Social Vulnerability, Discrimination, and Resilience-building in Disaster Risk Reduction

Abstract

Discrimination represents a harmful as well as an unfair treatment of a person or a group, based on prejudice. Therefore it is related to a ‘rejection process’ of the other, emphasizing critical attributes such as race, sex, age, gender, social and marital status, class and caste, migrant or refugee status, religion, incapacity or handicap. These attributes are socially constructed and are results of the complexity of daily life and of existing power structures. Discrimination induces people to simplify their behaviour by identifying themselves with the ideology of the group and to reject the other. This often creates stereotypes of how to think, to believe, and to act. Thus, a system of values, ideas, beliefs, and practices influences discrimination, and often oversimplifies complex life situations.