Local Government and Disaster

Cultural Psychology of Coping with Disasters

“…Through the concept of vulnerability, researchers turned their focus to the social factors that lead to disaster and which are (re)produced by social, economic, and political processes ). This shift in emphasis has meant that "natural" disasters are no longer understood as a singular, sudden-onset event caused by external forces but rather as something deeply embedded in "normal," everyday life and its socioeconomic structures (e.g., Hewitt 1983; Wisner et al , 2012.…”

“…A third commonality is that both approaches share an understanding of resilience as the self-organizing capacities and crisis management potential of communities or whole societies, which can develop and expand by learning from previous disaster experiences or improving risk reduction measures (UNISDR 2009;UNISDR 2004). The idea of resilience thus accounts for capacities endogenous to the community itself which the community can control better than macrostructural elements or the root causes of vulnerability (see Wisner et al 2012).…”

“…Resilience usually represents a general improvement of adaptive capacities, whereas vulnerability relates to a particular event. In the model presented by , this point applies especially to the progression from vulnerability to "unsafe conditions" or "fragile livelihoods and unsafe locations" (Wisner et al 2012), although even here the "root causes" remain relatively unspecific.…”

“…As a general trend, preventative measures have gained importance in disaster management (see UNISDR 2005;Wisner et al 2012). At the international level, the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015 outlines necessary disaster loss reduction measures on the part of different sectors and actors, such as national and local governments (Lavell et al 2012), international agencies (see Arnold 2012), disaster experts, local actors and communities (Delica Willison and Gaillard 2012), and civil society (see Thompson 2012).…”

“…(5) Strengthen disaster preparedness for effective response at all levels. (UNISDR 2005) A normative character prevails throughout both older and more recent models of (total) disaster management, prescribing how societies should handle hazards (O'Brien et al 2012). Disaster experts define what needs to be known and what needs to be done.…”