UC San Diego

In the process of adapting to - and expanding within - our environment, we develop complex social structures which are maintained at measurable costs. Current modes of production and development negatively affect the very same environment we depend upon for survival, fostering the creation of a system in which the adaptation and growth of one group is inversely proportional to that of another, as well as ultimately proving deleterious to itself. This system generates vulnerabilities experienced as slow-onset crisis at risk of developing into full-blown disasters. In this thesis, I analyze environmental disasters using a political ecology framework which posits that pre-existing socially created conditions of vulnerability represent the core causes of disasters. Although identifying human agency in what is considered “natural” disaster is a great step towards a communal call to action, I argue that, ultimately, the social creation of vulnerability that leads to disaster is generated by the ways individuals and societies deal with risk based on their perceptions of the future. Thus, a more holistic approach to the field moves us beyond vulnerability as the core cause of disasters, towards a psychocultural approach that investigates the complex motivations and interpretations involved in the collective creation of risk and vulnerability.