This article adopts an environmental justice approach to recurrent drought in the North-West Province of South Africa. It is based on a secondary data analysis of a study -of which the author was a research team member -conducted in the Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati District Municipality in February 2007, which assessed the impact of drought on older people. The methodology used during the initial study included observation, individual interviews, focus group interviews and participatory research. The author of the present article suggests, however, that discourses of Disaster Risk Management (DRM) and 'legislative compliance', as in many other South African contexts, have not yet been a particularly useful framing for issues of disaster and drought. The author suggests that environmental justice discourses might offer a more useful framing or conceptualisation for those concerned with the issue of recurrent drought in the study area or similar contexts.
This article is based on data gathered during a research project commissioned by the Fezile Dabi District Municipality in the northern part of South Africa's Free State Province. The research team (which included the authors) was asked to investigate allegations of pollution of tap water, as well as sewage from the local wastewater treatment plant flowing into the Vaal River in the town of Parys on the banks of the Vaal River. The authors adopt a sustainable livelihoods approach in analysing data gathered by way of unstructured interviews in and around Parys in June-July 2008. They argue that actual and perceived levels of pollution are eroding various local livelihood assets and it is posited that the situation constitutes an unfolding slow-onset disaster. It is imperative that shocks such as sewerage spills and rumours of polluted potable water are addressed to ensure that these do not become long-term negative trends.
This article constructively challenges the often cited distinction between the so-called hazard and vulnerability perspectives in disaster studies. In a context of increasingly intertwined, dense, and complex socioecological dynamics, disaster scholars often hold onto an apparently untenable distinction between nature and culture, manifested as either a hazard or a vulnerability approach. This article maintains that the typically undesired approach (the hazard approach) is inherent to the preferred (vulnerability) perspective. The article builds on Oliver-Smith’s (2013) critique of the magnitude of requirements placed upon practitioners given the full implications of the vulnerability perspective. Although critical of the vulnerability perspective, this article does not fundamentally disagree with the validity of its claims. Instead, by drawing on the pragmatist philosophy of Rorty (1989) and by demonstrating the potential value of posthumanism for disaster studies, I wish to argue for greater pragmatism within disaster scholarship. The article considers the recent petition or manifesto for disaster studies (Gaillard et al. 2019) for more inclusive disaster research as a potential opportunity to challenge the aforementioned nature–culture distinction in the field, as the petition signed by a number of disaster scholars outlines various concerns over the asymmetrical power relations between local and external researchers. These power relations have adverse consequences for the appropriateness of knowledge production in many contexts. I am primarily concerned with the very local level of disaster occurrence, where posthumanism might be most valuable.
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