Intersectionality and Disasters: Reinventing the Wheel Back to Anthropology of Disaster

Abstract (English)

Despite nearly a century of scientific research, the establishment of numerous global, regional, and national frameworks, and the investment of billions of dollars in disaster management, the frequency and impact of disasters continue to escalate. Traditional approaches often attribute the severity of disasters to natural forces, emphasizing factors such as frequency, duration, intensity, and magnitude, or to technological shortcomings in forecasting and infrastructure resilience. However, within social sciences, there is a growing consensus that disasters are not merely exceptional natural events but are deeply rooted in ongoing socio-economic processes. In this view, natural hazards act as triggers that interact with vulnerable social systems, leading to disasters.
Vulnerability is not an inherent trait but is produced and perpetuated by social, political, economic, and historical processes. Yet, contemporary disaster risk assessments often rely heavily on quantitative methodologies, reducing vulnerability to a set of measurable indicators and categorizing affected populations into homogeneous groups. This approach overlooks the nuanced ways in which intersecting axes of inequality—such as race, gender, class, and disability—shape individual and community experiences of disaster. Moreover, it risks placing the onus of vulnerability on these groups without acknowledging the structural factors that contribute to their heightened risk.
This paper advocates for the integration of intersectional theory and qualitative methods into disaster anthropology to address these gaps. By recognizing that individuals possess multiple, overlapping identities and that societal structures confer varying degrees of advantage and disadvantage, an intersectional approach provides a more comprehensive understanding of disaster vulnerability. Such an approach not only enriches our theoretical frameworks but also has practical implications for developing more equitable and effective disaster risk reduction strategies.