Patterns of vulnerability : a brief history of the West Kootenay Y2K Alliance
Date
2000
Authors
Howes, Kenneth Norman
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Abstract
The theme of this paper is vulnerability, situated within the context of an ethnographic account of a grassroots community organization called the West Kootenay Y2K Alliance, which evolved in Nelson, BC in late 1998. The objective of this thesis is to describe the local construction of Y2K - the Millennium computer problem - as a technological risk and how these factors influenced the mobilization of a community emergency preparedness and awareness effort in the Kootenay region. The perspective is political ecological and the approach allegorical. Sociocultural factors have been addressed from both a micro and macro level, providing insights into the manner in which the totality of social life plays into the intensity of disaster, and the speed of recovery from their impacts.