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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, SRecent 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 ForcesVolume
87Pagination
1115-1138ISSN
0037-7732Department/School
School of Geography, Planning and Spatial SciencesPublisher
The University of North Carolina PressPlace of publication
North Carolina, USARights statement
Copyright 2008 The University of North Caroline PressRepository Status
- Restricted