Unnatural hazards: multiplying the questions we ask

Abstract

ABSTRACT There has been a resurgence of interest in interrogating the naturalness of hazards. The majority of these concerns draw attention to the political, social and economic factors that influence the effects of hazards in different places. This analysis seeks to contextualise these debates within the broader intellectual history of human and environmental geographical studies of natural hazards. Here, as an update to the existing debates, I provide several arguments based on fieldwork in south Iceland that can be used to further challenge the naturalness of hazards. I argue that the specific critiques of unnaturalness we deploy should depend on the problems we wish to foreground in hazardous environments.