Disaster and Life Course Processes

Abstract

Disasters exist by virtue of the fact that persons and places are adversely affected by environmental hazards, which raises important questions about the characteristics and origins of differential vulnerability to such hazards in the first place. In this chapter, I consider the import of a life course perspective for studying the differential vulnerability of persons and places to environmental hazards. I also consider the utility of life course perspective for understanding disasters as processes (versus events), which persist in time and desist slowly. I demonstrate these ideas in the context of a stylized model. Implications and avenues for future research on disaster and life course processes are discussed.