very thought provoking message - i hope that your students are grateful
for the perspective development that you're encouraging in your course

one concern (with apologies if any of your points/conerns are
misconstrued): while underlying vulnerability may be interacting with a
particular one-time event so as to result in an "accelerated process
towards death" and such that truly the concern is not the one-time
event but the multiple interrelated events that comprise that process
for vulnerable peoples (or otherwise diminish such life in lessening
human security or welfare), i still don't understand the link between
that statement and the statement that the focus thus needs to be on the
hazard itself and not the underlying vulnerability.  as is repeated in
much of the social science literature and practitioner reports, the
series of hazards are just one part of the underlying
socio-economic-political processes that result in this vulnerability -
although a very significant part in highly at-risk areas, the focus can
not be on the hazards alone if the rest of the processes are what
separates those who are vulnerable to the event from those who are not.
 instead, the focus should seem to be upon better understanding
processes towards sustainable human security - including (but not
limited to) disaster resilience.

hopefully,
bob alexander

philip buckle wrote:


>All
>
>I'd appreciate any comments on the following ideas. I, Graham Marsh and
Eve Coles at Coventry Uni (UK) will be talking to our students about
the impacts of the earthquake and the tsunami when term resumes next
week and challenging the students to improve on the management
arrangements in place (or being put in place now) to support affected
communities.
>
>Their predecessors last year included a number of students (and the
least I expected) who contended that the death of 30,000 Europeans in
the heatwave of 2003 was not a disaster, but just an "accelerated
process towards death" as the  most vulnerable and the most at risk
were the elderly. We were very surprised by this but we expect a more
thoughtful and compassionate response from this year's students.
>
>We shall be putting to them this idea.
>
>That the Earthquake/Tsunami (often referred to in the media in the UK
as the Asian tsunami) is not one disaster but a number of tragedies and
disasters linked only by the hazard agents, the earthquake and the
tsunami. Somalia, Sri Lanka and Thailand, for example, have little
linkage between them and little in common, that is shared other than
the hazard agents.
>
>The sense that this is a single event derives from a Western
perspective (based in London, New York etc and mediated through Western
Governments and International agencies). for them this may be a single
event.
>
>This perspective may have little to do with the genuine and intense
compassion shown by governments and agencies and publics, but it may be
directly germane to how the event is managed. It may be too early to
tell. But there seems to a real risk that the localness (and therefore
local needs, local hopes and local contribution to the recovery of
local people themselves) of the event will be lost in the scramble of
major countries and agencies. This may be important to how assistance
is managed and therefore how effectively it is provided.
>
>It also puts a retrospective position that what may be most important
is the hazard itself, not the risk nor the vulnerability. This harks
back to the early days of IDNDR (and we have WCDR at Kobe imminent so
we need to be cautious about being pulled backwards).
>
>For myself these events again underline that in many important and
substantial senses all disasters are local and all have to be seen in
their geographical, political and cultural context.
>
>Ironically perhaps the media emphasis here on injured and bereaved
Western individual and families has highlighted this, as have the
numerous stories of individual losses and acts of selflessness and,
most ironically, has the way that donations from the public have lead
Governments into stepping up their own assistance.
>
>Perhaps these events are characterised most strongly and most pignantly
at one level by the linkages between unaffected and affected
communities and 'ordinary' people.
>
>Philip Buckle