A genealogy of disaster studies

2021 ◽  
pp. 27-42
Author(s):  
JC Gaillard
Keyword(s):  
2021 ◽  
pp. 027614672110201
Author(s):  
Swapan Deep Arora ◽  
Anirban Chakraborty

Contemporary existence presents a duality of sustained development and recurrent disasters. Whereas disaster studies have closely examined public policy and state initiative, the role of for-profits is under-explored. Stakeholder theory and its integration with marketing orientation provide a theoretical underpinning for understanding the behavior of firms across contingencies, including disasters. Accordingly, we traverse the range of actions that these market entities exhibit in aiding disaster management and develop a comprehensive typology. The current COVID-19 pandemic provides a context for illustrating the practical exemplar actions as mapped to the proposed typology. We add to theory by examining the role of marketing philosophy and for-profits in tackling disasters at multiple levels: from micro-aspects of maintaining relations with specific stakeholders to the macro-objective of building community resilience. Further, the proposed typology helps practice and research by highlighting the range of firms' responses contributing to disaster management and building community resilience.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franciele Maria Vanelli ◽  
Masato Kobiyama

<p>Natural disasters refer to disruptions of the society’s functioning as result of negative interactions between natural hazards and social organization. Meanwhile, sociohydrology is dedicated to understanding the coupled human-water systems feedbacks. Both natural disaster studies and sociohydrology focus on understanding bidirectional interactions between environmental and social aspects, which is characterized by a dichotomous thinking pattern. In this context, natural disaster studies and sociohydrology have many parallels. In the present research, we conducted an exploratory research from two central arguments: (i) sociohydrology development can contribute to understanding how to disaster risk reduction by converting negative impacts into a harmonious coexistence between natural and social interactions; and (ii) water is relevant to all types of natural disasters in a direct or an indirect manner and is also fundamental in disaster response. Advances in knowledge about bidirectional interactions between environmental and social aspects overcoming dichotomous thinking pattern can update the sociohydrology development and the concepts commonly applied to natural disaster and risk reduction. We propose that any local community should use the school catchment concept that refers to any experimental catchment which serves for scientific researches and environmental education activities. The partnership between natural and social scientists and society is a challenge. Thus, school catchment construction and use can assist to overcome dichotomous thinking such as natural × social aspects, quantitative × qualitative analyses, systematic × non-systematic data, global × local spatial scales, and structural × non-structural measures. Hence, sociohydrology can support the integrated management of water resources and natural disasters and risks, contributing to achieving the Sendai Framework goals and the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations Agenda 2030. On the other hand, natural disaster studies can contribute to the interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary development of sociohydrology. Therefore, we conclude that sociohydrology has the potential, not yet explored, for contributing to natural disaster studies and vice and versa.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Nardini ◽  
Sara Bonati ◽  
Stefano Morelli ◽  
Veronica Pazzi

<p>Very few research studies have been dedicated to understanding the role of social media, diversity and vulnerability during a highly impacting event for a society. Social media are very important nowadays as a way to be in "connection to" and "link between" individuals. Thanks to technological support it is possible to create new virtual and real social relationships and networks and to be always up to date about what happen in the world. The role that virtual space plays "reducing distances", connecting people and places and facilitating the provision of support to people in need, has been receiving increasing interest in disaster studies in last years. In particular, connectivity has assumed an increasing role in relation to the diffusion of means to reach people and places in virtual mode. Furthermore, the use of social media as a means of providing information on disasters and risks could help to reduce exposure in disasters. However, several knowledge gaps are still opened, and in particular which are the potential repercussions of a high connected disaster management process on vulnerability? How can the weight of diversity change into the virtual space? The premise is that not everyone has the same possibility of accessing social media (e.g. to be informed, to know what is happening and to link with rescuers). The difficulty of accessing social media can make people invisible into the disaster management process with the risk that someone could be left behind. Thus, this presentation aims to discuss the challenges that derive from an increasing use of social platform in providing and receiving information during disasters. A second relevant point, that this presentation aims to discuss, is linked to the way citizens perceive communication platforms and how the flow of information significantly impacts on the interpretation and on the management of risk. Conclusions of this work suggest that communication should take into account the risk perception models by the public and therefore the peculiarities of each vulnerable group, to provide "targeted" communications in relation to the cultural context with the aim of reducing vulnerability growing up citizens’ awareness and knowledge. This presentation is the result of the work provided as part of the EU H2020 founded project LINKS (http://links-project.eu).<span> </span></p>


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Tironi ◽  
Katherine Campos-Knothe ◽  
Valentina Acuña ◽  
Enzo Isola ◽  
Cristóbal Bonelli ◽  
...  

PurposeBased on the research, the authors identify how four key concepts in disaster studies—agency, local scale, memory and vulnerability—are interrupted, and how these interruptions offer new perspectives for doing disaster research from and for the South.Design/methodology/approachMeta-analysis of case studies and revision of past and current collaborations of authors with communities across Chile.FindingsThe findings suggest that agency, local scale, memory and vulnerability, as fundamental concepts for disaster risk reduction (DRR) theory and practice, need to allow for ambivalences, ironies, granularization and further materializations. The authors identify these characteristics as the conditions that emerge when doing disaster research from within the disaster itself, perhaps the critical condition of what is usually known as the South.Originality/valueThe authors contribute to a reflexive assessment of fundamental concepts for critical disaster studies. The authors offer research-based and empirically rich redefinitions of these concepts. The authors also offer a novel understanding of the political and epistemological conditions of the “South” as both a geography and a project.


2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (8) ◽  
pp. 1179-1195
Author(s):  
Kelly Frailing ◽  
Dee Wood Harper

Disaster sociology has a rich and undeniably valuable history. Among other things, it has revealed much about the behavior of disaster survivors. In recent years, criminologists have turned their attention and the discipline’s theories, methods, and data sources to understanding behavior in the wake of disasters and have come to a number of additional and sometimes different conclusions than did sociologists. In this article, we examine property crime in the wake of some recent and high-profile disasters. We find short-term increases in burglary after a number of disasters, ostensibly challenging some long-held notions in disaster sociology. We contend that the use of criminological methods including secondary analysis of extant data to understand behavior after disasters provides a more nuanced and accurate picture of postdisaster behavior and conclude with a call for inclusion of these theories, methods, and data sources in disaster studies more widely.


Author(s):  
Andrew Baum ◽  
Susan D. Solomon ◽  
Robert J. Ursano ◽  
Leonard Bickman ◽  
Edward Blanchard ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
Cam Grey

The projects of social history, disaster studies, and archaeology deliberately tend to eschew consideration of events, focusing instead on processes and structures that unfold gradually over time. The eruption of the Somma-Vesuvius volcano in Campania, Italy, in 472 presents tangible markers of a specific moment, although the absence of local textual evidence and the strong hints of rapid re-exploitation of the rich and fertile soils of the region suggest that the scale of the disaster that it precipitated was limited. A perspective on the eruption informed by the concepts of risk and vulnerability demonstrates that the population of the Campanian Plain had different experiences of the eruption according to factors such as their location, the nature and robustness of their social and economic resources, and their mechanisms for accessing and exploiting power relationships.


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