the blockage, erosion, or devaluation of local knowledge and coping practices, or, taken together: local capacity. Vulnerability studies and practice has not given enough attention to local capacity, especially as social capital. In the past local knowledge, perceptions, and coping has been studied ethnographically, but in an individualistic and positivistic manner. At the extreme vernacular ways of describing extreme natural events, coping, etc. have beenappropriated by outside agencies seeking to “package” their standard remedies in language that will make it acceptable to “recipients” or “clients.” Earlier models of diffusion-innovation and top down “extension” remain hidden underneath “culturally sensitive” veneers.
What is actually needed is an understanding of why and how local knowledge is rendered inappropriate or inaccessible, and ways that local people can be empowered to reclaim local knowledge and appreciate its usefulness. Of course, a balanced view of local knowledge is also necessary. Given major rapid changes in environmental conditions, locale (because of migration), population growth or decline (e.g. because of HIV/ AIDS), economic, and political change, some conventional local knowledge may be no longer applicable. Hybrid knowledge and practices are necessary that combine outside and inside points of view (Wisner et al., 1979; Wisner et al., 1991; Wisner, 1994a; 1994b; 1995a;1995b).
What also needs to be researched is how groups of people can be motivated to rediscover their own local knowledge or the generate their own in a cultural environment in which they are told by society that they are “ignorant”, “superstitious”, “uneducated”, “incapable.” Unfortunately these prejudices against the knowledge and capabilities of poor people, working class people, ethnic minorities, elderly people, youth and children,[3] the disabled,[4] refugees,[5] etc. are very common – I would say in subtle and unconscious forms, even universal – in urban and rural areas and in every country in the world (Freire, 1982; Hall et al., 1982; Goonatilake, 1984; Scott, 1985 & 1990; Colburn, 1989; Hardoy and Satterthwaite, 1989; Marglin and Marglin, 1990; Dudley, 1993; Eade, 1997; Holland and Blackburn, 1998; Grenier, 1998; Twigg and Bhatt, 1998; Peri Peri, 1999; Carrasco, 2000).