A stranger with your door key: are we mistaking alienation for place attachment?

PurposeScholars 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.Design/methodology/approachIn 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.FindingsI 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.Originality/valueThis exploration of disaster theory offers a new framework for bringing together urban theory, in particular critical urban theory, with disaster research.