Los desastres en Latinoamérica: vulnerabilidad y resistencia

Se ofrece un análisis crítico de cómo el concepto de la vulnerabilidad social es usado en algunos estudios de desastres en Latinoamérica. La incorporación de la capacidad de resistencia produciría una apreciación mucho más apropiada del fenómeno de los desastres que impactan el continente, daría mayor relevancia a los procesos de movilización comunitaria, ayudaría a establecer modelos de administración pública más estables, y daría mayor vigencia a los estudios de las culturas ante los desastres

A Conceptual Framework for Collective Behavior and Action and Its Application to U.S. Student Riots in The 1990s

The paper offers a conceptualization of collective behavior and action incidents, defining them as suffused by socio-cultural emergence, inextricably dramaturgical in nature, exhibiting a limited range of dominant emotions, carried out by five master social units (masses, publics, associational networks, social movement organizations, and small groups), and located both in time and space as well as in social spaces reflecting issues associated with master categories of age, race/ethnicity, class/occupation, gender/sex, and ethnocentrism/nationalism. It then applies the scheme to student riots in the 1990s in the United States

Las inundaciones de 1999 en Veracruz y el paradigma de la vulnerabilidad

El estudio examina la distribución de las alertas y de los servicios hacia los damnificados de las inundaciones de 1999 en Veracruz, México. Se abordan el paradigma de la vulnerabilidad, la inundación de 1999, y los métodos aplicados en el análisis. La información proviene de una encuesta aplicada a 385 jefes de las familias afectadas por las inundaciones, quienes residían en tres ciudades al norte de Veracruz: Poza Rica, Gutiérrez Zamora, y Tecolutla. Las fuentes más importantes de alerta y ayuda, tales como evacuación, evacuación vertical y albergues, fueron la programación de radio así como las relaciones personales con amigos, vecinos y parientes. Las autoridades debieran concentrarse en la evacuación vertical y en el mejoramiento de los servicios y la programación de estaciones de radio, más que en la asistencia a las víctimas

1999 Floods in Veracruz and the Paradigm of Vulnerability

This study examines the distribution of warnings and of services to victims of the 1999 floods in Veracruz, Mexico and offers a criticism of vulnerability as the dominant paradigm guiding national and international disaster-related programs. It has sections on the vulnerability paradigm, the 1999 flood, and the methods used in the analysis. The information comes from a survey of 385 head of households flood victims residing in three cities in the north of Veracruz, Poza Rica, Gutierrez Zamora, and Tecolutla. The results indicate that government services to the population threatened by the floods were almost nonexistent. Radio programming and personal relations with friends, neighbors, and kin, were the most important sources of warnings about the hazard. The respondents’ integration in their communities and the social organizations of these communities were key determinants of their receipt of warnings and assistance such as vertical evacuation sheltering. Authorities should place much greater emphasis than they do now on facilitating the use of vertical evacuation and the service of radio stations providing information to communities at risk of extreme weather events, improving their weather and disaster-preparedness programming and making radios available to people in areas at risk of severe weather and other hazards. Disaster preparedness and mitigation need to be made part of their efforts in community development, encouraging the growth of social capital that can be used for disaster response and recovery. The implications of these findings for the continued use of the paradigm of vulnerability that provides guidelines to present-day international assistance at times of disasters are considered

Testing Shibutani’s Prediction Of Information Seeking Behavior In Rumor

The paper tests a set of predictions regarding information seeking behavior in rumors derived from models of rumors by Shibutani and others. Data for the analysis comes from a random sample of 1,042 households in Memphis, Tennessee surveyed by the Disaster Research Center prior to December 3rd 1990 in connection with the Iben Browning prediction of an imminent massive earthquake in the New Madrid fault zone. The results support Shibutani’s prediction of a positive association between the use of formal and informal sources of information; Knopf’s prediction that rumors are part of pre-existing generalized beliefs in a community; and McPhail’s hypothesis that the network of relationships available to people is an important determinant of their search for and use of informal information. These findings indicate that Shibutani’s model of rumors should be supplemented by attention to the importance of cultural context and the logistics of accessibility and micro-participation. Unexpectedly, a large number of respondents did not use either formal or informal sources of information about the earthquake threat

Societal Factors Involved on Risk Mitigation Policy: Challenges to Seismic Retrofitting of Hospital Buildings

This paper discusses the recurrent problems that emerge in the seismic risk mitigation policy process. It offers a definition of risk mitigation, and examines its application to earthquake threat, particularly the challenges to mitigation adoption and implementation processes. California experience with the application of legislation (SB1953) mandating seismic structural and non-structural retrofitting of hospital facilities illustrates these problems and also shows how stakeholders, who are supposed to act in accordance with the law, have adjusted to the new regulatory environment. This case is illustrative of how well-intended rules may fail in their applicability because of a failure in anticipating undesirable and unintended outcomes. It brings attention to the embeddedness of mitigation efforts on institutional processes, and the importance of taking into account the specificities of target-areas and organizations when investing on seismic safety rehabilitation and retrofitting