社会脆弱性:灾害社会学研究的新范式

Social Vulnerability:A New Perspective for the Study of Sociology of Hazards

社会脆弱性是指社会群体、组织或国家暴露在灾害冲击下潜在的受灾因素、受伤害程度及应对能力的大小。它有三个主要讨论面向,即脆弱性是一种灾前既存的条件、是灾害调适与因应能力、是一个特定地点的灾害程度;有两个基本研究命题,"灾害风险不平等命题"与"社会分化命题"。而将社会脆弱性评估模型具体化为空间整合模型、灾害周期模型、微观与宏观模型及函数关系模型,目的在于能真正确认社会中最脆弱的群体和体现出预测的特质,真正了解灾害中不同群体应对灾害风险能力的差异,真正为防灾与减灾规划提供有针对性建议。然而,毋庸讳言,这一研究范式也存在着"技术决定论"、"结构式减灾"及难以量化等一些局限。

Social vulnerability refers to the potential factors resulting in disasters, degree of damage and the ability to react to the disasters when social groups and orgnizations or nations are faced with disasters. Based on such a definition, the paper points out that such a theory can be defined as follows from three aspects： social vulnerability is the factors leading to disasters, the ability to adjust and react to the disasters and the degree of damage in a certain area. In addition, the theory also deals with hazard inequality proposition and social polar ization proposition. According to this theory, the evaluation on social vulnerability includes the space integra tion mode, hazard period mode, micro and micro modes and function mode. In this paper, we emphasize that only through analyzing the social vulnerability can we identify the most vulnerable group, know the differences different groups show in their ability to cope with disasters and put forward effective suggestions for preventing and reducing disasters. We also maintain that this kind of study has some shortcomings, such as technological determinism, structural disaster relief and difficulties in quantization.