Social Vulnerability to Disasters in Puerto Rico: An Outlook of Evolving Structural and Behavioral Forces

The study of social vulnerability to disasters has generally focused on understanding how social stratification relates to disasters and how social forces can create the possibility of a hazard to become a disaster. Ben Wisner and his colleagues assembled a working definition of social vulnerability as they were studying the famine that unfolded in the Sahel from 1967 to 1973. In the book At Risk: Natural Hazards, People’s Vulnerability and Disasters (2004), Wisner and his colleagues defined social vulnerability as “the characteristics of a person or group and their situation that influence their capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist, and recover from the impact of a natural hazard”. Their definition includes the difficulties and chances that people may encounter as they mitigate, prepare for, deal with, respond to, and recover from the impact of a natural hazard. However, there is no firm definition of social vulnerability. Rather, it can be considered as an evolving concept. Despite its focus on process, applications of the concept of social vulnerability in research often fall short in capturing the elements and dynamics of social vulnerability. This research uses Puerto Rico as a case study in which social vulnerability is conceptualized as steaming from evolving structural and behavioral forces.  This research presents a dynamic situational approach to social vulnerability and explores how the practice of emergency management may impact, address, or fail to address the needs of impoverished marginal communities and their contrasting perceptions. The findings provide insights that could assist emergency management practitioners and disaster researchers and practioners working in the areas of marginality, development, emergency management, bureaucratic change, rationalization, decision-making, and policy making.