Food for thought: towards a future for farming. By Patrick Herman and Richard Kuper (London: Pluto Press, 2003, pp. 156+xx)

✍ Scribed by Robert Ackrill

• Book ID: 102352350
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 43 KB
• Volume: 17
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0954-1748
• DOI: 10.1002/jid.1145

✦ Synopsis

questions if the insurance industry can withstand climate change. Katrina Allen provides a longoverdue critical appraisal of the strengths and limitations of community-based disaster mitigation. Jeroen Warner contrasts public-sector efforts to introduce improved approaches to water hazard management.

The diverse contributions cannot add up to a comprehensive view of the subject, and a few are tantalisingly brief. However, they do signpost some of the ways forward for researchers and policy makers who struggle with the challenge of implementing comprehensive risk management, involving multiple stakeholders and disciplines, and linking all levels of risk production: global to local.

The Vulnerability of Cities also mixes synthesis and case study. It is only recently that disaster researchers have started looking seriously at urban vulnerability, while many disaster management organisations, particularly non-governmental ones, still shirk this immense challenge. The first half of the book pulls strands from several areas of urban research together to present an all-round picture of the nature and causes of risk and vulnerability. Those unfamiliar with the subject will find it a useful review of the literature, but it also breaks relatively new ground in this context by placing greater emphasis than usual on livelihoods, social capital and related strategies for managing risk, and urban governance.

The second part of the book looks at urban social capital and adaptive potential in more detail. It presents three case studies of the social relations that shape the opportunities and constraints for local action to reduce vulnerability. The case studies are all from the Caribbean but cover a variety of political systems: a liberal democracy (Bridgetown, Barbados), a state in transition from a so-called socialist regime (Georgetown, Guyana) and a state in transition from an authoritarian regime (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic). Each study looks at the variety of contexts that influence vulnerability reduction: political structures and attitudes towards civil society, causes and characteristics of socio-economic vulnerability, the nature of environmental hazards, national and local disaster mitigation and response capacity, and social capital and adaptive potential among communities and civil society organisations.

In disaster research, work of this kind is still innovative. For all their differences, Pelling argues, the case studies generate some common lessons about the extent of informal social organisation, the role of external agencies in extending inclusiveness and reducing competition between community organisations, and the likely consequences of community actors' wider engagement with political and institutional structures. The question that arises from this is how can the potential of community social capital-individual and organizational-to reduce risk be deployed in practice? The three case studies reveal substantial obstacles. In his concluding chapter, Pelling lists a series of opportunities and barriers to building adaptive potential, but a major part of the challenge lies in knowing which approaches are likely to work. There has been little critical appraisal of urban risk reduction initiatives. Much of our knowledge of achievement comes from superficial write-ups or implementing agencies' own assessment of their work. In the absence of better evidence, one may easily place too much weight on such material (as this book's chapter on urban governance seems to do). What is clear, though, is the need to realign the emphasis of research on urban risk towards the socio-institutional issues that The Vulnerability of Cities addresses; this thought-provoking book can be seen as a foundation stone for a new research agenda.