Social vulnerability
In its broadest sense, social vulnerability is one dimension of vulnerability to multiple stressors and shocks, including abuse, social exclusion and natural hazards. Social vulnerability refers to the inability of people, organizations, and societies to withstand adverse impacts from multiple stressors to which they are exposed. These impacts are due in part to characteristics inherent in social interactions, institutions, and systems of cultural values.
Because it is most apparent when calamity occurs, many studies of social vulnerability are found in risk management literature.[1][2][3][4]
History of the concept[edit]
In the 1970s the concept of vulnerability was introduced within the discourse on natural hazards and disaster by O'Keefe, Westgate, and Wisner.[11] In "taking the naturalness out of natural disasters" these authors insisted that socio-economic conditions are the causes for natural disasters. The work illustrated by means of empirical data that the occurrence of disasters increased over the last 50 years, paralleled by an increasing loss of life. The work also showed that the greatest losses of life concentrate in underdeveloped countries, where the authors concluded that vulnerability is increasing.
Chambers put these empirical findings on a conceptual level and argued that vulnerability has an external and internal side: People are exposed to specific natural and social risk. At the same time people possess different capacities to deal with their exposure by means of various strategies of action (Chambers 1989). This argument was again refined by Blaikie, Cannon, Davis, and Wisner, who went on to develop the Pressure and Release Model (PAR) (see below). Watts and Bohle argued similarly by formalizing the "social space of vulnerability", which is constituted by exposure, capacity and potentiality (Watts and Bohle 1993).
Susan Cutter developed an integrative approach (hazard of place), which tries to consider both multiple geo- and biophysical hazards on the one hand as well as social vulnerabilities on the other hand.[12] Recently, Oliver-Smith grasped the nature-culture dichotomy by focusing both on the cultural construction of the people-environment-relationship and on the material production of conditions that define the social vulnerability of people (Oliver-Smith and Hoffman 2002).
Research on social vulnerability to date has stemmed from a variety of fields in the natural and social sciences. Each field has defined the concept differently, manifest in a host of definitions and approaches (Blaikie, Cannon et al. 1994; Henninger 1998; Frankenberger, Drinkwater et al. 2000; Alwang, Siegel et al. 2001; Oliver-Smith 2003; Cannon, Twigg et al. 2005). Yet some common threads run through most of the available work.
Criticism[edit]
Some authors criticise the conceptualisation of social vulnerability for overemphasising the social, political and economical processes and structures that lead to vulnerable conditions. Inherent in such a view is the tendency to understand people as passive victims (Hewitt 1997) and to neglect the subjective and intersubjective interpretation and perception of disastrous events. Bankoff criticises the very basis of the concept, since in his view it is shaped by a knowledge system that was developed and formed within the academic environment of western countries and therefore inevitably represents values and principles of that culture. According to Bankoff the ultimate aim underlying this concept is to depict large parts of the world as dangerous and hostile to provide further justification for interference and intervention (Bankoff 2003).
Collective vulnerability[edit]
Collective vulnerability is a state in which the integrity and social fabric of a community is or was threatened through traumatic events or repeated collective violence.[17] In addition, according to the collective vulnerability hypothesis, shared experience of vulnerability and the loss of shared normative references can lead to collective reactions aimed to reestablish the lost norms and trigger forms of collective resilience.[18]
This theory has been developed by social psychologists to study the support for human rights. It is rooted in the consideration that devastating collective events are sometimes followed by claims for measures that may prevent that similar event will happen again. For instance, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a direct consequence of World War II horrors. Psychological research by Willem Doise and colleagues shows indeed that after people have experienced a collective injustice, they are more likely to support the reinforcement of human rights.[19] Populations who collectively endured systematic human rights violations are more critical of national authorities and less tolerant of rights violations.[20] Some analyses performed by Dario Spini, Guy Elcheroth and Rachel Fasel[21] on the Red Cross' "People on War" survey shows that when individuals have direct experience with the armed conflict are less keen to support humanitarian norms. However, in countries in which most of the social groups in conflict share a similar level of victimization, people express more the need for reestablishing protective social norms as the human rights, no matter the magnitude of the conflict.