Social Construction of Disaster Risk and Preparedness: Institutional Narratives from Sindh

Abstract

Traditionally, disaster risk reduction (DRR) and preparedness planning in Pakistan has been viewed through technocratic and hazard-oriented structures giving precedence to planning tools, response systems and infrastructural remedies. Although these methods are necessary, they do not pay much attention to the social and institutional mechanisms according to which the disaster risk and preparedness are perceived and regulated. This paper considers disaster risk and preparedness as socially constructed phenomena through the lenses of the institutional discourses that have been generated by the disaster management authorities in Sindh and one of the most disaster-prone provinces in Pakistan.

The study is based on a qualitative, interpretivist research design and uses semi-structured interviews with disaster management officials, the analysis of disaster management plans, standard operating procedures, and policy documents, and a limited number of focus group discussions to provide the contexts of triangulation. Thematic and narrative analysis were also applied as the means of analysing the data in order to determine the prevailing patterns of meaning-making in institutional discourse. The results indicate that there are four interconnected institutional discourses that influence preparedness to disasters in Sindh. To start with, the catastrophes are depicted as extraordinary and externally imposed natural processes, which supports the sense of inescapability. Second, preparedness is mostly created in the form of documentation and procedural adherence which leads to symbolic rather than functional preparedness. Third, communities are placed mainly as passive beneficiaries, restricting the acknowledgment of the local knowledge and adaptive capacities. Lastly, the blame on the disaster risk is often transferred to climate change, geography, or population behaviour, which further depoliticises the governance of disaster and contributes to accountability spreading. Connecting the results to the social constructionist theory and the literature on disaster governance, the research shows that the failures in preparedness cannot be explained only by the factors that could be defined as technical or capacity-related but need to be considered as the results of the institutional discourse and power dynamics. The research has the potential to add to disaster literature by expanding the social constructionist approach to investigating the sub-national governance of DRR in a Global South setting, and it provides policy-implicated implications in terms of the shift towards less symbolic preparedness and more reflexive, inclusive, and functional approaches to disaster risk reduction.