Vulnerability to Natural Hazards: Philosophical Reflections on the Social and Cultural Dimensions of Natural Disaster Risk

Mark Coeckelbergh ()
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Mark Coeckelbergh: De Montfort University

Chapter Chapter 3 in Risk Analysis of Natural Hazards, 2016, pp 27-41 from Springer

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Risk Management; Natural Hazard; Flood Risk; Disaster Risk; Indigenous Knowledge (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:rischp:978-3-319-22126-7_3

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-22126-7_3

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