{"title":"The Utility of Structural Approaches for Spatially-Explicit Hazards and Vulnerability Research","authors":"R. Dezzani, T. Frazier","doi":"10.4172/2167-0587.1000E117","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Since the decade of the 1980s, the rise of post-modern and poststructuralist approaches to social research have come to dominate academic thinking about human behavior. As a result of these perspective choices, contingency and agency at the scale of the individual have motivated the majority of research focused on individuals and small group interest and experience at the expense of “systems” and structures at the scale of cities, regions and larger geographical expanses of interest. This has resulted in a theoretical framework of perceptual relativism directed from the largest scale of the effects chain. This phenomenological-based research agenda has developed over the decades with a mixed blessing of perspective benefits but also theoretical and analytical deficits. The purpose of this editorial is not to provide criticism of the poststructuralist perspective but to offer a joint perspective through the mechanism of cross-scale analysis which can make effective use of structural approaches. This serves as a “not only ...but also” scenario as suggested by Trevor Barnes for incorporating rigorous quantitative analysis with theoretical approaches not usually perceived as being intrinsically quantitative [1].","PeriodicalId":233291,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Geography & Natural Disasters","volume":"72 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2015-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Geography & Natural Disasters","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.4172/2167-0587.1000E117","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Since the decade of the 1980s, the rise of post-modern and poststructuralist approaches to social research have come to dominate academic thinking about human behavior. As a result of these perspective choices, contingency and agency at the scale of the individual have motivated the majority of research focused on individuals and small group interest and experience at the expense of “systems” and structures at the scale of cities, regions and larger geographical expanses of interest. This has resulted in a theoretical framework of perceptual relativism directed from the largest scale of the effects chain. This phenomenological-based research agenda has developed over the decades with a mixed blessing of perspective benefits but also theoretical and analytical deficits. The purpose of this editorial is not to provide criticism of the poststructuralist perspective but to offer a joint perspective through the mechanism of cross-scale analysis which can make effective use of structural approaches. This serves as a “not only ...but also” scenario as suggested by Trevor Barnes for incorporating rigorous quantitative analysis with theoretical approaches not usually perceived as being intrinsically quantitative [1].