Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
risk where, risk messages are mediated by a series of lenses including the media,
government, scientifi c debate, personal experience and culture that may either
amplify or attenuate perceptions of risk. This work was based on communication
theory and was directed towards understanding why certain risks cause more public
anxiety than others. One of the critiques of this infl uential framework for under-
standing technological risk perceptions was its apparent focus on the hazards rather
than the people who were experiencing the hazards (Baxter and Greenlaw, 2005).
While attention to the social experience and construction of risk was one of the
main contributions of the pragmatist tradition within technological hazards, this
theme was to be developed further under the infl uence of the emerging political
economic focus within hazards research.
From Political Economy to Social Nature
Since the 1980s, there has been increasing attention to the political economic factors
contributing to social vulnerability to hazards. This newer, more radical hazards
research tradition came to be closely aligned with the emerging political ecology
research agenda within human geography. This was particularly so because many
of the pioneers of the radical critique within hazards research in geography were
also at the forefront of defi ning the political ecology research agenda in human-
environment interactions and resource management (e.g., Watts, 1983; Blaikie and
Brookfi eld, 1987; Blaikie et al., 1994). Because of their regional expertise, as well
as the salience of drought in Sahel during the 1970s and 1980s, much of this early
radical work was focused on Africa and on explaining the underlying social causes
of famine (O'keefe et al., 1977; Blaike and Brookefi eld, 1987; Watts and Bohle,
1993). It also tended to be more oriented toward theoretical analysis than toward
empirically based fi eld study. Partly as a result it has been accused of practical and
policy irrelevance (Proctor, 1998).
In keeping with its roots in Marxist political ecology, the radical tradition of
hazards research focused on theorising the underlying structural features that make
the economically and socially marginalised and disempowered also the most vulner-
able to hazards. The pressure and release (PAR) model developed by Blaike et al.
(1994) identifi ed the structural root causes that translated into institutional level
'dynamic pressures' which in turn spawned the empirical 'unsafe conditions' to
create vulnerability. Combining micro-level ethnographic research with analyses of
macro level socio-economic trends, Mustafa (1998) showed how structural factors,
such as economic marginalisation and political disempowerment within an authori-
tarian political system, translated into vulnerability to fl ooding for local communi-
ties. In later work, Mustafa (2002) devoted attention to conceptualising how
differential social power levels translated into inequitable access to irrigation water
and differential vulnerability to fl ood hazard for the same people. With reference
to an ongoing hazard from volcanic activity in Ecuador, Tobin and Whitford (2002)
used health indicators of evacuated communities as indicators of stress and vulner-
ability. Pelling (1998; 1999) documented the appropriation of the community par-
ticipation and democratisation discourse and programming by the local elites in
urban and peri-urban Guyana, thereby accentuating the vulnerability of the poor
and the disenfranchised to fl ood hazard.
Gender specifi c confi gurations of vulnerability and disaster experience have also
been documented. Using ethnographic data from Northern Pakistan, Halvorson
