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The dynamics of vulnerability: some preliminary thoughts about the occurrence of ‘radical surprises’ and a case study on the 2002 flood (Germany)

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Abstract

This paper develops a view of vulnerability attempting to capture a constitutive dimension of most disasters, that is their radically surprising moment. Therefore, it builds a conceptual framework, which captures the moment of surprise itself, as well as, its consequences for people by developing a dynamic and actor-oriented understanding of vulnerability. It begins with an outline about how to observe and explain vulnerability by offering a brief overview of how the discussion on vulnerability has evolved over the last 30 years or so. In a second step, the interrelation of knowledge, ignorance and vulnerability is specified. Therefore, a basic understanding of surprises is developed, which is then further distinguished in everyday surprises and ‘radical surprises’. The theoretical argument is substantiated by a case study on a city in Germany, which was severely affected by the 2002 August flood. The paper concludes with some more general implications for the discussion on the interrelation of local knowledge, the dynamics of vulnerability and the occurrence of ‘radical surprises’.

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Notes

  1. To be sure, it was already adumbrated that the interrelation between cause and effect was not straightforward in previous attempts. Blaikie et al. for instance, admit”in analysing the linkages between the root causes, dynamic pressures, and unsafe conditions, it is rather exceptional to have reliable evidence, especially the further back in the chain of explanation we go” (1994, 29). Yet, they rather contradict their own reference to the potential multicausality of vulnerability and the difficulty of differentiating between causal links and unsafe conditions by reducing the complexity to a strong positive correlation between socio-economic status and vulnerability. They state “as a rule the poor suffer more from hazards than the rich” (Blaikie et al. 1994, 9). It is surely due to such simplifications that vulnerability research has the tendency to overestimate the weakness of actors; they tend to imply a lack of agency on the side of the potentially vulnerable persons. Hewitt therefore states that “a generalised and abstract paradigm of vulnerability, is as unsatisfactory as the hazard paradigm” (1998, 82). It has the tendency to conceptualize people as weak and passive in the sense that they share similar “pathologies like or derived from, poverty, underdevelopment and overpopulation” (1997, 167).

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Acknowledgment

I would like to express my gratitude to Jochen Bürkner, Annett Steinführer, Henning Nuissl, Matthias Gross, Christoph Görg, Volker Meyer, Bruna De Marchi, Anna Scolobig, Sue Tapsell and to three anonymous reviewers; all contributed substantially to my work over the past years. The research was supported by the European Community’s 6th Framework Programme through the grant to the budget of the Integrated Project FLOODsite (Contact GOCE-CT-2004-505420).

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    Christian Kuhlicke

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Kuhlicke, C. The dynamics of vulnerability: some preliminary thoughts about the occurrence of ‘radical surprises’ and a case study on the 2002 flood (Germany). Nat Hazards 55, 671–688 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-010-9645-z

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