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Rethinking the nature of disaster: From failed instruments of learning to a post-social understanding
Citation
Williams, S, Rethinking the nature of disaster: From failed instruments of learning to a post-social understanding, Social Forces, 87, (2) pp. 1115-1138. ISSN 0037-7732 (2008) [Refereed Article]
Copyright Statement
Copyright 2008 The University of North Caroline Press
Abstract
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.
Item Details
Item Type: | Refereed Article |
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Keywords: | Hurricane Katrina; Natural hazards; Nonhuman nature; Risk; Post-social theory; Tsunami; Uncertainty |
Research Division: | Human Society |
Research Group: | Sociology |
Research Field: | Environmental sociology |
Objective Division: | Environmental Policy, Climate Change and Natural Hazards |
Objective Group: | Natural hazards |
Objective Field: | Natural hazards not elsewhere classified |
UTAS Author: | Williams, S (Dr Stewart Williams) |
ID Code: | 54269 |
Year Published: | 2008 |
Web of Science® Times Cited: | 27 |
Deposited By: | Geography and Environmental Studies |
Deposited On: | 2009-02-16 |
Last Modified: | 2015-01-30 |
Downloads: | 0 |
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