Sustainability and Social Justice
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Current approaches to vulnerability assessment for disaster-risk reduction (DRR) commonly apply generalised, a priori determinants of vulnerability to particular hazards in particular places. Although they may allow for policy-level legibility at high levels of spatial scale, these approaches suffer from attribution problems that become more acute as the level of analysis is localised and the population under investigation experiences greater vulnerability. In this article, we locate the source of this problem in a spatial scale mismatch between the essentialist framings of identity behind these generalised determinants of vulnerability and the intersectional, situational character of identity in the places where DRR interventions are designed and implemented. Using the Livelihoods as Intimate Government (LIG) approach to identify and understand different vulnerabilities to flooding in a community in southern Zambia, we empirically demonstrate how essentialist framings of identity produce this mismatch. Further, we illustrate a means of operationalising intersectional, situational framings of identity to achieve greater and more productive understandings of hazard vulnerability than available through the application of general determinants of vulnerability to specific places and cases.
Publication Title
Jamba: Journal of Disaster Risk Studies
Publication Date
1-1-2015
Volume
7
Issue
1
ISSN
2072-845X
DOI
10.4102/jamba.v7i1.201
Keywords
vulnerability assessment, disaster risk reduction, spatial scale mismatch, identity, climate change adaptation, resilience, Zambia, risk in industry, risk management, HD61
Repository Citation
Carr, Edward; Abrahams, Daniel; de la Poterie, Arielle T.; Suarez, Pablo; and Koelle, Bettina, "Vulnerability Assessments, Identity and Spatial Scale Challenges in Disaster-Risk Reduction" (2015). Sustainability and Social Justice. 88.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_idce/88
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.