Vulnerability assessments, identity and spatial scale challenges in disaster-risk reduction

Jàmbá: Journal of Disaster Risk Studies

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Vulnerability assessments, identity and spatial scale challenges in disaster-risk reduction
 
Creator Carr, Edward R. Abrahams, Daniel de la Poterie, Arielle T. Suarez, Pablo Koelle, Bettina
 
Subject Geography, Development Studies vulnerability assessment; disaster risk reduction; spatial scale mismatch; identity; climate change adaptation; resilience; Zambia
Description 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.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor United States Agency for International Development Norwegian Research Council
Date 2015-11-30
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Qualitative methods; ethnography; interpretive methodologies; Livelihoods as Intimate Government
Format text/html application/octet-stream text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/jamba.v7i1.201
 
Source Jàmbá: Journal of Disaster Risk Studies; Vol 7, No 1 (2015); 17 pages 2072-845X 1996-1421
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://jamba.org.za/index.php/jamba/article/view/201/397 https://jamba.org.za/index.php/jamba/article/view/201/399 https://jamba.org.za/index.php/jamba/article/view/201/398 https://jamba.org.za/index.php/jamba/article/view/201/366
 
Coverage southern Africa; Zambia; floodplain — seniority; gender
Rights Copyright (c) 2015 Edward R. Carr, Daniel Abrahams, Arielle T. de la Poterie, Pablo Suarez, Bettina Koelle https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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