ABSTRACT
Over the last decades, a social science framing of disasters has emerged. Disasters are now understood as intersections of geophysical events with vulnerable populations, as the result of natural and social processes that continually unfold over time (Hoffman & Oliver-Smith, 2002). Research on disaster vulnerability, therefore, has evolved into a comprehensive discipline that investigates not only geophysical processes but also social, economic, and political forces (Tobin & Montz, 1997; Wisner, Blaikie, & Cannon, 2004). This shift toward a more complex social conception of hazards and disasters in general, and of vulnerability in particular, is significant and important. However, as we argue and demonstrate in this chapter, it has not gone far enough in current research.
