Versions of vulnerabilities in Brazilian scientific papers on environmental disasters

Abstract

In this study, we analyzed versions of vulnerability in Brazilian scientific articles on environmental disasters. To achieve this goal, we carried out a literature review in a database specialized on disaster and health issues and a reticulated bibliographical review in the retrieved articles. We described the article's content, identified linguistic repertoires of vulnerability and analyzed the versions of vulnerability each group of repertoires performed. Our results show that the majority of authors do not define conceptually what vulnerability is, but they associate areas of knowledge qualified to speak on the subject, label people as vulnerable and rank vulnerabilities through the use of instruments of measurement and quantification. We conclude that it is necessary to discuss the ways by which scientific literature has performed vulnerability versions based on linguistic repertoires in order to encourage dialogue between fields.