This research, based on fieldwork conducted in the village of Darkot in the Karakoram Mountains, Northern Pakistan, seeks to utilise this ‘vulnerability’ perspective to study risk and responses to ...risk by members of the community. In it I argue that losses from environmental hazards—while closely related to the magnitude of the event itself—must also be interpreted with regard to changes in environmental conditions unrelated to hazard events, socio-economic constraints that constrain household responses to risk and slow recovery and the constraints on settlement within and around the community, such that people have little choice but to settle in unsafe locations. The first section of this work deals with the various theoretical approaches to the study of risks and hazards, with particular reference to the work of Hewitt (1983, 1997) and Blaikie et al. (1994, 2001) on the social construction of vulnerability. Physical conditions in the Karakoram and the Yasin Valley are discussed and the various ways in which human activity has modified the landscape. The research was carried out over a period of two months, during which time a number of interviews were carried out within the village, hazard sites and settlement patterns were identified and mapped, and data collected on land-use, population, cropping patterns and agricultural practices within the community. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
