Flame and fortune in California: The material and political dimensions of vulnerability

• Published in: Global environmental change 2013-12, Vol.23 (6), p.1410-1423
• Main Authors: Simon, Gregory L., Dooling, Sarah
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Blends; California; cities; Construction materials; Economic analysis; Environment and politics; Environmental change; Environmental problems; Fire protection; Fires; Governance; Historical analysis; Human ecology and demography; issues and policy; Landscapes; Materiality; mixing; Policies; politics; Polymer blends; Risk and disasters sociology; Rural and urban sociology; Sociology; Sociology of knowledge and sociology of culture; Sociology of leisure and mass culture; Spatial history; U.S.A; Urban political ecology; Urban sociology; Victimology; Vulnerability; Wildfire; Wildfires
• ISSN: 0959-3780; 1872-9495
• DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2013.08.008

•Vulnerabilities exist in experienced (material) and interpreted (political) forms.•Vulnerabilities are translated from material to political through complex process.•Translation process influences development of actionable forms of vulnerabilities.•Policies may deviate from, and respond incorrectly to, experienced vulnerabilities.•Relational inquiry, diverse spatial–historical data needed to highlight this process. This paper seeks to clarify and refine the assertion that vulnerability exists as both a material, condition and discursive construct. Building off of previous scholarship analyzing the production of, vulnerabilities, we present a conceptual framework that illuminates how material vulnerabilities are translated into political vulnerabilities and ossified in the policy realm. We argue that specifying components of, and relationships between, the material and political aspects of vulnerability will result in a more sophisticated articulation of vulnerability as a recursive process. In order to achieve this level of analysis we propose a spatial–historical analytic approach that blends point-in-time and, empirically driven analysis with robust historical and political economic analysis. We use the largest urban wildfire – in terms of dwellings lost – in California's history to show how the persistent disconnection between material and political forms of vulnerability has, over time, resulted in contradictory landscapes where homes are intentionally placed in landscapes vulnerable to wildfires with reduced fire protection. Spatial historical analysis of the Tunnel Fire reveals how representations of vulnerability oftentimes deviate from lived experiences, engendering responses of exploitation, ignorance, mobilization and resistance. This framework also recognizes how these responses can create new vulnerabilities while also maintaining, deepening and diminishing existing material conditions. Finally, relational analysis illuminates how factors generating vulnerability in fire areas also contribute to and reinforce vulnerabilities within other parts of cities like Oakland, California.