Vulnerability to mass movements’ hazards. contribution of sociology to increasing community resilience

Abstract

There is yet an incorrect perception of common sense about environmental issues, mainly about the increase and rapid environmental degradation due to the misuse of natural resources. The pressure on the territory, changing the form by the intensification of the human occupation and the overexploitation of the resources can generate local phenomena that, combined with events of local or regional scale, can cause significant losses in the communities and their livelihoods. Mass movements are short return periods hazards, highly localized, mainly weather-related, but also triggered by seismic or volcanic activity or even technological accidents. The generalization or axiomatization of the idea that innovation is synonymous with greater efficiency, greater security, and greater sustainability, can lead to the technocracy of the solutions, devaluing and fragmenting the cultural and social organization of communities. Knowledge of human capacity for adaptation and analysis of the impacts of climate change forecasts on the social structure of communities, especially those that will first experience the effects, is important for the adoption of measures that contribute to its preservation. Sociology, in one of its aspects, seeks to recover and reveal the materiality of the structure and social life of communities.