自然灾害中的文化维度研究综述

Research on Cultural Dimension of Natural Disaster:A Literature Review

文化是人类社会特有的现象,是考察和理解社会的重要维度。文化影响人们看待事物的角度、实践中的行为选择与认同以及彼此间互动的方式,因而是人们认识和应对灾害的重要背景。20世纪60年代以来,灾害和防灾减灾中的文化维度问题,逐渐被灾害研究和减灾实践者所关注。经过半个多世纪的积累与发展,文化维度上的实证/实例分析与理论探索,目前已涉及到了灾害和防灾减灾实践的许多方面。拟基于文化的狭义理解范畴,从灾害认知和灾害应对2个层面梳理自然灾害中的文化维度研究进展与趋势,分析相应的灾害研究与减灾实践启示。

Culture provides an important perspective to understand society. It is one of the key factors that im- pact how people behave themselves, interact with one another, view the world ; what they believe and value. There- fore, a good understanding of public disaster awareness and disaster coping is impossible without taking their culture context into consideration. Since the 1960s, cultural dimension in disaster issues and/or disaster reduction prac- tices has been attracting increasingly attention; many empirical or theoretical explorations have been reported. This review aims to give an overview of research progresses on how culture impacts public awareness and coping of disas- ters, and analyze the corresponding implications for disaster research and disaster reduction practice. This review summarizes that： ①There is unanimous consensus on public awareness and coping of disaster, which are affected by their culture context. While the knowledge about the ways and degree of impact is still limited, further research is warranted. In addition, more systematic and in-depth studies conducted from cross-cultural perspectives are nee- ded to design to further explore the origins of variance in public disaster awareness and coping, and to what extent from cultural differences. ②Research on public awareness of disaster, emergency response and recovery indicated that culture might have double-side impacts on disaster management--sometimes cultural factors such as value, norm, custom and belief might lead to people more vulnerable than the others, even could be the root causes, but they could also be the source of people＇ s resilience to disaster in some cases. How to identify those positive and negative impacts, then develop cultural-oriented disaster management policy is a challenge issue, which need spe- cial attention. ③There is an increasing acknowledgement that local knowledge and disaster subculture could play an important role in public disaster coping, while the lacking of the awareness of the value of local knowledge, the change of lifestyle, and the impact from external culture pose a threat to the inheritance of some local, traditional disaster coping strategies. So exploring how to conserve, protect, identify, document them, then combine them with modern science and technology should and will be the focus of relevant studies. On the bases of these summa- rizations, in terms of cultural dimension of natural disaster research in China, systematic and in-depth studies are needed to explore how Chinese culture affects public disaster awareness and coping, what cultural resources can be used in disaster （risk） reduction and for building and enhancing disaster resilience, and how to use them.