Between dust and mud: effects of disasters in the quotidian life of vulnerabilized group

• Grant number: 12/02919-9
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Duration: June 01, 2012 - May 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Sociology of Development
• Principal Investigator: Norma Felicidade Lopes da Silva Valencio
• Grantee: Norma Felicidade Lopes da Silva Valencio
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In sociological terms, disaster is considered a tragic social event, referred to a social time, and not merely chronological (Sorokin, 1949; Quarantelli, 1998 and 2005). From the many macrossocial implications of disasters, which the literature in the area is being developed, stand out the ones that focalizes the insufficiencies and institutional mistakes to deal properly with preparedness in front of imminent threats, even if they're recurrent, and to respond and fully recover the most affected groups. In Brazilian case, what is at the core of the question is the inability of the State to act critically in face of the vulnerabilization process (cf. Acserald, 2002; 2006), once the State itself is part of the anomalous modernity (cf. Matins, 2000; 2003). These processes culminates in the exposition of determined social groups - the impoverished in urban and rural spaces and, particularly, the traditional people - to recurrent threats, and affects them intensively and multidimensionally in the frequent disasters. In the country, over 90% of the officially recognized disasters are related to water (water stress or intense rainfalls) and deficits in the infrastructure to control it (Valencio and Valencio, 2010), which makes susceptible the territorialization of the historically weakened groups. In front of such context, the objective of this sociological study is to identify, through documental research, localities in the 5 macrorregions of the country which the disasters related to droughts and intense rainfalls have been equally recurrent in the past 5 years; so, in the next step, through a qualitative field research, it shall be described and analyzed the social, material spatial and symbolic content of the degradation processes in the plane of the quotidian life of different vulnerabilized social groups, highlighting the specificities of its multidimensional affectation. (AU)