Session 7:

Vulnerability(part 1)
SANA KHOSA

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA-NC

Introduction to Vulnerability

 What is it?

 One word to describe it.

 Urdu word for it?
Some images that may depict vulnerability

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

Some images that may depict vulnerability

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-ND

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA-NC
Source: ALJAZEERA
Vulnerability

 Concept explaining the state of individuals, people, whole

communities, countries?
 Vulnerable groups
 Vulnerable lands
 Vulnerable societies (made up of weak institutional set-up, laws, rules
protecting people and places, environmentally unjust societies)
 Vulnerability – some definitions

 The UNISDR(2017) defines it as “[t]he conditions determined by physical,

social, economic and environmental factors or processes, which increase the
susceptibility of a community to the impact of hazards.”

 “…disaster vulnerability as a set of conditions indicative of the potential for

loss: loss of life, physical and mental well-being, the ability to function,
physical systems such as buildings and infrastructure, livelihoods and
personal assets such as wealth and savings, and environmental diversity and
sustainability” (p.121)
Not only a state.

 It is not static or a state

 An evolving/changing set of conditions
 Driven by various forces – dynamics of the world systems,
marginalization of people based on racial and social/political
actions, and other reasons why inequality remains deep-rooted
Drivers of Vulnerability

 1. Hazardousness of place
 2. Built-environment and infrastructure vulnerability
 3. Social vulnerability
Hazardousness of Place/Exposure is high

 Some geographic areas more prone to hazards

 These areas are more exposed
 E.g.: coastal areas – hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones
floodplains, areas near rivers and streams – flash/ riverine floods
Bangladesh and Pakistan – more floods
Drought in African Regions
Case of Philippines – one of the most hazard prone areas
 Hazardousness of Place

 Some areas more at risk due to technological hazards as well

 Houston – largest chemical complex in the US
 Communities with nuclear plants are also at a higher risk
 However, even though exposure may be uniform in a community, but the
people exposed are not equally vulnerable.
 “…exposed populations show variation in their capacity for mitigating and
preparing for earthquakes, knowledge of what to do in the event of an
earthquake, and ability to undertake those self-protective actions.
 Why doesn’t everyone evacuate?
 Built-environment vulnerability
 What does built-environment include?
 Buildings and infrastructure (bridges, ports, roads, underpass, power
grids)
 Constructed systems such as levees, seawalls, dams
 Built-environment vulnerability implies loss from destruction and
damage to these, and weakening of these structures overtime.
 Hazard and risk assessments help to ensure that built-environment
is updated according to the threats in the region. Does the built
environment need some update? Maintenance ? Retrofitting?

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under

CC BY-SA-NC
 Over-reliance on the built-system…

 ‘Subways were stopped in their tunnels, airports halted operations, and elevators
stalled mid-ride. Water systems shut down. The communications network was
disrupted; cellular telephones ceased to work; emergency response networks were
hampered; and automatic teller machines went dark. Many restaurants and shops
shuttered their doors, and streets were rapidly overwhelmed by vehicles and
pedestrians trying to find their way home. Without air-conditioning, many
buildings rapidly become stifling. Stranded commuters spent the night in train
stations, hotel lobbies, and emergency shelters’. (US Dept of Transportation,
2004:2). (August 2003 Power Blackout in the US)
 Cascading impacts…

 Elderly suffered more

 Food poison cases increased
 Hospitals emergency departments didn’t have the capacity to manage this
 Accessibility to prescription drugs

 Highly advanced communities can be very vulnerable to this type of power grid
failure.
 Power grid may be ‘the single most vulnerable system in our critical
infrastructure’ (Perrow, 2006, 213).
 Social vulnerability in disasters

 Tierney conceptualizes “social vulnerability to disasters as a condition that can

be found at a particular point in time and is the consequence of historical and
ongoing societal forces that create a disproportionate potential for loss, and also
for experiencing poorer outcomes as a result of loss” (p. 125).
 “Vulnerable groups are those groups that are more likely to experience a range
of negative impacts when disaster strike and less likely to experience positive
outcomes in the aftermath of disasters”. (p. 125)
 Poorer outcomes as a result of loss – reinforcement of pre-existing inequalities
Ideal scenario vs reality

 Build back better and reduce pre-existing inequalities , ‘levelling the

playing field’

 Most suffering, should get the most in relief and help during recovery.

 The Mathew Effect (Robert Merton, 1968): “…those in society who

already have advantages tend to accumulate more, while those who lack
advantages fall farther behind” (p. 127).
 The concept and significance of
intersectionality
 ‘People are not born vulnerable, they are made vulnerable’ (p. 127). Do you agree?

 Concept of intersectionality in sociology.

 ‘…the ways in which multiple dimensions of stratification and inequality come
together to shape people’s life circumstance and life chances’.

 ‘…different axes of inequality combine and interact to form systems of oppression

…differential levels of social vulnerability….both in normal times and in disaster.’
(p. 127)
 Intersectionality

 Don’t say ‘all women are vulnerable’

 Instead…which women are more vulnerable and under what conditions and
circumstances?
 A malnourished child living in slum-like conditions vs a child living in DHA with his
qualified parents and going to an internationally recognized school
 These two children are in very different situations and if a hazard impacts them both,
the impacts and recovery from impacts will play out differently
Key dimensions of Social Vulnerability:
Class, Race, and Gender

 SOCIAL CLASS
 RACE AND ETHNICITY
 GENDER AND VULNERABILITY
 Social Class

 Class and it’s three main dimensions:

1. Income and wealth
2. Education
3. Occupation

Income – earned by individuals and households – wages, salaries, dividends on investments

Wealth – what is owned, what individuals and households own – your house, savings, stocks, etc.
The distribution of income and wealth in society are highly unequal
 Social Class

 Wealth distribution Disparity in

the US
 “In the first quarter of 2022,
69.1 percent of the total
wealth in the United States
was owned by the top 10
percent of earners. In
comparison, the lowest 50
percent of earners only
owned 2.8 percent of the
total wealth.”
 Social Class in Pakistan

 There is so much disparity that it is very difficult to break the poverty trap.
 So sometimes you are ‘born’ socially vulnerable due to class differences and the lack
of opportunities and support that you get
“Oxfam's study shows that 40 per cent of sons born to the bottom quintile father
remain in the bottom quintile; only 9 percent make it to the top quintile while 52
per cent sons born to rich remain rich” (Dawn news)
Social Class marker – Education

 Higher education attainment – upper-middle and upper class

 Wealthiest groups – elite primary and secondary schools and colleges
 Occupations - More prestige attached to come occupations
 Physicians and scientists – high occupational prestige
 Real estate agents – might be earning much more through commissions but
not much prestige attached.
 Social Class characterization

 Old way – Upper, middle, and lower class

 Sociologist Dennis Gilbert (2018) divides US social classes in 6 ways:

1. The capitalist generational wealth, corporate CEOs, people with high net worth
2. Upper middle advanced degrees, doing well financially, salaried professionals
3. Middle class at least high school education and supervisory role/managerial role
4. Working class manual workers, retail workers, clerical staff
5. Working poor class lowest paid manual workers, mostly working full time
6. The underclass unemployed, work part-time, seek public assistance
Social class

 Towards the low end of the class hierarchy – malnutrition, stress, abuse, living
in overcrowded houses, bigger families…
 However, social support in these conditions is very important for survival –
place-based social networks – food sharing, sitting together and sharing their
problems, helping each other,…However, disasters damage those social support
systems…
 Poor at a higher risk of residential dislocation (in the west as well).
 In the west, when dislocated persons increase some regions will face high
demands for rental places… resulting in high rates.
 How to support the dislocated?

 Relief aid
 Hurricane Harvey in Texas 2017:
- prove US citizenship, and residence, some people not listed on a lease, utility
bills, exchange students, foreigners, undocumented who can’t offer proof of
citizenship, documentation lost during floods, storm.
 Disaster burdens on the underprivileged, the have-nots.

Initial Flood Relief – ID card copy number. How to ensure there is no duplication?
Social Vulnerability – Race and Ethnicity

 ‘race is a social construct that is used to mark racialized persons and groups for unequal
treatment within the society’.
 Racial segregation
 Job discrimination
 Race and ethnicity is believed to co-wary in social class structures
 African Americans, Native Americans and Hispanic people in the US
 Expressions of racism, Earn less in the same jobs, segregated areas, living near hazardous areas,
living in ‘food deserts’, reduced access to schools and parks.
 If you hold socioeconomic status as a constant…?
 Social Vulnerability – Race and Ethnicity

 Income and wealth disparities

 Median income for US households = $57,230
 For Whites = $ 60,869
 Hispanics = $45,719
 African Americans = $ 37,364
 Asian Descent = $ 78,141

 Wealth disparities are even more pronounced.

 Minorities lack the financial ‘cushion’ – less sources of informal aid as well.
 Social Vulnerability – Race and Ethnicity –
marginalization of American Indians
 Native Americans living in reservations / sovereign nations
 ‘…of the five hundred Native American nations, more than 300 are exposed to toxic
hazards’
 Lack of power , poverty – nuclear weapons testing, nuclear waste facilities
 Traditional Mohawk lands in New York exposed to industrial waste.
 How does the government justify it ?
 Compensation/one-time payment.
 But the streams get polluted, their livelihoods tied to fishing disrupted, social fabric
and social cohesion impacted.
 Social Vulnerability – Race and Ethnicity –
marginalization of American Indians

 There are more than 500 abandoned uranium-mining sites on the Navajo
Reservation in Arizona. Those living on the reservation were not aware of
uranium-related hazards until 1979, when a dam break released 94 million
gallons of mining byproducts and 1,100 tons of radioactive sludge onto
reservation land. Tribe members subsequently learned that decades of uranium
mining were polluting their soil and their drinking water, exposing them to
elevated risks for lung cancer and putting them at risk for kidney damage and
various inflammation-related diseases (Arnold 2014).

(Tierney, 2019, p.141)

 Gender and Vulnerability

 Gender as a sociological conceptualization is ‘the differential assignment of

rights, privileges, and cultural and behavioral expectations that are associated
with the designation of persons as male or female’.
 Signaling differences in appropriate behavior
 Disparities in social privilege, economic opportunity, power
 Gender inequality is prevalent
 Limited autonomy, less access to education, concerns of physical safety.
Gender and Vulnerability

 Actions to ‘keep them in their place’.

 Abuse, aggressive behavior and violence to denial of rights
 Abuse is so pervasive in western democracies (the #metoo movement).
 But men and the burdens they bear are huge too…sometimes they are more
vulnerable because they are expected to be out there, in the middle of risky
situations…Is this is also socially constructed?
 Global Gender Gap Index

 World Economic Forum has a Global Gender Gap Index

 Four key gender achievement dimensions
1. economic participation and opportunities
2. educational attainment
3. survival and health
4. political empowerment

Five Countries with the lowest gender gap in 2021 were: Iceland, Finland, Norway, New Zealand, Sweden
Five Countries with the highest gender gap in 2021 were: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Congo, Iran, Chad.
Gender and Vulnerability

 So if you further dissect, you see African American and

Hispanic women earn less.
 ‘Poverty in the US is both gendered and race-based’(p.
135).
 Pakistan?
Gender and Vulnerability

 “…for women, pregnancy creates special needs. For men, expectations

regarding masculinity may limit their ability to ask for psychological
help when they are experiencing stress, which can lead to self-
medication through substance abuse. Women are more risk-averse than
men, which means that they may take disaster warnings and evacuation
orders more seriously than their male counterparts. In Hurricane
Katrina, for example, men were twice as likely as women to resist
evacuating (Haney, Elliott, and Fusell, 2010).
 Complex Gendered Impacts of Disasters

 In some cases men mortality higher in disasters, and in some cases women
and girls are more vulnerable.
 Women’s lack of accessible health services.
 Men experience higher risk of injury in response
 Women experience more stress in supportive and caregiving roles
 Women experience more violent abuse at homes/shelters
 In some studies it has been reported that men may commit suicide at higher
rates after disasters, while women suffer more from mental health related
issues
 The importance of intersectionality

 Race, ethnicity and gender impact class effects –

 White men are in a more privileged place as compared to non-white racial and ethnic
groups
 ‘The social forces that are active and evident in everyday life manifest themselves’ in disasters.
(p.136)
 Recovery opportunities limited.
 State-sanctioned racial divides in society.
 Major source of federal govt recovery assistance is in the form of Loans – good credit history, and an
income that shows you can pay the loan back – discriminatory.
 Direct support is short-term – temporary repairs, rental vouchers
 Recovery is a challenge.

 Businesses owned by ethnic minorities also suffer more.

 ‘minority group members applying for business loans are less likely to receive them, more
likely to be denied credit, and more likely to pay higher interest rates for their loans than
whites’. (p. 138).
 They don’t have the wealth that would serve as a collateral to the loan.
 Govt assistance is not always fairly distributed – Two cities in Florida.
 Jessica Pardee’s study on 51 African American women who were displaced after Hurricane
Katrina - (21 were employed pre-Katrina - only 4 employed afterwards, Hardly any savings,
all received federal govt funds/Red-Cross funds/compensation, faced higher rents, made
multiple moves in the months that followed)
Not related to our formal lecture

 Is vulnerability always bad?

 Being vulnerable gives us courage. If we lack something, we
work harder to overcome and strengthen ourselves.