Scholars of disaster have discussed how place attachment affects the disaster landscape. The rupture of self from home, of familiar into strange and disconnected is explored through this lens. I propose in this paper that it is possible that what we are seeing is not a sudden disruption of place attachment, but an ongoing process of alienation.
In this paper I discuss the concepts of both place attachment and alienation. In particular I explore Marx’s concept of alienation. I then look at examples from disaster research and identify instances and concepts that can be better interpreted as an ongoing process of alienation.
I find that, when using Marx’s framework of alienation, we can take examples from disaster studies that might appear as a sudden disruption of place attachment and critically examine them as cases of alienation.
This exploration of disaster theory offers a new framework for bringing together urban theory, in particular critical urban theory, with disaster research.
