ABSTRACT
Vulnerability and resilience are concepts in natural hazards research that originated at a particular historical moment and their significance can only be understood through a consideration of the way power operated at the time in the prevailing socio-environmental systems. If vulnerability expressed a profound unease with the developmental model that dominated the Cold War era, then the subsequent discourse of resilience fitted well with pre-established neoliberal ideas about competition and entrepreneurship. The current emphasis in research on “adaptation” implies accepting a world in which disturbance and crisis are constant features whether caused by climate change and/or social upheaval.
