ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the fundamental and significant ways that our worldviews-our representations and assumptions about the world-frame our understanding of, and response to, hazards and disasters. We begin by defining theory: the formal, explicit, and systematic worldviews that provide the foundation for the scientific analysis of hazards and disasters. This is followed by a discussion of the shift in theory from framing hazards and disasters as primarily natural and unexpected events to framing them as expected outcomes of complex human-environment interactions. This theoretical shift has led to a focus on social vulnerability: why some individuals, groups, communities, and nations differentially experience the effects of hazard events. Most recently, scholars and policy makers are also placing more emphasis on community resilience in conjunction with social vulnerability, adding to theoretical complexity. We then discuss how critical and conflict
2.1 Chapter Purpose ..................................................................................................................... 33 2.2 Objectives ...............................................................................................................................34 2.3 Introduction ............................................................................................................................34 2.4 What Is Theory? ..................................................................................................................... 37 2.5 Hazards and Disasters: The Dominant Paradigm .................................................................. 38 2.6 Challenging the Dominant Paradigm: Social Vulnerability .................................................. 39 2.7 Conflict and Critical Theory ................................................................................................... 43 2.8 Structure and Agency .............................................................................................................44
