From Hazard to Disaster

This volume explores the complex relationships between hazard, vulnerability and disaster for steering the challenges posed by disaster. Divergent to popular conviction and moving beyond technocratic approach, this book argues that natural hazards alone do not result in disasters. When they intersect with the vulnerability of vulnerable people, these hazards turn into disastrous events. Mostly depending on qualitative and comparative investigation, the book contends that various people – men and women, young and old, wealthy and poor as well as people of different social identities – encounter diverse outcomes confronting the same hazard. While transmuting hazards to disaster, social vulnerability plays a crucial role in determining resilience to natural hazards. The main objective of this book is to understand why and how disasters occur as it helps in constructing plans to address their root causes and identifying long-term solutions. The book aims to augment the voices of those vulnerable people who are most at risk from disasters. Although the book emphasises people’s vulnerability at the centre of disaster and few countries in South Asia, the implications can be realistic across a variety of disaster settings in diverse social contexts.

Posing an understanding of social construction of disasters in the context of the South Asia, this book will be of interest to academicians in the fields of Disaster Studies, Environmental Studies, Sociology, Political Science, Anthropology, History, Economics, International Development Studies and Governance Studies. It will also be an invaluable reading for policymakers, practitioners, academicians, development planners and all those interested in understanding the complexity and addressing the challenges of making South Asia a disaster-resilient region.