From Vulnerability to Adaptation to Climate Change: Food for Thoughts in Social Sciences - Vulnerability of Coastal Ecosystems and Adaptation - page 226

6.2.1. The development of vulnerability concepts
On these grounds, the two main visions of risk, and indirectly of
vulnerability became more prominent between 1950 and 1980, which
favored the emergence of the third concept. Today, the third concept is
the one which is most clearly defined of all. There was also a gradual
realization of the significance of interactions between humans and the
space they inhabit [FRA 03, HIL 04, REG 06]. These interactions are
not limited to the exploitation of natural resources. On the contrary,
they go beyond this relation through the relationships related to
history and identity with places and, by extension to the role of
the environmental characteristics on the dynamics and attitudes of the
various societies [DIA 97, DIA 05]. Going beyond the
man/environment dichotomy enabled researchers to introduce more
complexity in the approach to natural phenomena and their
consequences on societies [BAN 04, OBR 04]. From an
epistemological point of view, the change consisted of overturning the
domination relation between nature and society when explaining a
disaster, which can be shown by going back to the three paradigms
(physical, structural and complexity 1 ) developed by D. Hilhorst
[HIL 04].
The physical paradigm approach emerged in the 1950s. It relied on
the idea that the causes of a disaster were to be found in the physical
characteristics of the hazards and of the impact process. Hard sciences
(geology, climatology, etc.) were then dominating the field of study
around natural hazards; whereas the nature of societies only played a
marginal role as an explaining factor. The role of social sciences was
then confined to the identification of individual behaviors when faced
with risk and disaster ( a posteriori analysis). This approach neglects
the intrinsical characteristics of societies when explaining a disaster.
This idea became popular during the 1980s through the work of
anthropologists, geographers and sociologists. The approach changed
from 'hazard-focussed' to a structured school of thought around the
structural paradigm with at its center, the idea that 'Disasters were not
primarily the outcome of geographical processes.' ([HIL 04, p. 53],
1 D. Hilhorst refers to the behavioral paradigm, the structural paradigm and the
complexity paradigm.