University of Tasmania
Browse

File(s) under permanent embargo

Rethinking the nature of disaster: From failed instruments of learning to a post-social understanding

journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-16, 22:40 authored by Williams, S
Recent disasters have been of such scale and complexity that both the common assumptions made about learning from them, and the traditional approaches distinguishing natural from technological disasters (and now terrorism) are thus challenged. Beck’s risk thesis likewise signals the need for a paradigmatic change. Despite sociological inflections in disaster research and management, however, an examination of the risk management practices deployed during Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami reveals attendant problems with a persistent instrumental rationality and disjuncture between society and environment. Therefore, an alternative, post-social understanding is proposed. It includes relational (rather than instrumental) approaches which reinstate the importance of nonhuman nature, but it also recognizes that disasters are postnormal problems, and that disaster research and management increasingly deal with phenomena beyond the limits of current know-how.

History

Publication title

Social Forces

Volume

87

Pagination

1115-1138

ISSN

0037-7732

Department/School

School of Geography, Planning and Spatial Sciences

Publisher

The University of North Carolina Press

Place of publication

North Carolina, USA

Rights statement

Copyright 2008 The University of North Caroline Press

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Natural hazards not elsewhere classified

Usage metrics

    University Of Tasmania

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC