The multiplicity of impact: how social marginalization compounds climate disasters

ABSTRACT

This study advances and examines the proposition that social marginalization, especially along racial and ethnic lines, produces compound disadvantages that accumulate across a wide range of personal, social and political domains when climate disasters strike, producing a multiplicity of impact often missed by quantitative research on social vulnerability. To test this claim, we use data collected by the Houston Area Survey after the historic rainfall brought by Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Analyses reveal that impacts to Black residents were much more pervasive than for any other group, including a disproportionate likelihood of impact to their income, transportation and personal networks in addition to their housing. Results also indicate that this multiplicity of impact across one’s personal and social domains associates with greater scrutiny of local government’s role in the disaster, net of one’s general political ideology. The implication is that we cannot fully understand the social impacts of a changing climate through social vulnerability metrics and property damage assessments, alone. More comprehensive frameworks and impact accounting are needed.

KEYWORDS:

• Natural disasters
• focusing events
• social marginalization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

A. Alexander Priest

A. Alexander Priest is a Ph.D., student at Rice University. His research focuses on social inequality, environmental hazards, and climate adaptation. He earned his MA in Sociology from Rice University.

James R. Elliott

James R. Elliott is Professor and Chair of Sociology at Rice University. His research focuses on social inequality, environmental hazards, and climate adaptation. He has served as a program advisor for the US National Science Foundation and as co-editor of Sociological Perspectives, the official journal of the Pacific Sociological Association. His co-authored book Sites Unseen: Uncovering Hidden Hazards in American Cities recently won the Robert E. Park Award for best book in community and urban sociology from the American Sociological Association.