Socio-natural disaster, resilience and vulnerability: The territorial perspective in italian current debate

The purpose of this special of Sociologia Urbana e Rurale (Urban and Rural Sociology) is to introduce a significant overview of Italian sociologists’ reflections on the topic of disasters. The use of English language aims at facilitating the circulation of such articles within today’s multidisciplinary, international scientific community. In fact, although Italian sociological literature on the topics of risk, emergencies and short- and long-term consequences of disasters has remarkably grown over the last four decades, most of the texts are in Italian language, which undoubtedly limits their impact on a worldwide scale. Though Italian sociologists do not exclusively deal with calamities affecting their own country, the latter has been the main focus of their studies. On the other hand, as is known, Italy is -at least in Europe- one of the most risk-exposed countries in terms both of natural disasters (the peninsula is largely seismic) and in terms of its particular building heritage and weak prevention policies. The articles included in this issue focus on the catastrophes affecting the country from the ’60s to date - from the Vajont disaster (1963), to the earthquakes in Belice (1968), Friuli (1976), Irpinia (1980), Abruzzo (2009) and Emilia (2012) - decades in which sociological disciplines have progressively grown hand in hand with the attention to social, economic, political and cultural implications of environmental problems.