Environment & Urbanization

World leading environmental and urban studies journal

Natural Hazards, Risk and Vulnerability: Floods and slum life in Indonesia

Author(s): 
Roanne van Voorst

Publisher: 
Earthscan

Pages: 
162

Year: 
2016

Natural Hazards, Risk and Vulnerability, by Roanne van Voorst, examines the concept of risk behaviour and explores why – if people share the same risks – they express such heterogeneity in their responses. Van Voorst spent several months living amongst an illegal flood-prone riverbank community in Jakarta, Indonesia and draws upon this experience to explain heterogeneous risk practices amongst urban poor residents in response to three specific risks: floods, poverty and evictions. She takes a bottom-up and holistic perspective and embeds her research study of “human risk practices in the cultural and social environment” (page 148).

The book is structured in such a way as to take readers on the research journey with van Voorst, and it is full of detailed stories and dialogues with community residents. The introduction outlines academic approaches to risk, the academic relevance of her work, the context of flood risk in Jakarta, and finally the structure of the book.  Following on, Chapter 1 introduces van Voorst’s study community, conveys her research methods and data collection, and explains how a study of risk behaviour within her study community reveals four distinguishable “risk styles”. Chapters 2 to 5 unpick these four styles – known as orang antisipasi (autonomous actions), orang ajar (cooperation with government), orang susah (dependent on aid), and orang siap (challenging structures of inequality). In each chapter, one risk style is examined in relation to both its characteristics and the factors underlying the risk style.

For example, in Chapter 2 van Voorst links the risk style of orang antisipasi with Bourdieu’s “habitus of poverty”. In Chapter 3 van Voorst compares “the ajar style…with human risk behaviour as observed by scholars in different contexts” (page 65). And in Chapter 4 she examines whether the susah risk style allows people to escape from the risks that characterise a context of normal uncertainty” (page 92 to 93).

In conclusion, van Voorst reflects upon her focus on the “normal uncertainty” of daily life and risk styles (rather than strategies) of her study inhabitants. She identifies how these inform our understanding of risk behaviour and add to academic knowledge. In particular, van Voorst highlights that risk behaviour amongst residents of the flood-prone riverbank community was “typically influenced by their trust in other actors, their habitus of poverty, their self-efficacy, and individual life experiences”, and claims that “people’s risk practices are much more than ‘just’ disaster responses…they give us insight into the ways in which they view their world and their position in it” (page 149). Subsequently, she concludes that future research needs to look beyond the material aspects of risk and vulnerability towards the factors that underlie such heterogeneous risk behaviour.

 

Book note prepared by Hannah Keren Lee

Search the Book notes database

Our Book notes database contains details and summaries of all the publications included in Book notes since 1993 - with details on how to obtain/download.

Use the search form above, or visit the Book notes landing page for more options and latest content.

For a searchable database for papers in Environment and Urbanization, go to http://eau.sagepub.com/