Engaging with Disaster

Despite recent calls for more people-centered, interdisciplinary disaster science, the shift toward interdisciplinarity and societal research stops short of involving the full range of perspectives and experiences that should inform disaster preparedness and recovery efforts. This chapter discusses the roots of systematic vulnerability in weather-related disaster scenarios and inequities in disaster response and recovery and lays out the need for community engagement and ethnographic data collection at the outset of preparedness efforts. It examines the debates surrounding the very concepts of disaster, vulnerability, and resilience in disaster anthropology and concludes with a discussion of “Eco-Social-Vulnerability” (ESS) assessment and accompaniment, as methods to (a) identify areas in the greatest need of preemptive, community-based engagement; (b) facilitate collaborations with community members to identify the factors contributing to systematic vulnerability, and c. increase local preparedness and long-term resilience.