International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 28 (2018) 327–334

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International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijdrr

A critical analysis of vulnerability T

Christine Gibb
Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto, Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, Canada M5S 3G3

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Vulnerability is a concept fundamental to the theoretical and practical dimensions of disasters. Paralleling, and
Structural vulnerability sometimes diverging from, the dominant physicalist discourse in disaster studies, disaster management and
Natural hazard engineering-oriented studies, the conceptualisations of vulnerability and their application have undergone
Disaster several transformations. In this paper, I critically examine the naissance, use and critiques of a structural un-
Physicalist paradigm
derstanding of vulnerability in the context of disasters. I contend that a structural understanding of vulnerability
is less problematic than its physicalist predecessor from both theoretical and practical perspectives, but it is not
unassailable. In fact, not only does structural vulnerability have an Achilles heel, but its potentially fatal flaws
are shared by the physicalist paradigm. Instead of rejecting the structural vulnerability paradigm or being pa-
ralysed by the apparent impasse, I argue that scholars, practitioners and policy-makers should focus on the ways
in which structural vulnerability benefits disaster theory and practice, and foreground the relational character of
vulnerability.

1. Introduction
Vulnerability is a concept fundamental to the theoretical and
practical dimensions of disasters.1 Paralleling, and sometimes diverging
from, the dominant physicalist discourse in disaster studies, disaster
management and engineering-oriented studies, the conceptualisations
of vulnerability and the application of these interpretations have un-
dergone several transformations. This analysis focuses on structural
vulnerability, which, pared down to its most basic elements, involves an
individual or group's exposure to, capacity to cope with, and potenti-
ality to recover and minimise damage from crises, stresses and shocks
([46], 45).
The different meanings of the word ‘structural’ point to very dif-
ferent theoretical positions in hazards and disasters research. An en-
gineering-based definition of structure, as in the physical structure of a
building, is vastly different from David Harvey's ([25], 290–291) gen-
eral definition of structure as neither an " 'action' or [a] 'thing' [but
rather] a system of internal relations which is in the process of being
structured through the operation of its own transformation rules." Watts
and Bohle ([46], 62) have applied this general definition to hazards and
disasters, in which "structures (sets of internally related practices which
carry causal powers) tend to produce certain tendencies, their effects
can be mediated by other mechanisms and by empirical variation in
local conditions." Under the former engineering interpretation, struc-
tural refers to entities that can be strengthened through technical and
engineered means [12,13]. Under the latter interpretation, structural
refers to the institutions, power and historical factors in society that
create inequalities and make some individuals and groups more vul-
nerable than others [35,48]. In this essay, the terms ‘structural vul-
nerability’ and ‘structural understanding of vulnerability’ reflect the
societal structures interpretation and not the engineering structures
interpretation.
The following analysis is an invitation for critical reflection. It ex-
amines the naissance, use and critiques of a structural understanding of
vulnerability in the context of disasters. I contend that a structural
understanding of vulnerability is less problematic than its physicalist

E-mail address: christine.gibb@utoronto.ca.

1
Unless noted otherwise, the terms ‘disaster,’ ‘hazard’ and ‘risk’ reflect the following definitions.A disaster is “a process/event combining a potentially destructive agent/force from the
natural, modified or built environment and a population in a socially and economically produced condition of vulnerability, resulting in a perceived disruption of the customary relative
satisfactions of individual and social needs for physical survival, social order, and meaning” ([37], 4).So-called natural disasters are more aptly (albeit more cumbersomely) described as
"humanitarian disasters with a natural trigger" ([39],183).A hazard is a potentially damaging physical event, phenomenon or human activity that carries a potential for social, infra-
structural or environmental damage [48]. Hazards are categorised as natural (e.g. atmospheric, hydrological, geological and biological), technological (e.g. dangerous materials, de-
structive processes, mechanical and productive) and social (e.g. war, terrorism, civil conflict, and the use of hazardous materials, processes and technologies) [36]. Natural hazards can
result in catastrophic disasters (e.g. hurricane, flood) and in more common but less visible chronic disasters (e.g. everyday risks to human health and wealth brought about by poor
sanitation or no drinking water) [39].Risk is the probability of harmful consequences or expected loss. It is a function of exposure, capacity to mitigate hazard impacts and vulnerability
[16]. Wisner et al. [48] define the relationship according to the risk equation, R = H x V, in which R is risk, H is hazard, and V is vulnerability. Unequal distribution of risk is based on
access to and control over resources (via class, age, physical ability, citizenship status, racial/ethnic and cultural group, gender).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2017.11.007
Received 9 August 2017; Received in revised form 7 November 2017; Accepted 8 November 2017
Available online 10 November 2017
2212-4209/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
C. Gibb
predecessor from both theoretical and practical perspectives, but it is
not unassailable. In fact, not only does structural vulnerability have an
Achilles heel, but its potentially fatal flaws are shared by the physicalist
paradigm. Despite its flaws and the apparent impasse, I argue that
scholars, practitioners and policy-makers should focus on the ways in
which structural vulnerability benefits disaster theory and practice, and
foreground the relational character of vulnerability.
2. A short history of 'vulnerability'
Situating a concept historically, examining the process of and
players involved in establishing categories, and tracing how these ca-
tegories take on meaning through use are essential to comprehending
concepts and categories [25]. Thus, I begin with a short history of
vulnerability. Kelly and Adger [28] trace the term's early linguistic
roots back to the Roman Empire, when the state of soldiers lying
wounded on the battlefield, susceptible to further attack, was described
as ‘vulnerabilis.’ In this classic sense, vulnerability was defined by prior
damage and not by a future stress; the vulnerability of an individual or
social group to a particular stress was primarily determined by their
extant state, or their capacity to respond to a stress.
It was not until the mid-twentieth century that scholars and other
experts explicitly recognised a relationship between vulnerability and
disaster in what has been called the "geophysicalist and technocratic
reductionism" ([26], 7), or simply "physicalist" [39] approach to dis-
asters. Scholars situated vulnerability as a function of mainly biophy-
sical and sometimes technological risk [12], and as a post-calamity
characteristic or state after recovery and rehabilitation efforts had been
implemented [1]. Hence, vulnerability had been redefined as a condi-
tion of susceptibility following a stress.
The key tenets of the physicalist approach can be deduced (in
grossly oversimplified terms) from James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps'
classic faery tale [4]. In The three little pigs, each pig tries to withstand a
perceived hazard (strong winds) by using various technologies (straw,
stick and brick houses). The story's hero, the clever brick-laying third
pig, triumphs over the hazard through his application of appropriate
technology, and is in a privileged position to offer his assistance and
expertise to his less resourceful and forward-thinking counterparts.
Unknowingly, this pig has conformed to the physicalist paradigm that
continues to dominate Western imaginings of disasters and policies to
prepare for and cope with them. The paradigm attributes disaster to an
unavoidable extreme geophysical event occurring in a nature in-
dependent of society. It assumes that scientific expertise and techno-
logical solutions are always the best options for predicting and pre-
venting threats, thereby reducing risk and vulnerability. It emphasises
the preeminence of bureaucratically organised institutions that hire and
pay specialised professionals [26,35]. The physicalist framing reflected
new ideas and discourses emerging in academia and spreading
throughout society in the post-war era: an elevated status for (mainly
Western) experts, technology and knowledge [31], a pervasive capita-
listic worldview producing uneven development and cementing the
separation of nature from society [41], an end of nature and emergence
of risk societies [5], a gross mismatch between the welfare state's ability
to address external (collective) risks and the prevalence of new manu-
factured risks in contemporary societies [21], and widespread uncritical
acceptance and adoption of orthodox science [17]. The physicalist ap-
proach endures as the dominant paradigm in most governments and
their agencies, United Nations bodies and multilateral funding institu-
tions, and continues to heavily influence national and international
decision-making [3,39], although there are signs of increasing recep-
tiveness to alternative critical paradigms among major international
political and economic actors [48] and researchers advocating com-
prehensive, integrative and place-based approaches that span multiple
disciplinary paradigms of vulnerability [18,32].
The understanding of vulnerability was revised once again, when
the ineffectiveness of physicalist interventions to reduce human
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International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 28 (2018) 327–334
suffering became painfully obvious. Despite decades of research and
efforts to reduce the frequency and devastation of disasters, their
numbers had doubled every ten years [39]. The increase could not be
attributed exclusively to better media coverage or a more densely set-
tled global population [3]. Evidence from the global South emerging in
the 1970s and 80s, however, provided plausible alternative explana-
tions; it appeared that everyday society-environment relations and
historical factors better explained hazards and disasters than did geo-
physical processes [26]. This led academics and activists to consider
alternative critical, people-centred explanations of disaster, and to re-
conceive vulnerability in structural, social, ethical, political and equity
terms [3,4,7,39]. Wisner et al.'s ([48], 11) definition of vulnerability as
"the characteristics of a person or group in terms of their capacity to
anticipate, cope with, resist and recover from the impact of a natural
hazard" became the general standard in hazards and disasters research.
The use of vulnerability as a concept and analytical tool was not limited
to risks, hazards and disasters research. It was also integrated initially
into fields such as famine and food insecurity, human ecology, political
economy/ecology and ecological resilience, and later into the fields of
climate change, global environmental change, development, sustain-
able livelihoods, poverty and vulnerability of social-ecological systems
[1,15]. The emerging research indicated that the pendulum was
swinging back toward the classic understanding of vulnerability, as
determined by an extant state and capacity to respond prior to a stress.
It was time to elaborate a structural understanding of vulnerability.
3. A structural understanding of vulnerability: theory and
practice
This section elucidates a structural understanding of vulnerability,
variously called 'structural', 'contextual', 'starting-point', 'social' or 'type
II' vulnerability (hereafter vulnerability unless otherwise noted)
[1,12,18,28]. Each term serves to either emphasise a particular aspect
of this understanding or to distinguish it from a physicalist view of
vulnerability. Using empirical and theoretical evidence, I argue a
structural conception is preferable to a physicalist one even though the
former is plagued by methodological and scalar difficulties.
The first major scholarly attempts to challenge the dominant views
on vulnerability and disaster and to propose approaches consistent with
a structural understanding of vulnerability are the entitlements ap-
proach to drought and famine and the Marxist approach to disasters.
Indian economist Amartya Sen [40] proposed the former in his now-
famous 1981 essay, Poverty and famines: an essay on entitlement and
deprivation. Using historical data from famines in Bengal, Ethiopia, the
Sahel and Bangladesh, he argues that a disaster situation (e.g. drought
and famine) can unfold even in the absence of an absolute hazard (e.g.
food shortage). According to his entitlements approach, it is a person or
group's ability to acquire and exchange resources within a given society
(i.e. their entitlement relations) that determines whether or not they
eat, and not the overall availability of food, on whatever geographic or
temporal scale. In Sen's view, vulnerability is entitlement failure, and
social differentiation is both a cause and a consequence of vulnerability.
Therefore, adjusting the mechanisms by which food is allocated in so-
ciety is the best way to reduce vulnerability. This approach was highly
influential; it is credited with shaping government policies in sub-Sa-
haran Africa and South Asia in which food is stockpiled in good years,
and later sold in lean years at low prices the poor can afford [39].
Geomorphologist Kenneth Hewitt's [26] book, Interpretations of ca-
lamity, offers an equally powerful critique of both the content and the
underpinnings of prevailing physicalist hazards research. Hewitt's ap-
proach is particularly appealing because, unlike Sen's entitlements ap-
proach, it can be applied to a wide range of disasters. Hewitt stresses
that it is the everyday social interactions and structures embedded in
broader historical circumstances, and not the particularities of a natural
hazard, that ultimately determine the nature, causes and consequences
of a disaster. The corollary of such a framing of disaster is that
C. Gibb
vulnerability is necessarily driven by economic, social and political
influences. In other words, the dominant view fails because it does not
recognise the abnormal in everyday normal life. This critique has em-
pirical support in Chile [9], Guyana [37], the Philippines [19,20] and
the United States [11], among others. Hewitt's approach was later
generalised as a Marxist approach that concentrates on the socio-
economic structures in which individuals and communities are em-
bedded to pinpoint root social or structural causes (local and interna-
tional) of disasters [39]. The Marxist moniker is explained by the
approach's linking of the exploitative class relationships within and
between countries to the seemingly unavoidable social inequalities
produced through the global capitalist economy.
Hewitt's conception of disaster was later revised and theorised in
three influential models. Watts and Bohle [46] provided a distinctly
geographic perspective to the debates with their new realist theory of
famine and hunger (later generalised as the spaces of vulnerability
model) that considers how locally and historically specific social, po-
litical, economic and structural-historical processes define the social
and geographic space of vulnerability. Wisner et al. [48] elaborated two
models, the pressure and release (PAR) model and the access model.
The PAR model is a static hierarchical framework of the proximate and
ultimate causes that prefigure a disaster. The access model is a dynamic
framework for investigating how different people acquire resources to
secure their livelihoods in the context of social and environmental
events and long-term processes associated with a disaster. It stresses
human agency as people's ability to develop strategies to achieve their
stated aims. People adopt a range of coping strategies based on pre-
vention, impact minimisation, hoarding of food and saleable assets,
production diversification, income source diversification, development
of social support networks and post-event coping ([48], 114–119);
these coping strategies reduce vulnerability. Applying these models to a
wide range of hazards (e.g. famine, biological hazards, floods, coastal
storms, earthquakes and volcanoes) the authors explain that vulner-
ability results from interlinked "root causes embedded in ideological,
social and economic systems, the dynamic pressures of a demographic,
socioeconomic or ecological nature, and specific sets of unsafe condi-
tions that, when combined with a natural hazard, produce a disaster"
([48], 28). All three models have been applied and adapted for specific
academic and community-level disaster work.
Evidence from Philippine disasters support the above models (cf.
[19,20]). For example, in 2004, a terrible combination of successive
typhoons, massive landslides and devastating flash floods led to con-
siderable physical damage and killed more than 1600 people in Quezon
province. Gaillard et al. [20] claim that the so-called causes of the
disaster, heavy rainfall and deforestation, were only the triggers. The
real causes were structural and not at all natural: difficulty accessing
land and other resources, which forced people to live in unsafe areas
and farm on steep slopes just to be food secure; and corrupt elites who
turned a blind eye to illegal logging and actually encouraged the
overexploitation of forests. Framed within the PAR model, this case
shows the unequal distribution and exercise of power (root causes)
facilitated the translation of the real causes (dynamic pressures) into
unsafe conditions. In his study on risk perception to volcanic hazards
following the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, Gaillard's [19] conclusion
echoes key tenets of the access model, the spaces of vulnerability model
and the entitlements approach. He concludes that people's access to
livelihoods must include both the availability of livelihoods and their
capability or entitlement to use resources. Their access is a product of
class relationships and of a broader social order in which economic
wealth, social opportunities and political power are unevenly dis-
tributed. These Philippine examples intimate other insights accrued
from a structural understanding of vulnerability, namely margin-
alisation as a link between vulnerability and disaster, the multi-
dimensionality of disasters, and disasters as opportunities to abuse
power.
Vulnerability is related to disaster through an intermediary, the
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International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 28 (2018) 327–334
process of marginalisation. Though frequently related, the concepts of
marginality and vulnerability are not synonymous; the former refers to
processes that render certain people socially, economically, politically
and legally excluded, whereas the latter refers to people's exposure and
capacity to deal with stresses [18,23,43,46]. Pelling ([39], 179) argues
that the root cause of a disaster is always marginalisation, defined as
"the exclusion of certain individuals and groups from economic, social
or political resources." The result of inequalities in a given society, such
as class, gender, race, ethnicity, caste, religion, age, health, disability,
and other social cleavages [3,4,11,39], marginality influences people's
control over basic needs and rights [46], which in turn, determines who
is vulnerable and whether a hazard unfolds into a disaster [39]. Mar-
ginality extends into diverse areas of people's lives. For example, vic-
tims of flood, landslide and volcanic disasters in the Philippines are
geographically marginal because they live in hazard-prone areas, so-
cially marginal because they are poor, and politically marginal because
their voices are disregarded [19,20]. It is within these overlapping
spatial and societal dimensions of marginality where vulnerability is
manifested [23]. Marginalisation and vulnerability are thus constructed
in social systems that apportion risks unevenly among citizens who
exert different demands on the physical environment [4,48].
Reflections on Hurricane Katrina in the USA further underscore the
potential for devastating impacts when a natural hazard occurs in a
locale with an uneven distribution of risk, marginality and vulner-
ability. The variation in the social inequality landscape of New Orleans
far surpassed that observed in the physical landscape. Entitlements to
health care, clean food and water, safe and livable neighbourhoods,
social networks, transportation, capital and political representation
were highly differentiated [11]. The city's topographical gradients
mirrored its class, race, ethnic, age and gender gradients: the wealthy
had access to cars, credit cards and insurance plans; African-American
and other ethnic enclaves were located in some of the most hazard-
prone areas; insurance cheques were delayed for female-headed
households who did not fit their insurer's narrow definition of family
[27,42]. The social systems that had produced such unequal exposure
to risk increased the likelihood that a disaster would affect certain
people more than others, and these disparities reflected the city's power
hierarchies [4]. As the relief and reconstruction efforts after Hurricane
Katrina tragically demonstrated, disasters do not obliterate social dif-
ferences but instead further entrench social oppression and exploitation
[42]. Indeed, while engineered structures were destroyed in the storm
(e.g. dykes), social structures were not. Therefore, decreasing the im-
pact of disasters requires reducing vulnerability and inequality, and
increasing disaster resilience via improved social conditions and living
standards for all marginalised groups [11]. O'Brien et al. [35] echo the
assertion that lessening vulnerability necessarily entails altering the
context in which the hazard occurs, and add that any strategy must be
based on principles of equity and justice.
As indicated in the above discussion, a structural understanding of
vulnerability rejects the physicalist one-dimensional portrayal of dis-
asters (e.g. caused by natural forces) in favour of a multidimensional
portrayal. Wisner et al. ([49], 367) contend that disasters
are rooted in everyday life, are manifestations of development
failures, have distant and remote precursors, are linked to livelihood
resilience and household capabilities, and result in the need to re-
lease pressures through changes in institutions, structures of dom-
ination and improved access to resources.
Hence, disasters reflect the "totality of relationships" of a particular
social context that prefigures a disaster precipitated by environmental
forces ([36], 28). Feminist scholars applaud this multidimensional de-
piction of disasters and vulnerability because it focuses on current and
future vulnerabilities arising from power differentials, gender ideolo-
gies, historical changes, and the inseparability of society and nature in
the context of concurrent socioeconomic, ecological and political con-
ditions [7,16]. It also closely examines individuals' relative access to or
C. Gibb
control over key resources within societies, which are necessarily in-
fluenced by gender [16].
The practical benefit of recognising the multidimensionality of
disasters is that it aids in explaining the production, reproduction and
consequences of environmental hazards and disasters, and in pre-
scribing solutions. For example, Pelling [38] uses a political ecology
approach to study vulnerability to floods, climate change and sea-level
rise in Guyana, which he estimates affect 90% of the population. He
examines how the country's colonial history, decades of poor political
leadership and perverse power structures established under the Inter-
national Monetary Fund structural adjustment reforms all coevolved
with an increasing risk to flood hazards to create a particular political
and environmental space shaping present-day vulnerability. Drawing
on two case studies, one urban, one peri-urban, Pelling argues that
remedies are best sought to deal with the political, social and economic
processes that render individuals and groups vulnerable, rather than the
actual vulnerabilities themselves. Taylor [43] uses a similar political
ecology approach to probe the relational dynamics of vulnerability in
agrarian environments in Andra Pradesh, India. By foregrounding and
nuancing questions about power relations and mechanisms of social
exclusion and adverse inclusion, Taylor ([43], 318) contends that “the
relative security of some social groups is achieved through the pro-
duction of insecurity among others.” These emphases on interrupting
oppressive processes as a solution supports Harvey's [25] framing of a
structure as a system of dynamic relations and Watts and Bohle's [44]
theoretical portrayal of contingent, open and relational causal factors,
whose effects are not fixed. Hence, the multidimensional character of
disasters highlights opportunities to alter unfair political, social and
economic structures.
The corollary of this observation, however, is that disasters create
opportunities for exploitation even by those who deny the multi-
dimensionality of disasters. The dominant physicalist paradigm legit-
imised the discourse and actions (or lack thereof) of Western govern-
ments whereby disaster, poverty, disease and the environment were
treated as isolated issues to be addressed in accordance with the pre-
ferred timelines and strategies of Western governments [3]. The para-
digm's assertion that destruction was caused by natural hazards vali-
dated the idea that nature was responsible for poverty and for the
uneven distribution of material goods, conveniently absolving a global
capitalist system and neocolonialism of any wrongdoing. It allowed
engineers, scientists and bureaucrats to appropriate the hazards and
disasters discourse, and to quarantine it away from non-experts, which
had the unintended consequence of stymying efforts to understand,
prevent and mitigate disasters [26]. While not written as a critique of
disaster discourse and management, insights from Timothy Mitchell's
Rule of experts are useful in illustrating this point. Mitchell ([31], 41,42)
reveals three significant but overlooked features of the new politics
based on technological expertise that guided the development and
modernisation in 20th century Egypt. First, so-called expertise was
merely a concentration and restructuring of pre-existing knowledge.
Second, each technical project failed, forcing experts to learn from
nature and to continually adjust their science and technology. Third,
the extra-scientific origins of technical expertise were actively covered
up, as was the fact that each new technology was itself a reaction to
difficulties stemming from earlier failed techno-science projects.
Mitchell ([31], 52) concludes that deliberately misapprehending com-
plexity in favour of generating "neatly separate realms of reason and the
real world, ideas and their objects, the human and nonhuman" was
necessary for the production and reproduction of techno-power in
Egypt, and in the twentieth century in general. Parallel lessons exist in
the history of disaster management (cf. [3,39]).
While they do not actually resolve problems of geographic power
imbalances and dubious implementation of technology, structural re-
conceptions of disaster and vulnerability can at least expose them.
There is a strikingly cosy fit between the conservative attitudes of
dominant national and international actors and the solutions proposed
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International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 28 (2018) 327–334
by the multibillion dollar disaster industry, composed primarily of en-
gineering firms based in the global North [39]. Consistent with patterns
of economic exploitation instituted in the European colonial era
[14,17], business opportunities are sought out in the Third World-cum-
hazardous nations, whose resources are drained through the purchase
of expensive disaster risk reduction and rehabilitation technologies
[39]. Firms have a bias for technology-based solutions, which may not
be available, accessible, affordable, socially acceptable, or advisable on
environmental grounds [34]. When used in isolation, technology-based
solutions may actually prolong or increase losses associated with a
disaster because they fail to engage with root causes, they can create a
false sense of security thereby encouraging increased risk-taking, and
they are open to meddling by powerful economic, political or social
actors [39]. In fact, politics and ideology can and have trumped real
disaster risk reduction efforts [42].
4. Non-fatal weaknesses of the structural vulnerability paradigm
The discussion thus far has depicted structural vulnerability in a
positive light. The concept, however, has been criticised for going too
far in its emphasis on the human factors underlying disasters.
Brookfield [8] posits that the tendency in the 1980s and 90s to attribute
socially produced causes as the ultimate causes of even genuinely
‘natural’ calamities has eclipsed the importance of underlying causes
originating in the geophysical (environmental) domain. Based on evi-
dence from two historical case studies on soil erosion in St Kitts and in
Europe, and a contemporary study of the Aral Sea crisis in the former
Soviet Union, he demonstrates that most disasters stem from a complex
mixture of human and geophysical causes. He asserts that dis-
aggregating the ecological components of vulnerability is equally im-
portant to deconstructing the political and economic components.
Other scholars echo Brookfield's call for a more equal weighting of
these components (cf. [15,18,39,44,45]). These critiques have helped
to frame a more socially and environmentally balanced positioning of
vulnerability and disaster (cf. [44,45] for an alternative framing via a
coupled human-environment system).
Another question that continues to plague researchers, politicians
and practitioners alike is ‘how to assess vulnerability?’ There is no
agreed upon method to measure vulnerability [11,18,29]. Academics
and other experts cannot give an objectively true answer to an essen-
tially subjective and political question on which outcomes are better or
worse [29]. Conventional physicalist-based methods to assess patterns
of risk and geophysical susceptibility cannot be used as-are for evalu-
ating structural vulnerability or new types of manufactured risks and
hazards, especially when the latter impact more than one social group
[39]. The response of structural vulnerability proponents has been to
focus on the particularities of place and to measure the vulnerability of
a certain group in a specific locale. What is often missing from these
studies is an analysis of the actual formation of vulnerability through
processes taking place within multiple unbounded spatial and temporal
scales [2]. The use of a political ecology approach by Pelling [38] and
Taylor [43] stand out as notable exceptions that offer such processual
analyses, and a focus on both the symptoms and underlying causes of
vulnerability. Vulnerability evolves at a range of scales through en-
vironmental change, sociocultural change, market integration and
transfers of resources, people and information [2]. In Eastern Ghana,
for instance, Westerhoff and Smit [47] found that vulnerability pro-
cesses operate at each of the local, regional, national and international
levels; phenomena and conditions ranging from bushfires, climatic
conditions, resettlement schemes and World Bank-influenced macro-
economic policies synergistically affect people's exposure to stresses,
adaptive capacity and coping strategies. To address the inherent multi-
scalar processes, Adger et al. [2] propose a characterisation of vulner-
ability as nested and teleconnected, whereby nestedness reflects lin-
kages to local history, social relations and place, and teleconnected
emphasises the networking of local systems, people and places, and
C. Gibb
their social and economic implications.
A nested and teleconnected characterisation of vulnerability does
not, unfortunately, resolve the problem of setting scalar parameters.
Scale can refer to either spatial or temporal boundaries and is often
defined for "a particular issue and for particular purposes" ([10], 110).
Because scale is socially defined and inevitably subject to political,
scientific, legal or cultural influences, rarely is there perfect congruence
(or even compatibility) between the units of analysis chosen by re-
searchers and those required by policy-makers and practitioners to as-
sess the vulnerability of social-environment systems [15]. Instead of
lamenting the impossibility of a truly objective and neutral scale, re-
searchers and practitioners can use the determination of scale as an
opportunity to clearly articulate the goals, values and discourses un-
derlying their efforts [10,15]. This approach could reduce uncritical
application of the discourses of global environmental problems and risk
onto a local scale, which merely reflects the values and practices of
dominant scientific networks, and replicates predefined assumptions
about environmental risk and degradation imposed from outside [17].
These scalar, assessment and conceptual difficulties indicate that cur-
rent iterations of a structural understanding of vulnerability are not
infallible. Proponents, however, are well aware of the problems and are
actively seeking theoretical and practical remedies.
Before proceeding to the next section on the assailable qualities of
structural vulnerability, it is necessary to add a few stipulations. Despite
its apparent inclusivity, scholars have ardently defended what vulner-
ability is not. It is not synonymous with poverty [39,48] or social class
[16], although these concepts are closely interlinked and can operate
simultaneously. It is not a rejection of technology and science-based
interventions in disaster preparedness and management [4]. It is not
exclusively based on socioeconomic and political conditions, but also
on environmental forces [36]. In other words, vulnerability is a func-
tion of both biophysical and socially constructed risks, or what Giddens
[21] would call traditional and manufactured risks. Lastly, to retain its
power as an analytical tool, vulnerability must not be applied to any-
thing other than people [48]. Livelihoods, buildings, settlement loca-
tions, infrastructure, countries, and so on can be ‘fragile,’ ‘unsafe,’
‘hazardous’ or other synonym, but they cannot be ‘vulnerable.’ If people
and shoddily-build houses are considered equally vulnerable, practical
efforts to carry out disaster preparedness can be inappropriately com-
partmentalised and fall under the exclusive jurisdiction of narrowly-
focused government offices.
As discussed in the preceding pages, a structural understanding of
vulnerability enriches disaster discourse. It exposes power relations,
highlights opportunities to correct inequalities, recognises the ab-
normal in everyday life, has empirical support – especially in the global
South, and reflects the multidimensional character of disasters. While a
structuralist perspective is clearly an improvement over the dominant
physicalist view, can it (with minor tweaking) provide robust practical
and theoretical solutions? The next section explores this question.
5. Does structural vulnerability have an Achilles heel?
Son of the mortal Peleus and the nymph Thetis, Achilles' prowess on the
battlefield was legendary and unrivaled. He had acquired near im-
mortality as an infant when his mother had dipped him in the magical
River Styx. His heel, where she had grasped him, was the only part of his
body susceptible to injury; it was the eventual site of a fatal arrow in the
battle of Troy. Today, an Achilles heel describes a person's assailable
feature or weakness [33].
The preceding section reviewed the weaknesses of structural vul-
nerability as a theoretical concept and a practical tool: acknowledging
geophysical (natural) causes, finding appropriate assessment and eva-
luation methods and addressing scale. Many, and perhaps all, of these
weaknesses can be overcome with further refinement of vulnerability
theory and methods, a more equal weighting of geophysical and human
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forces, additional empirical evidence, greater political will, and the
achievement of broad development goals such as the eradication of
poverty. But are these remedies sufficient? Is it possible to deliver a
fatal arrow to a structural understanding of vulnerability? To probe the
possibility of an Achilles heel for structural vulnerability, the final
section revisits the presumed improvements of the structural perspec-
tive over the physicalist one, and examines the ontological and epis-
temological underpinnings of the vulnerability discourse. Such an ap-
proach is warranted because structural vulnerability draws attention to
the multidimensional quality of disaster, a quality that discloses "fun-
damental features of society and culture, laying bare crucial relation-
ships and core values [produced through] intersecting and inter-
penetrating processes and events of social, environmental, cultural,
political, and technological natures" ([36], 26). These intersections can
only be understood by interrogating how dominant depictions of the
society-nature relationship create conditions of vulnerability.
In the previous section, I argued that a structural understanding of
vulnerability was especially useful in highlighting the inadequacies of a
physicalist perspective; for example, it pointed out major flaws in
treating disaster, poverty and the environment as isolated unrelated
issues. Yet, is it satisfactory to merely raise issues? Can structural vul-
nerability, in its current incarnation, actually overcome the theoretical
and practical failings of the dominant paradigm? Bankoff, a major critic
of the physicalist perspective who has written extensively in support of
critical alternatives, is not convinced. In fact, he goes as far as asserting
that structural vulnerability, as a less-environmentally-deterministic-
more-socially-economically-and-politically-informed alternative to
physicalist vulnerability, does not significantly diverge from the per-
spective that nature, via hazards, results in poverty and uneven de-
velopment [3].
To elucidate Bankoff's argument, I turn to the complicated and often
messy relationship between science and society (and politics in parti-
cular). All methodologies, discourses, epistemologies, ontologies, and
so on, are underlain with an ideology [24], where ideology is taken to
be "an inverted, truncated, distorted reflection of reality; a set of ideas
rooted in practical experience of a given social class which sees reality
only from its own perspective" ([41], 15). By analysing how three in-
fluential thinkers - Malthus, Ricardo and Marx – explain the population-
resource relationship, Harvey [24] demonstrates that a given ideology
invariably makes available a limited set of methodologies, which in
turn yield certain conclusions and political prescriptions. The mere
claim that the scientific method guarantees objectivity and ethical
neutrality, and is ideology-free, is itself ideological. Harvey does not
dispute the results of all science, but instead maintains that science is
necessarily social and ideological, and that scientific results are not
immune to ideological assault and are not necessarily better than re-
sults from other methods. In the following paragraphs I develop this
assertation, and in doing so, point to the fatal flaws of the structural
vulnerability paradigm: it is necessarily underlain with ideology, and is
thus susceptible to ideological assault or appropriation; it over-
emphasises human agency; its solutions rest upon a problematic re-
production of the nature-culture dualism; it reproduces a damaging
discourse of Western hegemony.
There are historical examples of ideology and specific interests
dictating disaster outcomes and even the course of history. According to
Davis [14], the origins of the inequality among nations and the irre-
vocable division of humanity (in what would later be called the Third
World, or for our purposes, hazard-prone nations inhabited by vulner-
able people) lie in European colonialism and the integration of other
parts of the world into the global market economy. During the colonial
period, famine and drought, though linked with climatic events, were
very much the product of human factors and decisions. The three waves
of drought, famine and disease that killed 30–50 million people in
India, China, Java, Philippines, New Caledonia, Korea, Brazil, southern
Africa, Maghreb and Russia in 1876–79, 1889–91, 1896–1902 could
have been averted had the political will existed ([14], 52). European
C. Gibb
empires and elites possessed the riches to reverse the situation. Under
colonial rule, the effectiveness of traditional coping strategies of tro-
pical agriculturalists to extreme weather events was eroded through the
restructuring of household and village linkages to regional production
systems, to world commodity markets and to the colonial state. The
death of millions of people worldwide occurred at the precise moment
that they were forcibly assimilated into the modern world system. Yet,
the magnitude of poverty, drought and famine, and the utter neglect of
non-elites in the colonies have been erased from Victorian era history.
Davis contends the historical erasure, the conscious dismissal of human
suffering, and the stop-at-nothing attitude of colonial exploitation were
all necessary to justify the forced opening of many parts of the world to
modernity and capitalism.
Forsyth's Critical political ecology finds evidence in the practice of
modern-day environmental science to support Harvey's conclusions and
Davis' astute observations. Forsyth ([17], 79) adopts the phrase "social
framings of science and knowledge" to describe the principles and as-
sumptions underlying political debate and action. While the frames
themselves are implicit, the policies and positions to which they give
rise are distinctly explicit. It is thus imperative to be aware of these
frames and how they are created in order to reflect on how they in-
fluence politics. With the aim of "enabling the production of more
biophysically accurate, and socially relevant, science," he challenges
many existing beliefs about the separation of environmental science
and politics ([17], 2). Instead of dividing explanations of environmental
problems as scientific projects and environmental policy as political
projects, environmental science and politics should be seen as copro-
duced or mutually reinforcing at every stage. Science is not, and will
never be, a neutral backdrop for politics; thus, people should not use
science uncritically and assume it is free from political influence. In
reality, however, powerful social groups have had their interests dis-
proportionately represented in environmental science and politics,
which have resulted in policies that disproportionately penalise poor
land users in the global South.
There is nothing inherent to a structural understanding of vulner-
ability that protects it from ideological assault or appropriation by
powerful social groups to justify particular politics. The most con-
structive contribution of structural vulnerability would thus be a re-
cognition that the concept is relative and inherently about ethics and
equity [15]. Not only should researchers investigating vulnerability
adopt "a considerable amount of humility," they should acknowledge
that incorporating disparate paradigms and worldviews is intrinsic to
the research process itself ([15], 388). Indeed, many proponents of
structural vulnerability recognise that they construct their ideas within
a particular socio-political context, which is inevitably reflected in their
research results.
The emphasis on agency as a key tenet of structural vulnerability
may be another potentially fatal flaw. Agency is an important compo-
nent of Wisner et al.'s [49] access model, and is widely used in both
theoretical and empirical studies of structural vulnerability. There is an
exhaustive literature on agency, but for the purposes of this discussion,
I will simply define it as "people's abilities to influence lines of conduct
in their lives and call attention to factors that both constrain and enable
people to act" ([7], 28). This definition evokes the question of 'whose
agency is foregrounded?' In disaster studies, the 'who' frequently refers
to spatially, socially, economically or politically marginalised in-
dividuals or groups with a high exposure to stresses, and a low capacity
to cope and recover from them. Efforts to strengthen the agency of these
groups are not unlike the problematic attempts of government agencies
and development institutions to empower marginalised people. Em-
powerment discourses and interventions hinge upon uneven power
relations in which purported experts have the exclusive power to
identify and fix the flawed power of others [30]. A focus on empow-
erment offers states a convenient and relatively inexpensive option to
avoid supplying their marginalised citizens with basic needs and im-
proving their well-being; empowerment transfers these responsibilities
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to previously-marginal-newly-empowered citizens [22]. Similar to the
presupposition of empowerment as a panacea, foregrounding the
agency of marginal and vulnerable people without equal attention to
the social structures, relations and processes that produce and maintain
marginality and vulnerability is highly problematic.
Mitchell [31] questions the validity of an emphasis on human
agency from another angle. He argues that not all forms of agency are
human insofar as their power is not under the control of human beings
as social agents. For example, a variety of other factors, what he calls
"the forces of technology, disease, hydraulics, war, nature, chemistry,
etc.," interact with human intention, producing complex and sometimes
catastrophic results ([31], 10). A close inspection of these interactions
casts human agency as
less a calculating intelligence directing social outcomes and more as
the product of a series of alliances in which the human element is
never wholly in control. Is human agency a disembodied form of
reason, observing, calculating, and reorganising the world before it?
Or is it rather more of a technical body, manufactured out of pro-
cesses that precede the difference between ideas and things, be-
tween human and nonhuman? If so, what consequences follow for
thinking about social explanation, or the logic of history, or for
analysing processes, such as the economic, that are formatted as the
outcome of human calculation ([31], 10)?
Mitchell's line of reasoning leads to some very uncomfortable
questions for a structural understanding of vulnerability positing a
preeminent role for the human determination of disaster, risk and
vulnerability. Mitchell does not deny the existence of human agency,
rather he asserts that its inclusion in discourse and analysis results in a
tendency to separate phenomena into uncomplicated, tidy, dualistic
categories and ignore the mixed way events and processes really occur.
Mitchell's general critique of human agency is akin to Brookfield's
specific complaint of the bias of structural vulnerability proponents to
overweight the human causes of disaster.
Perhaps it is the solutions prescribed by the structural paradigm that
pose the greatest challenge to fully embracing vulnerability. There is a
tendency in conventional disaster work to treat symptoms instead of
causes because vulnerability is deeply rooted, yet any lasting solution
involves political change, radical reform of the international economic
system and the development of public policy to protect rather than
exploit people and natural resources [48]. In the 1990s and early 2000s,
for example, structural vulnerability featured prominently in the dis-
cussions leading up to and during major international summits hosted
by key international institutions and government agencies [48]. Yet, in
the final version of summit declarations and documentation normalised
beliefs prevailed with the erasure of any traces of the structural per-
spective and the reinstatement of its physicalist predecessor. Oliver-
Smith [36] proposes an alternative explanation for the rash of disaster
policies and practices that target symptoms instead of causes. He argues
that understanding vulnerability requires an appreciation for the con-
struction of nature and society, and in particular the nature-culture
dichotomy. In prevailing Western thought, there is an inherent dualism
separating nature from society. Society is perceived to "exist as a col-
lection of human constructs and relations, and the environment is 'out
there', waiting to be acted upon in the cause of sustaining human life"
([36], 28). This dualistic perspective presupposes the interaction of two
separate entities and implicitly supports solutions requiring people to
generate suitable means of acting upon or with the environment. That
this dualism pervades physicalist and structural paradigms alike begs
the question of whether or not a structural understanding of vulner-
ability is just another reaffirmation of Western hegemony and of the
West as a universal model.
The tendency of social sciences to draw upon particular historical
experiences in the West as the template for universal knowledge is
highly problematic. Universalistic generalisations are frequently per-
ceived as accurate representations, yet they oversimplify and
C. Gibb
misrepresent change, and overlook important political factors in un-
equal distribution, which misdirects attention away from more acutely
damaging impacts [17]. Economics, for example, was abstracted from
the formalisation of labour, market, regulatory and judiciary processes
and social relations specific to 19th century Western Europe [31]. Yet,
this same discipline completely discounts the important role played by
the European colonies and the overall structure of the European em-
pires in facilitating market exchange in Europe. Instead of acknowl-
edging the limitations imposed by its narrow disciplinary roots, eco-
nomics proclaims that "every country in the world [should] be
measured and understood in relation to this universal model" ([31], 7).
The example of economics is emblematic of the broader theory of
Eurocentric diffusionism,
the notion that European civilisation – 'The West' – has had some
unique cultural advantage, some special quality of race or culture or
environment or spirit, which gives this human community a per-
manent superiority over all other communities, at all times in his-
tory and down to the present ([6], 1).
Critically reflecting upon universal models that construe the global
South as vulnerable and the global North as the sole source of solutions
is thus a crucial project. Forsyth [17] maintains that because a phe-
nomenon is influenced more by local culture and historical experiences
than by predefined notions of that phenomenon, locally embedded
understandings of perceptions and experiences of a phenomenon that
allow for a more locally relevant and socially acceptable account are
the preferred alternative.
According to Bankoff [3], both physicalist and structural disaster
discourses reproduce a damaging discourse of Western hegemony. At a
superficial level, the two discourses seem to espouse opposing positions
on the ultimate causes of disasters. A closer inspection of the causes,
however, reveals the two discourses are actually in agreement. Despite
the prevalence of scholarship alleging the multidimensionality of dis-
asters, Bankoff ([3], 29) argues that the structural paradigm still shares
with its physicalist counterpart a "one-dimensional construction of the
processes that transform a hazard into a disaster." He explains,
While the technological and scientific discourse of natural disasters
creates marginal environments that more clearly reveal its pa-
ternalistic mentality and colonial origins, that of vulnerability ap-
pears to construct a less culturally specific geography of disaster
based on the relative entitlement and empowerment of people ex-
posed to hazard. Yet, in the final analysis, the two are variants of the
same hegemonic discourse that identifies one and the same parts of
the globe as the abode of mainly disadvantaged people who dwell in
poorly governed and environmentally degraded spaces ([3], 29).
Not only do the dominant physicalist and structural paradigms
concur at some level on the causes of disasters, they both portray the
West (or global North) as superior and the standard to which the rest of
the world should aspire. The dominant approach makes no attempt to
conceal its affinity for Western science, technology and engineering-
based disaster preparedness and management. In contrast, the struc-
tural approach is much more covert. Similar to discourses of poverty,
underdevelopment and overpopulation, the vulnerability discourse re-
inforces an essentialising depiction of certain societies and people as
"weak, passive and pathetic" and regions outside the global North as
"dangerous, disease-ridden, poverty-stricken and disaster-prone" ([3],
29). This embedded assumption was all but inevitable because the
structural paradigm emerged from within a dominant Western world-
view, and so necessarily mirrors Western values, principles and culture.
6. Conclusion
In this invitation for critical reflection, I examined the naissance,
use and critiques of a structural understanding of vulnerability in the
context of disasters. The analysis showed that a structural
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International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 28 (2018) 327–334
understanding of vulnerability is less problematic than its physicalist
predecessor from both theoretical and practical perspectives, but it is
not unassailable. Like the mythical Greek warrior Achilles and the
wounded soldiers lying on the battlefield during the Roman Empire,
structural vulnerability is susceptible because of its extant state, or the
prior damage inflicted upon it via its formation within a dominant
Western liberal consciousness. The paradigm has an Achilles heel: it is
necessarily underlain with ideology, and is thus susceptible to ideolo-
gical assault or appropriation; it overemphasises human agency; its
solutions rest upon a problematic reproduction of the nature-culture
dualism; it reproduces a damaging discourse of Western hegemony.
Despite these flaws, there are options out of the apparent impasse.
As discussed in this analysis, there are avenues through which struc-
tural vulnerability can be usefully applied to benefit disaster theory and
practice. The paradigm also informs subsequent theorisations of vul-
nerability. Taylor [43] elaborates upon a particularly promising one,
the concept of relational vulnerability. It foregrounds questions of so-
cial differentiation, equity and power relations at multiple spatial and
temporal scales. It posits that the production and reproduction of vul-
nerability is directly linked to social relations, in which marginal in-
dividuals and households are rendered insecure through the parallel
processes of social exclusion and adverse incorporation into grossly
lopsided power structures. The corollary of the relational character of
these processes and unequal power relations is that advantaged social
groups benefit from greater relative security and prospects. When ap-
plied to a political ecology approach that both studies the symptoms of
vulnerability and tackles root causes, relational vulnerability offers new
possibilities for minimising some of the non-fatal and fatal flaws of the
structural vulnerability paradigm. Although an emphasis on the dy-
namic and relational character of vulnerability does not present easy or
comfortable solutions, by situating disasters as a question of power, it
offers scholars, practitioners and policy-makers a springboard for just
and committed work.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Fonds de recherche du Québec –
Société et culture (FRQSC) and the Canada Chair of Asian Research at
the Université de Montréal. I greatly appreciate the suggestions from
two anonymous reviewers.
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