“Disasters are fundamentally social phenomena; they involve the intersection of the physical processes of a hazard agent with the local characteristics of everyday life in a place and larger social and economic forces that structure that realm” (Bolin with Stanford 1998, 27). “Disasters are easily characterized as unfortunate things that happen from time to time to people and their cities. What is missing in this view is any understanding of the ways that political and economic forces create conditions that result in an earthquake having disastrous impacts for some people and communities… “The disruptions of a disaster can unmask social inequalities and the injustices that accompany them…Too often…disasters become the basis for rebuilding social inequalities and perhaps deepening them, thus setting the stage for the next disaster” (Bolin with Stanford 1998, 2). “Disasters, from a vulnerability perspective, are understood as bound up in the specific histories and socio-cultural practices of the affected people taken in the context of their political and economic systems” (Bolin with Stanford 1998, 8). “The value of a vulnerability approach [to the study of hazards and disasters] lies in its openness to cultural specificity, social variability, diversity, contingency, and local agency” (Bolin with Stanford 1998, 20). “A vulnerability approach [to hazards and disasters] directs attention back to people and the common everyday aspects of their lives that make them more or less likely to be caught up in a disaster” (Bolin with Stanford 1998, 20). “It is the local struggles and strategies that can provide lessons for dealing with disaster across a range of societal contexts….Too often disaster research proceeds with the ‘view from above’” (Bolin with Stanford 1998, 20). “Disasters and other environmental problems are too often treated, not as symptoms of more basic political and economic processes, but rather as accidents whose effects can be remedied by sufficient application of technical skill and knowledge” (Bolin with Stanford 1998, 231)