Household self‐blame for disasters: responsibilisation and (un)accountability in decentralised participatory risk governance

Abstract

The most important theoretical argument concerning decentralised participatory governance is that it can make a government more accountable for the needs of the governed. Key to this process are participatory spaces that act as mechanisms for dialogue between citizens and local government. However, within Cochabamba, a city in the centre of Bolivia, South America, ‘at‐risk’ citizens engage minimally with disaster risk issues in participatory spaces, despite high levels of civic participation. This is because ‘at‐risk’ populations view disasters as a private/household problem that is symptomatic of household error, rather than seeing them as a broader public problem due to wider structural inequalities. Consequently, they redistribute responsibility for disaster risk reduction towards households, which (re)produces the absolution of government authorities as guarantors of disaster risk reduction. This paper challenges the normative assumption that participatory spaces facilitate democratic deliberation of disaster risk reduction and the downward accountability of local government for disaster risk reduction.

The family crisis migration stress framework: A framework to understand the mental health effects of crisis migration on children and families caused by disasters

“…Although few studies on social vulnerability have focused on families as a unit of analysis, some individually focused research may help generate hypotheses for future work on disasters and social vulnerability among crisis migrant youth and families (Sou, 2019). Among crisis migrant children, lower socioeconomic status is often coupled with traumatic stress and elevated risk for experiencing traumatic events.…”

Flood Risk Management and Perceptions of Responsibility for Flood Risk on Toronto Island

“…Neoliberal, capitalist states have FRM systems that are distinguished by a mix of technical and economic factors that influence risk reduction decisions (Forino et al, 2015;Vanderlinden et al, 2017;Sou, 2018;Straub, 2020). This type of governance minimises political conflicts and denies the need for inclusive and deliberative processes, while emphasising good financial decision making from the state's standpoint and relies on expert decision making (Ojha et al, 2015).…”

An Urban Governance Framework for Including Environmental Migrants in Sustainable Cities

“…Nonetheless, even when inclusivity is achieved to a significant degree, urban governance for sustainability might not improve. The city of Cochabamba, Bolivia demonstrates that participatory governance does not overcome a culturally engrained ideal that risk reduction is more of an individual household than collective responsibility [137]. In such cases, the fully open, participatory process might reach an inclusive decision that increases vulnerability and decreases sustainability.…”