From the Narrative of the Blitz to the Rhetoric of Vulnerability

Through comparing the cultural representations of the floods of the 1950s with those of the year 2000, this article explores the changing conceptualizations of adversity in Britain.The focus of this study is the shift from a narrative of resilience in the 1950s to a narrative of vulnerability in the early 21st century.This shift is paralleled by a reorientation of cultural scripts from an emphasis on community solidarity to individual distress. This article contends that both the representations of how a community copes with a disaster, and people’s lived experiences of disasters, were influenced by this shift.Through exploring the evolution of the cultural narrative of adversity, its changing meaning is discussed.