ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines the epistemological and conceptual underpinnings of man-nature relations in general. He analyses the critical concept of adaptation as motif pervading both hazard and cultural ecological research. The author also examines geographic hazards work in light of his theoretical concerns, particularly the prevalence of cybernetic views of social systems and the individual rationality approach to hazard behaviour. He proposes an alternative materialist epistemology and theory with special attention to the dual foci of labour and intersubjective meanings in the society-nature relation. The author discusses an empirical case study which attempts to apply these materialist postulates to the drought hazard among peasants in northern Nigeria. A proper starting point for the study of environmental hazards is the epistemology and conception of nature itself. In peasant communities, where socioeconomic differentiation is so pronounced, poor farmers, shackled by their poverty, are largely powerless to effect the sorts of changes that might mitigate the debilitating consequences of environmental hazards.
