The Actuality of Disaster Studies: Focusing on the Vulnerability and Resilience Paradigm

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  • URANO Masaki
    Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Waseda University

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  • 災害研究のアクチュアリティ――災害の脆弱性／復元＝回復力パラダイムを軸として――
  • サイガイ ケンキュウ ノ アクチュアリティ サイガイ ノ ゼイジャクセイ フクゲン カイフクリョク パラダイム オ ジク ト シテ

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Abstract

<p>This paper reviews some of the major sociological focus points of disaster studies in the past several decades. In this paper I examine the transformation of the points of views mainly discussed in relation to disaster social processes. Disaster studies in Japan experienced a major paradigm shift during the 1990s, especially after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. A similar kind of paradigm shift has been occurring around the world since the latter half of the 1980s. This paradigm shift might be seen as a change of the focus points of the study from the management of disaster processes to the analysis of social vulnerability and of a community’s potential to recover from disaster. Nowadays we are much more interested in the social vulnerability of the community which has been gradually accumulated through history. We are also concerned with the social capital which enables the community to cope with and to recover from disaster.</p><p>In this paper, I intend to comment on the vulnerability and resilience paradigm of disaster studies, which is an effort to analyze the social consequences of disaster in relationship with the social structure and political economic system of society. The analytical framework of this paradigm might be viewed as being similar to the analysis of the social processes of victimization. This framework could also be closely connected with the concept of environmental justice. In this sense, the vulnerability and resilience paradigm will be a helpful guideline for disaster research from the environmental sociological perspective.</p>

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