Rethinking the Nature of Disaster: From Failed Instruments of Learning to a Post-Social...

Rethinking the Nature of Disaster: From Failed Instruments of Learning to a Post-SocialUnderstandingAuthor(s): Stewart WilliamsSource: Social Forces, Vol. 87, No. 2 (Dec., 2008), pp. 1115-1138Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20430905 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 11:29

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Forces.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.13 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 11:29:46 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=oup

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20430905?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Rethinking the Nature of Disaster: From Failed Instruments of Learning to a Post-Social Understanding

Stewart Williams, University of Tasmania

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 managementpractices deployed during Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami reveals attendant problems with a persistent instrumental rationality and disjuncture between society and environment. 7herefore, 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 post normal problems, and that disaster research and management increasingly deal with phenomena beyond the limits of current know-how.

The catastrophic events of the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 were of unprecedented scale and complexity. In general, disasters are "low incidence, high impact" events and, as such, are often afforded low priority and inadequate resources in policy and planning (McConnell and Drennan 2006).Thus their occurrence still invites surprise as well as horror. However, the inadequate understanding as well as poor management of such phenomena also raises concern. This article therefore addresses this inability to comprehend more fully the nature of disaster with a focus on the tsunami and Katrina, both of which defied the traditional distinction between natural and technological disasters, and in fact, joined the characteristics of both. From their origins in the physical world, these events combined with socio-technical and other factors to become humanitarian crises on the international stage.

Thispaper has benefittedgreatlyfrom the comments oftwo anonymous reviewers. Their efforts and those of the editors of this special issue are much appreciated. Direct correspondence to Stewart Williams, School of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS 7000, Australia. E-mail: Stewart. [email protected]. ? The University of North Carolina Press Social Forces 87(2). December 2008



1116 . Social Forces 87(2)

Learning Lessons, Repeating Mistakes

Disasters provide opportunities to learn and improve policy and practice, and disaster studies are conducted with this aim in mind. The alternative to learning is an increased likelihood that the destruction caused by such events will be exacerbated. Disasters have therefore spawned a vast research literature, but their management also requires in-progress reports, action-after reviews, and practical assessments (of real and simulated events) known as "hot washes" as well as departmental and other debriefings. Prominent within this discourse are the many documents that make conclusive claims explicit in their titles about having learned lessons after a disaster as in the cases of the Indian Ocean tsunami (Clinton 2006; Srivinas and Nakagawa forthcoming) and Hurricane Katrina (Kunreuther 2006; White House 2006; Woodhouse 2007).

The opposite has also been suggested in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. More alarm than insight was raised (Tierney 2006a), and some emergency responders, frustrated by repetitious mistakes in disaster management, point out that even "a casual observer can spot problems that recur: communications systems fail, command and control structures are fractured, resources are slow to be deployed." (Donahue and Tuohy 2006:1) Disaster management professionals working on post-tsunami reconstruction in Aceh and Sri Lanka (Kennedy et al. 2008:34) are also critical in noting a cycle of "lessons learned about 'lessons learned"' because their own insights "mirror many of the lessons identified - but not necessarily learned and applied - in other transitional settlement and shelter cases." Thus the implementation of knowledge is as important as learning per se. However, the events of Katrina and the tsunami suggest that the nature of disasters has changed. How we might approach understanding and coping with them must also shift.

Learning from disasters is complex. It begins with the rational cognitive processes of individual actors, but is mostly considered in the context of organizational learning wherein disasters serve as focusing events that inform policy and practice. The process varies in type, is subjective, and

most likely to happen only with the most extreme events (Birkland 2006; Gerber 2007; Solecki and Michaels 1994). This type of learning is highly contingent, and one strong advocate was compelled after Katrina to refer also to the antithetical process of "un-learning" because the durability of any knowledge which might have been gained from previous disasters was so evidently put in doubt (Birkland 2006). Gerber (2007:237) suggests that "even if learning does occur, its sustainability is unclear. Hazard mitigation is in many ways not a question of scientific understanding but of political

will, a will that is found to be lacking in many instances." In describing the reports produced after Katrina as "fantasy documents,"

Tierney(2006a:22)warns againstthe rhetoric of disaster, stating: "These kinds



Rethinking the Nature of Disaster . 1117

of 'lessons learned' documents can result in sound recommendations as well as symbolic ones. The key question is whether those recommendations that are sound will lead to action and change." She alludes to others' work (Clarke 1999; Clarke and Perrow 1996) which demonstrates how, in situations of high uncertainty, organizations deploy science and technology in combination with a misplaced faith in their capabilities (including presumed infallibility) so as to redefine risks as more manageable and acceptable. Their thesis suggests that accidents are routine, emphasizing the likelihood of disaster, rather than its improbability. The socio-technical complexity and concentration of modern urban life, including its dense populations, large institutional workplaces, and extensive communications and transport networks, increase vulnerability to organizational and even societal failure (whether arising from terrorism, for example, or collision with a near-Earth object such as an asteroid) (Clarke 1999, 2006; Clarke and Perrow 1996; Clarke and Short 1993; Perrow 1999, 2007). Indeed, these authors insist that more and worse catastrophes are yet to come.1

Such thinking accords with Beck's (1992) risk thesis and primary claim that institutionalized scientific knowledge and technical expertise have contributed to the proliferation and worsening of risks rather than their amelioration. Published in high modernity, Beck's thesis was timely.

Technologies were advancing rapidly, economies destabilized with global restructuring, and incidents such as the Chernobyl reactor explosion, Challenger space shuttle, Exxon Valdez oil spill and Union Carbide chemical leak in the public consciousness, heralding new types of ecological threat.

According to Beck, natural hazards have given way to manufactured risks of epic proportion as the unmanageable and not necessarily apparent side effects of modernization (epitomized by global warming). In reflexive modernity, however, scientific and institutional organizations can obscure the link between their generation and control of risks, and can counter prevailing

mandates, thereby exacerbating rather than reducing risks. Individuals too are more likely to be aware and learn about their exposure to different risks, but have become more cynical about science, politics, business and the media. Revisiting his thesis with the notion of a world at risk, and adding terrorism to ecological and financial crises, Beck (2002, 2006) predicts further challenges and changes on a global scale. A new cosmopolitan realpolitik will inevitably result through force, conflict and catharsis, he suggests, with the reinvention or demise of nation-states as "global risks are producing 'failed states' - even in the West." (Beck 2006:344)

Disaster researchers and managers continue systematic production and accumulation of knowledge for purposes of improving policy and practice, but work in the face of increased uncertainty, failure and skepticism. For example, practitioners refer to "adaptation" and "integration" of disaster policy "paradigms" (McEntire et al. 2002:267) and "the evolution of



1118 . SocialForces87(2)

emergency management," (Britton 2002:45; O'Brien and Read 2005:353) but in reality, the progression implied does not always follow. Surprisingly, even Donahue and Tuohy (2006) who observe the mistakes made before, during and after disasters - rather than lessons learned - remain optimistic. Still, they do suggest that it is a specific type of organizational learning and radical transformation, and not the usual incremental type of learning, which is required. Whether its eventuation is possible within the current framework of disaster research and management is another matter.

Society advances through interpersonal, organizational and institutional learning, especially in response to uncertainty. This learning is reflexive, dialogical and performative rather than individualized, but contrary to the learning proposed in rational, organized and idealized (Habermasian) settings, it best establishes new discursive relations and meanings outside of conventional parameters (Eder 2000, 2003; Healy 2004). Commenting on why "the world is hard to change," Eder (2003:45-7) explains that the broader, structural change of societal learning is different from other, more common types of learning and occurs separately as "evolution" or "revolution." Rather than belittle everyday learning, Eder suggests that it is still needed to provide the many varied contexts from which significant change might emerge as when a major crisis delegitimizes the former rule system used for producing knowledge and replaces it with a new narrative order. Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami are now precipitating such dialogical engagements. They might therefore also provide opportunities for a more radical learning in addition to the usual stories about failing in the face of increasingly severe disasters.2 Similarly, Picou and Marshall (2007:1) flag a possible post-Katrina "paradigm shift" in line with Beck's thinking and his own question (Beck 2006:331) on

whether there might be "need for a paradigm shift in the social sciences?" To understand and cope with disasters of enormous scale and complexity demands fundamentally different perspectives. It is therefore relevant that both the Indian Ocean tsunami and Hurricane Katrina have since been unpacked in the profound terms of "enlightenment." (Clark 2005:385; Picou and Marshall 2007:17) Beck (2006:338-9) likewise links these two disasters (amongst others) to a possible but necessary "enlightenment function" of world risk society.3

Approaches to Disasters Research and Management

Demands for new approaches to disaster intensified with the tsunami and Katrina. Picou and Marshall (2007), for example, seek perhaps the most radical re-imagining and urge the pursuit of Beck's enlightenment function. Recent calls for a sociological inflection in disaster studies have also been made (Quarantelli 2005; Tierney 2007), but they trace back to political,




human ecology (Hewitt 1983). Meanwhile, others continue in a social constructionist tradition (Hinchcliffe 2000; Kroll-Smith, Couch and Marshall 1997; Pelling 2001; Picou and Marshall 2002). Such maneuvers toward the social reflect a more general shift in the discipline. In practice, it includes the development of a multi-hazards approach involving the various tiers of government and other agencies with the participation of communities in reducing their vulnerability and increasing their sustainability and resilience to disaster (Blaikie et al. 1994; Mileti 1999; Pearce 2003). Still "hazard mitigation tools" including risk assessment and warning communications systems, planning regulations, building codes, GIS mapping and various government (and, increasingly, private) policies remain common. They are redolent of the practical instruments distinct from conceptual thinking.

Differences between the theorization of research and the practices of management reflect a long-running fracture in the discipline. It is noted, for example, by sociologists and disaster researchers conducting comprehensive and critical reviews of their fields (Quarantelli 2005; Tierney 2007). They identify the traditional focus on natural disasters, with origins in the physical environment and its processes, as limiting. The development of disaster studies within human ecology and the natural sciences, driven by the particular interests of institutions, government officials and technocrats, has created the paradigmatic view of disasters as non-routine, physical events that have a negative impact on humans and social systems. Although multi-disciplinary, it has been strongly empirical and focused on technical applications. It begets a sociological critique summarized as follows:

"Disaster researchers must stop organizing their inquiries around problems that are meaningful primarily to the institutions charged with managing disasters and instead concentrate on problems that are meaningful to the discipline. They must integrate the study of disasters with core sociological concerns, such as social inequality, societal diversity, and social change. They must overcome their tendency to build up knowledge one case at a time and focus more on what disasters and environmental crises of all types have in common with respect to origins, dynamics, and outcomes. And they must locate the study of disasters within broader theoretical frameworks, including in particular those concerned with risk, organizations and institutions, and society-environment interactions." (Tierney 2007:520-21)




These observations also embed concerns about the definitions of disaster and the traditional approach, distinguishing natural from technological hazards as the primary means for classifying disaster. Briefly, natural disasters have long been accepted as "acts of God" whilst technological ones are attributed to human error or a technical failure. More nuanced distinctions now suggest that natural disasters tend to include visible damage to the built environment and have legitimate victims, garnering government response. With clear stages through to recovery in the short-term, too, they often result in improved outcomes for those people who are subsequently well-organized and supported within what are, in effect, "therapeutic" rather than just "affected" communities. In contrast, technological disasters are usually less visible, contaminating the biophysical environment often without warning, and they fail to follow a clear path of specific stages while also delaying any recovery. They tend to be protracted and litigious incidents, marked by an irresponsibility or

"recreancy" (attributed most often to corporations and governments) as well as malfeasance and loss of trust; and they therefore cause chronic, secondary trauma for victims as they lack closure and produce "corrosive" communities (Erikson 1976, 1994; Freudenburg 1997, 2000; Kroll-Smith and Couch 1990; Kroll-Smith, Couch and Marshall 1997; Picou and Marshall 2007; Picou, Marshall and Gill 2004).

Some researchers refute such distinctions and maintain the sociological stance that disasters are social phenomena to be defined and examined in exclusively social terms (Dynes and Drabek 1994; Quarantelli 1987, 1997). Others have since revised or qualified their position. Kroll-Smith and Couch (1991), for example, are less interested in the type of disaster agent (natural or technological) than in the symbolic interaction between communities and their environments and how people interpret and respond to disruptive events. Kroll-Smith and Gunter (1998) resist the standard definitions and rulings of a "legislative" sociology. Picou, Marshall and Gill (2004) and Picou and Marshall (2007) on the other hand, as well as Marshall and Picou (2008) most recently, are adamant that such an a priori categorization of disasters is possible but ultimately unhelpful. What were traditionally thought natural disasters can be caused or exacerbated by human factors but furthermore, they suggest, events such as the Indian Ocean tsunami and Hurricane Katrina are so complex that they render the categories futile.

This complexity is increasingly evident. For Picou and Marshall (2007), Katrina comprised natural and technological (na-tech) disasters, but also exhibited similarities shared between technological and terrorist disasters. Such complexity frustrates orthodox approaches in disaster research and management but it might also necessarily effect significant change. For example, state-of-the-art risk management practices currently available




for na-tech disasters actually embody only the usual hazard mitigation tools and thus need upgrading (Steinberg, Sengul and Cruz 2008). Greater prospects of technological, specifically terrorist, disaster have been mainstreamed since the 9/11 attacks on the United States in 2001. In the period afterwards, with "its relentless focus on terrorism, potential catastrophic losses from natural hazards were increasingly being ignored." (Tierney 2008:182) A shift toward "harder" policy and practice resulted, including more centralized powers, increased funding and resources, and legislation requiring plans for "civil contingencies," which now dominate all possible risk scenarios (McConnell and Drennan 2006:68; Tierney 2006b). It also relies on sophisticated IT systems and methods of networking that include modeling, computational simulations and information infrastructure

with interoperability of social and technical systems (Comfort 2005). A pervasive instrumental rationality inheres with these various

developments. Calling for more sociological approaches, Smith (2006) makes the similarly telling comment that "it is important in the heat of the moment to put social science to work as a counterweight to official attempts to relegate Katrina to the historical dustbin of inevitable 'natural' disaster." His metaphor from the physical sciences hints at the mechanistic thinking that still prevails throughout the discipline. It has persisted presumably because deemed normal or harmless if not essential (albeit essentializing). Dynes and Drabek, for example, identify the purposes of disaster research as "conceptual understanding," "symbolic or political uses" and "instrumental uses." (1994:11) They examine all but the last which relates to actual cases, specifically linking issues and actions, yet warrants no further mention. This disregard follows disclosure of their epistemological perspective with its scientific leanings:

"In certain ways, disasters represent unique labor atories, ethically acceptable natural experiments. If viewed in this way, disasters are unique social experiments for nearly all subspecialties within sociology, rather than trivial aberrations in social life." (Dynes and Drabek 1994:7)

Social Practices and Instruments of Risk Management

Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami are exemplary of the more sociological approaches to disaster research and management. Our research is also informed by Beck's (1992, 1997) risk thesis. It articulates the social and its subjects, and globalization and individualization, with the same double movement of reflexivity which he suggests has resulted in a democratization of knowledge for ecological modernity. Also of




interest, then, is the way that citizens become entwined in the social and neoliberal state machinery. With broader social participation in knowledge production and decision making, the insights of aid workers, first responders, observers, victims and disaster researchers are sought on the instruments deployed in these disasters.

Hurricane Katrina

During Hurricane Katrina, a problematic individualism was writ large because the state was deemed to have failed, as people fended for themselves. One local newspaper even declared: "Every Man for Himself." (Tampa Tribune cited in Menzel 2006:812) In contrast to the reports of late and inadequate rescue and recovery operations, are the revelations of overly officious, zealous responses. Complications arose because, firstly, the Federal Emergency Management Agency had been gutted and made subsidiary to the Department of Homeland Security, which is concerned with the prevention of terrorist attacks rather than natural disaster mitigation. Secondly, the approach deployed was based not on the insights of any explicitly sociological understanding but focused instead more simply on providing surveillance and protective equipment (Tierney 2006b). The worst aspects of a militaristic response then arrived with the National Guard. Citizens were denied water. Those searching for family members or rescuing private property were accused of looting. Groups organizing food and shelter were deemed dangerous and broken up at gunpoint. And, many people were reported as being refused permission to leave or were, at least, encouraged to stay within the confines of the mass shelters (Smith 2006; Tierney 2007; Tierney and Bevq 2007).

Over-policing during Katrina was at the expense of other responses, and discriminated against race and class (Smith 2006; Tierney 2007). Yet law enforcement agencies are claiming to have learned lessons after Katrina even though, as frequent first responders to disaster, they admit to a poor record of sharing information and experiences (Rojek and Smith 2007). Meanwhile, the mis-handling of individuals deemed out of place or a threat to themselves and/or others did not cease as former residents were excluded from New Orleans' renewal. Many homes and even whole suburbs were assessed and earmarked for demolition because they had been deemed damaged or dangerous (sometimes based on questionable "expert" advice), and swathes of people were kept out of the city (Allen 2007; McKee 2008). Their exclusion, on the other hand, was in sharp contrast to the welcome extended to an elite group of planners and developers armed with visions of new urbanism and corporate opportunity (Tierney 2006a, 2008). Some, often poor, black




neighborhoods have also suffered further decline while waiting for the state to commence their redevelopment or, alternatively, for market forces to drive their gentrification (McKee 2008). Indeed, the market is another significant instrument in risk management. Its influence was evident in the provision (adequate or not) of housing and insurance before Katrina but added to the situation because the most disadvantaged, uninsured and rental households were worst hit. Despite not protecting, insurance is expected to have an even more important role in hazard mitigation in the future (Kunreuther 2006; Kunreuther and Pauly 2006).

At a societal level, Beck foresees the demise of the "security pact" as ecological threats worsen, exceed the usual mechanisms of assessment and regulation, and become uninsurable (but for an alternative view on this latter, see Freudenburg 2000). The military's recent involvement in

what was depicted as civil unrest and urban insurgency in New Orleans is related. Similar scenarios in the future will be "directed even more toward managing 'problem populations."' (Tierney and Bevq 2007:48) Practices of securing society against disaster through policing and insurance are readily apparent from a sociological perspective. As the sometimes crude tools of risk management they also invite questions. Thus Tierney wonders:

"How many lives were lost in New Orleans while rescue workers sought to put down looting? How much resident-to-resident helping behavior was prevented or suppressed because people were afraid to venture out to help their neighbors out of fear of being killed or arrested?" (2006a:20)

Such failings are recurrent. Recommendations have been made before about assuming that "potential victims will react well, instead of badly," during crises as well as "focus[ing] on the co-ordination of the emergent resources, rather than trying to impose some kind of command and control." (Quarantelli 1997:41) Yet these insights and advice are compromised as disasters unfold in unexpected and contradictory ways.

The Indian Ocean Tsunami

In the case of the Indian Ocean tsunami, the social practices of risk management were also problematic. For example, actions undertaken for public safety instead intensified personal fears, local political differences and cultural instabilities (Hyndman 2007). But this catastrophe also elicited some of the best aspects of humanity world wide. The devastation inspired a total of pledges exceeding $13 billion, which was unprecedented (Hyndman 2007; Srinivas and Nakagawa forthcoming). The gift of aid




to total strangers is a social act involving human emotion and affect. Its business, though, is a mathematical one of quantification.

After the tsunami, Western generosity was plentiful to the point of excess. Mostly, the provision of aid was overzealous and inappropriate because of inadequate consultation. It then reinforced the structural inequalities and injustices which had contributed to the catastrophe in the first place (Clark 2007; Korf 2007). Perhaps, "potential donors or care-givers should have been better able to assess the situation, and weigh it against commensurate demand for assistance and attention" in an "economy" of disaster (Clark 2007:1131). Instrumental reason is pervasive, present even in humanitarianism, and its abstract operations can be troublesome. For example, women especially suffered in the tsunami, but they have been further misunderstood, discriminated against, denied aid or sexually abused because of systematic inabilities to account for gender differences (Eye on Aceh 2006; Felten-Biermann 2006). Similarly, Clark (2007:1132) notes the embodied (but, ironically, not gendered) experiences of "pain and suffering, which seem to resist being compared or catalogued or reduced to a calculus."

The mechanisms of organizing aid are in ways insensitive to human qualities. Its provision is important but can also normalize and maintain the vulnerabilities of the peoples assisted. The differences of wealth and poverty, for example, which influence the resilience of peoples and places to disaster, are reinscribed with humanitarianism across the world. The tsunami revealed the possibilities of global proximity and shared vulnerability rather than destinies worlds apart. Deep engagements and meaningful outcomes can require more grounded relations though, such as phenomenological interactions (see Kroll-Smith and Couch 1991; Kroll-Smith and Gunter 1998). But here, Western compassion and beneficence were products of caring at a distance. In these asymmetric relations between donor and beneficiary, the people receiving aid were rendered passive recipients and pure victims (Korf 2007). The donors, on the other hand, could remain at a comfortable distance while relations of risk and differences between here and there were assessed and responded to, but not significantly or even necessarily altered. Social scientists therefore continue to demand more ethical encounters between self and other, and empathy in responding to disaster. However, an instrumental reason (usually associated more with the "hard" sciences) also structures such sociological approaches to risk management, and it can obstruct even the most well-meaning humanitarian practices.4

The Role of the Environment

The natural, material world is objectivized and distanced by scientific reason. It also seems to figure less frequently in the explanations of events such




as Katrina and the tsunami as they continue to be seen more as human rather than natural disasters. In the aftermath of Katrina, for example, Erikson (2007:xx) stresses how "virtually everything that followed was a product of human hands or human imaginations." With the tsunami, Clark discusses vulnerability specifically in terms of "our all-too-humanness," side-stepping nature except for its impact on people:

"What is being passed over ... is not simply 'nature' - which is often well understood and deeply assimilated into struggles. But it does include some of the things that natural forces can do: what they can do, in particular, to soft and fragile bodies." (2007:1132)

Nature is increasingly subordinated to human interests, and responses to natural disaster are inevitably posed from the perspective of social concern. Beck's proposed transition from the natural hazards traditionally threatening society to the manufactured threats of modern risk society would also seem complete. However, the natural, material world still deserves proper consideration in disaster research and management. Balancing physical and social environments is reminiscent of the discipline's earlier efforts at symmetry which were made using social constructionism and stressed "an intimate link between people and their air, water and soil." (Kroll-Smith, Couch and Marshall 1997:15; see also Kroll-Smith and Couch 1990, 1991; Kroll-Smith and Gunter 1998; Picou and Marshall 2002) As the pendulum swinging between these disciplinary poles now favors the social over the physical, the role of the environment in disaster is obscured.

Hurricane Katrina

The events of Katrina are widely blamed on human (personal, political and organizational) failings (Menzel 2006; White House 2006). They are far less frequently seen as an affect and affirmation of nature. The shift in policy focus from natural hazards towards terrorism as well as technological threats was also reinforced in the government's subsequent inquiry. The final report makes 125 recommendations addressing 17 topics but they concern first, and most numerously, issues of "National Preparedness" and "Integrated Use of Military Capabilities" (with 21 and 11 recommendations, respectively) (see White House 2006). Environmental matters are restricted to only one of the 17 headings - "Environmental Hazards and Debris Removal" - and their seeming unimportance is stressed with the lowest number of recommendations for any topic (just three). Rather, the U.S. government like others mostly saw a human disaster.




If planning for disaster is Mission Impossible (McConnell and Drennan 2006), anticipating such events is even more impossible. With Katrina, government officials from President George W. Bush on down claimed that no one could have anticipated the breach of levees and flooding of New Orleans. Disaster researchers and managers, on the other hand, had long expected such a catastrophe; in preceding years, they had provided cautionary advice (Tierney 2008; Laska 2008[2004]). In 2004 "Hurricane Pam" had been a high-profile training exercise forthe region. It was also costly, and funds were subsequently not available for follow-up on recommendations. Moreover, planning and preparations remained inadequate, making the city's chances of being destroyed by such an event in the future much more likely. The aging levees were found just sufficient in 2004 and were maintained, rather than fortified. They had been constructed to withstand only a Category 3 hurricane and not the force of Hurricane Katrina, a Category 5 storm (Tierney 2008; White House 2006).

Katrina's potential for destruction was straight away amplified because the ecosystem in Louisiana, which should be resilient to hurricanes, had been so drastically altered. New Orleans' coastal location in the basin of a floodplain, situated below sea level, presents an obvious natural hazard. Practices pursued in the name of environmental management and hazard mitigation heightened the danger. First, human efforts to tame the Mississippi River with channels, pumps and levees created a patchwork of districts which often operate independently and at cross-purposes. Second, these manmade channels, designed to ease the flow of commerce, directed the storm surge inland towards major populations. Third, altering the landscape through river diversions and land reclamation created erosion, subsidence and flooding. Even worse, regional wetlands, which protect coastal areas by absorbing storm surges, were cleared to make way for all of these projects (Van Heerden and Bryan 2006; White House 2006).5 When the stormwater was drained away, it left behind a toxic sludge

which had accumulated from years of industry and agriculture along with fuel oil spills caused by the storm (Allen 2007; Picou and Marshall 2007). In addition to the chemical contaminants were biological pathogens from raw sewage, then mold bloomed into a major public health issue. This unanticipated development contributed to widespread, allergy-like sinus and respiratory problems, including "Katrina cough" and "Katrina crud syndrome," which were difficult to manage and became politicized (Frickel and Vincent 2007; Kutner 2007). In contrast to the original catastrophe, it was less visible and more stealthy and corrosive in the manner of other types of disaster. The nature of this disaster was redefined through the media and politics in pace with an environment that was not easily understood and changing rapidly but also, perhaps, too easily discounted.




The Indian Ocean Tsunami

Environmental factors are critical for understanding the tsunami but are understated in many of its explanations. In citing the extent of local poverty, organizational and government self-interest, security issues and civil conflict, or in emphasising the lack of inadequate mitigation and early warning systems, tsunami commentators tend to suggest socio-technical failures rather than natural disaster (Hyndman 2007; Keys, Masterman-Smith and Cotter 2006; Philo 2005). However, there are significant factors of an environmental nature which are less often identified. They include the removal of mangroves for the development of shrimp farms and tourist resorts (Sharma 2005), and the extensive loss of coral reefs (Srivinas and Nakagawa forthcoming). Intact, both would normally have lessened the tsunami's initial physical impact in localities which subsequently suffered in its wake. Also, for example, debris and waste were dispersed further, accumulating in different, often distant areas, causing secondary problems such as groundwater contamination. Processes for its management and removal then had to be established, and these were slow and often inappropriate.

Other unforeseen environmental problems arose. One major aid organization (Eye on Aceh 2006) reports that regional reconstruction involved rapid, voluminous and indiscriminate deforestation of timber for building houses. It relaxed only when locals demanded construction in non-traditional brick. Over-fishing also resulted from the success of aid programs that built many small boats rather than a variety of vessels. The small boats, suitable for fishing close to shore, decimated the species found there. According to others (Clinton 2006; Kennedy et al. 2008), environmental security and safety have been compromised because the "build back better" motto of aid organizations soon became one of "build back faster." As a result, urban sprawl, inadequate planning, resource exploitation and environmental degradation have worsened. This landscape is now not only less resilient than before but also more exposed to natural hazards and possible disaster.6

Problems with these disasters have involved poor regard for a complex ecological system and the consequences of human action. Thus, the flood of aid workers and attendant problems that swept across Southeast Asia were thus termed "the second tsunami" (Kennedy et al. 2008:33) or "other tsunami." (Clark 2007:1131) Similarly with post-Katrina reconstruction: "New Orleans experienced a hurricane and now is experiencing a second disaster of catastrophic proportions. Both Katrina and the second 'recovery disaster' that now grips the city are of human rather than natural origin." (Tierney 2008:183) Denial of Katrina's material, nonhuman nature, even in its origins, seems the consensus. Erikson, for example, refers to "a natural




force (itself of human construction to the extent that global warming or something of the sort can be said to have been involved)." (2007:xx)

For a Post-Social Understanding

An externalization of the environment in disaster research and management is consonant with the discipline's epistemological basis in the natural sciences but exacerbated by its instrumental rationality. However, alternative approaches to disaster can be pursued with the development of what is here termed a post-social understanding. It is similar to other post-prefixed "isms" (e.g., post-modernism) in commencing with a critique of Western reason's basis in dualisms such as subject/object and nature/ society. Likewise, the Cartesian mind/body dualism is foundational but problematic. It cleaves external materiality away from the internal human world and has thereby enabled the ascendance of science with its supposedly objective access to outer reality and a capacity to impose some order on its chaos.

Post-social understandings propose a messier, relational ontology marked by contingency and connection. They also push beyond social construc tionist interpretations of the world which focus on its discursive construction. A major influence is the Actor-Network Theory.7 Its concerns are with material relations, and not "with nature or knowledge ... but with the way all of these things are tied to our collectivities and to subjects. We are talking not about instrumental thought but about the very substance of our societies." (Latour 1993:4) This approach is aligned with the notion of "post-humanism" because the sovereign subject that has been at the center of the traditional sciences and social sciences is now being challenged with less anthropocentric approaches. Instead, the bonds between objects identified in the formation of networks which enroll heterogeneous entities such as knowledge and technology through hybrid assemblages, are most valued (see also Haraway 1991; Knorr Cetina 1997; Lash 2001; Whatmore 2002).

It also recognizes how "different epistemic cultures" are formed because specific technologies and processes of knowledge production prevail in particular environments and therefore structure communities at various levels (Knorr Cetina 1999). In contrast to the dominance of Western societies by scientific reason, for example, it admits (Wittgensteinian) forms of life that are "intrinsically anti-positivist" and "phenomenological" (Lash 2001:106) and make sense of the world through bodily and experiential engagement.

Use of such approaches is uncommon in disaster research and management. Early exceptions (Hinchcliff 2000; Law and Singleton 2004) analyze human-induced phenomena such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy and hoof-and-mouth disease outbreaks in the United Kingdom. In following a Latourian politics of nature and Beck's risk thesis,




this work's focus is on the institutional production of knowledge. Recent post-social approaches to Hurricane Katrina, comprising an edited collection in the flagship journal Social Studies of Science (Sims 2007), are likewise dominated by concerns with scientific knowledge, risk management practices and social-technological assemblages used in hazard mitigation and communication infrastructure. Such analyses can still render environmental matters secondary to social concerns as they turn from the nonhuman back to human actors again in accounting for material reconfigurations of human life worlds (Knorr Cetina 1997; Lash 2001; Pickering 1995).

In caution, Whatmore (2002:165) notes a "residual humanism" with ANT. She is also wary of the term post-humanism, and instead looks at the "more-than-human" worlds of human-nonhuman interactions (Whatmore 2004:1361). Such post-social explorations reveal the material reality and entanglement of things. They can also reinstate nonhuman nature in a world which exists outside of our attempts to purify, categorize, know and control it. For example, Pickering (2005:35) says "the coupling of the human and nonhuman is situated in time, in the dance of agency, rather than manifesting itself in atemporal laws or regularities." However, such nods to context and history veer close to the same troublesome anthropocentrism which hampers efforts to understand the nature of disaster and demands constant vigilance.

Healy (2004) interprets risk from a similar "post-foundational" perspective. He suggests that Beck's risk thesis is instructive but reinforces tensions between objectivist and subjectivist forms of knowledge. Although Beck contextualizes risk as a human or cultural construction, his attempts to reconcile natural realism and social constructionism are inadequate, and he is enthralled by scientific facts and falls back on technical expertise. Healy's (2004:280) suggestion that "Beck's embrace of foundational considerations both dilutes his arguments and constrains his ability to prescribe effective alternative courses of action" is corroborated by Beck's (2006) broad but rather dismal allusions to shocking and unmanageable global risks. More optimistic, in turn, Healy recommends the pragmatic use of inter-subjective relations and performative participation to seek new and extra meanings over the privileging of scientific reason, evidence and argument. This call for epistemic pluralism finds support with the complex realities of the disasters explored here and the argument for finding new ways to learn from them. Marshall and Picou (2008:241) suggest too that such "twenty first century catastrophes" require an approach beyond the usual one of applied science and professional consultancy, and alternatively advocate one that incorporates "an extended peer community."

The unimaginable aspects of catastrophe intimated by Beck have also gotten more important. As forms of ignorance or "not knowing", they




provide the limits to modern knowledge and therefore have an integral, constitutive role in defining risk society.

It has various types such as "non" and "negative" knowledge, and differs from uncertainty and ignorance. While once marking the outer limits of research, however, it now drives social change within epistemic communities and risk society (Beck 2006; Knorr Cetina 1999).8 Unknown variables and processes which were formerly thought impossible to account for are slowly being incorporated by scientists, policy makers and the public as they extend knowledge through such non-knowledge (Gross 2007). Its inclusion is especially relevant to catastrophic events, including the Indian Ocean tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, where complex systems involve much uncertainty and the unknown while the stakes are very high. Solutions to their problems are found not in the traditional domain but instead in "post-normal" science (Healy 2004; Marshall and Picou 2008).

Non-knowledge manifests in various ways. The empirical basis for decisions made in managing disaster, for example, often relies on crude tools rather than precision instruments. As Frickel and Vincent (2007) demonstrate, environmental testing after Katrina reduced the region's ecological complexity and social history in its reports because of the limited choice and use of tests. As a result, it failed to identify actual contamination. The tendency in science to commit Type I errors (not finding an extant causal relationship) over Type 11 errors (finding a causal relationship that does not exist), as well as seeking 95 percent levels of certainty which might rule against anomalous individual cases, are both also evident in the analysis of recent disasters (Frickel and Vincent 2007; Marshall and Picou 2008). On the other hand, Clarke's (2006) "worst cases" thinking resists seeing disasters as statistical (im)probabilities and instead advocates greater recognition of their possibility, stressing that they do happen. In expecting scenarios beyond the pale, including the (almost) unthinkable, it encourages us to become more resilient through anticipating the "what ifs?." Also, both Clarke (2006) and Marshall and Picou (2008) refer to the precautionary principle for pre-empting harm to humans or the environment. Implicit in their stance is a respect for nonhuman nature as they call for a lessening of scientific arrogance and technological hubris. Others recommend reducing the size, complexity and concentration of potential targets and moving towards greater modularity, connectivity and flexibility as well as continued testing in situ through trial and error (Clarke 2006, 2007; Perrow 2007; Woodhouse 2007). Such developments signal the possibilities of a place for post social understanding in disaster research and management as well as its prospects for helping us live in an uncertain world.




Conclusion

A post-social understanding of disaster does not aim to replace the indispensable insights, tools and methods of traditional science. However, the disciplinary framework of disaster research and management has been dominated by an instrumental scientific reason. It persists even with the recent, sociological inflection of risk management practices which produced some unsatisfactory outcomes in policing, housing and humanitarian aid. It has also been problematic in externalizing and distancing the natural, material world. As part of a the paradigmatic change revealed as necessary by the events of Katrina and the tsunami, a post-social understanding proposes more relational approaches that better connect individuals within social structures and networks, and allow for deeper engagements with the complexity of natural and other hazards. Of course, humanity's views on disasters will always largely be directed towards managing their consequences for us. But a post-social understanding will perhaps incorporate the physical and human environments as always already interwoven, and to better effect, by engendering a respect for the agency and power of nonhuman nature. While acknowledging our constitutive presence in the landscape we then might also make more of the fact that we cannot always know it all.

Notes

1. This particular thesis is not entirely pessimistic, however, and aims at reducing our susceptibility to disaster (see also Quarantelli 1991 ).

2. The paradox of learning and failing with disaster reflects the irony of world risk

society stressed by Beck (2006), but is also captured in Clarke's (2006:161) reference to "living and dying in worst case worlds."

3. This question of "an enlightenment function" is so central to his thesis that Beck (2006:330) identifies it (in italics) as the focus of his Hobhouse Memorial Public Lecture address.

4. This contradictory instrumentality is noted in similar context by Beck

(2006:343) with his remarks on how "the call for justice and human rights is used to legitimate the invasion of other countries."

5. The loss of "barrier islands" is cited as another important factor in Katrina's devastation (White House 2006). Unlike the reductions made in the amount of wetlands, though, this environmental alteration was a side effect of

development rather than a mitigation practice per se.

6. Less natural cover increases the magnitude and velocity of water run off, erosion levels and soil instability and has led to the incidence of mudslides at locations in Southeast Asia where they previously did not occur.




7. ANT has endured extensive critique (including from within) and expanded far

beyond its origins in Science and Technology Studies, but is still associated most with the work of Bruno Latour, Michel Call?n and John Law.

8. Gross (2007) provides a good overview and typology for the sociology of

non-knowledge. Referring to Beck's risk thesis and reflexivity he notes the

importance to Giddens, conversely, of knowledge and trust (but see also

Freudenburg 2000 and others who further examine this difference).

References

Allen, Barbara. 2007. "Environmental Justice and Expert Knowledge in the Wake of a Disaster." Social Studies of Science 37(1 ): 103-10.

Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Sage.

_. 1997. The Reinvention of Politics: Rethinking Modernity in the Global Social Order. Polity Press.

_. 2002. "The Terrorist Threat. World Risk Society Revisited." Theory, Culture

andSociety 19(1):39-55.

_. 2006. "Living in the World Risk Society." Economy and Society 35(3):32945.

Blaikie, Piers, Terry Cannon, Ian Davis and Ben Wisner. 1994. At Risk: Natural

Hazards, People's Vulnerability, and Disasters. Routledge.

Birkland, Thomas. 2006. Lessons of Disaster: Policy Change After Catastrophic Events. Georgetown University Press.

Britton, Neil. 2002. "A New Emergency Management for the New Millennium?" Australian Journal of Emergency Management 16(4):44-54.

Clark, Nigel. 2005. "Disaster and generosity." The Geographical Journal 171(4):384-6.

_. 2007. "Living through the Tsunami: Vulnerability and generosity on a

volatile earth." Geoforum 38(6): 1127-39.

Clarke, Lee. 1999. Mission Improbable: Using Fantasy Documents to Tame Disaster. University of Chicago.

_. 2006. Worst Cases: Terror and Catastrophe in the Popular Imagination. University of Chicago.

_. 2007. "Postscript: Considering Katrina." Pp.235-41. The Sociology of Katrina: Perspectives on a Modern Catastrophe. David L. Brunsma, David Overfelt and J. Steven Picou, editors. Rowman & Littlefield.

Clarke, Lee, and Charles Perrow. 1996. "Prosaic Organizational Failure." American Behavioral Scientist 39(8): 1040-65.




Clarke, Lee, and James F. Short. 1993. "Social Organization and Risk: Some Current Controversies." Annual Review of Sociology 19:375-99.

Clinton, William J. 2006. Lessons Learned from Tsunami Recovery: Key Propositions for Bui/ding Back Better. United Nations Office of the Special Envoy for Tsunami

Recovery. Available at: http://www.preventionweb.net/files/2054_VL108301 .pdf.

Comfort, Louise. 2005. "Risk, Security and Disaster Management." Annual Review of Political Science 8:335-56.

Donahue, Amy K., and Robert V Tuohy. 2006. "Lessons We Don't Learn: A

Study of the Lessons of Disasters, Why We Repeat Them, and How We Can Learn Them." Homeland Security Affairs 2(2). Available at: http://www.hsaj. org/?article-2.2.4.

Dynes, Russell, and Thomas Drabek. 1994. "The Structure of Disaster Research: Its Policy and Disciplinary Implications." International Journal of Mass

Emergencies and Disasters 12(1 ):5-23.

Eder, Klaus. 2000. "Taming Risks Through Dialogues: The Rationality and

Functionality of Discursive Institutions in Risk Society." Pp. 225-48. Risk in the Modern Age: Social Theory, Science and Environmental Decision-Making. Maurie J. Cohen, editor. St. Martins Press.

_. 2003. "Societies Learn and Yet the World is Hard to Change." Mimesis

24(2):29-50.

Erikson, Kai T. 1976. Everything in Its Path: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood. Simon & Schuster.

_. 1994. A New Species of Trouble. Explorations in Disaster Trauma and

Community. W.W. Norton.

_. 2007. "Foreward." Pp. xvii-xx. 7?7e Sociology of Katrina: Perspectives on a Modern Catastrophe,. David L. Brunsma, David Overfelt and J. Steven Picou, editors. Rowman & Littlefield.

Eye on Aceh. 2006. A People's Agenda? Post-Tsunami aid in Aceh. Available at:

http://www.reliefweb.int/library/documents/2006/eoa-idn-28feb.pdf.

Felten-Biermann, Claudia. 2006. "Gender and Natural Disaster: Sexualized Violence and the Tsunami." Development 49(3):82-6.

Freudenburg, William R. 1997. "Contamination, Corrosion and the Social Order: An Overview." Current Sociology 45(3): 19-39.

_. 2000. "The 'Risk Society' Reconsidered: Recreancy, the Division of

Labor, and Risk to the Social Fabric." Pp. 107-20. Risk in the Modern Age: Social Theory, Science and Environmental Decision-Making. Maurie J. Cohen, editor. St. Martins Press.




Frickel, Scott, and M. Bess Vincent. 2007. "Hurricane Katrina, Contamination and the Unintended Organization of Ignorance." Technology in Society 29(2):181-88.

Gerber, Brian. 2007. "Disaster Management in the United States: Examining Key Political and Policy Challenges." The Policy Studies Journal 35(2):227-38.

Gross, Matthias. 2007. "The Unknown in Process. Dynamic Connections of Ignorance, Non-Knowledge and Related Concepts." Current Sociology 55(5):742-59.

Haraway, Donna. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge.

Healy, Stephen. 2004. "A 'Post-Foundational' Interpretation of Risk: Risk as Performance." Journal of Risk Research 7(3):277-96.

Hewitt, Kenneth (editor). 1983. Interpretations of Calamity. From the Viewpoint of Human Ecology. Allen & Unwin.

Hinchcliff, Steve. 2000. "Living with Risk: The Unnatural Geography of Environmental Crises." Pp.115-51. The Natural and The Social. Uncertainty, Risk, Change. Steve Hinchcliff and Kath Woodward, editors. Routledge.

Hyndman, Jennifer. 2007. "The Securitization of Fear in Post-Tsunami Sri Lanka." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 97(2):361-72.

Kennedy, Jim, Joseph Ashmore, Elizabeth Babister and Ilan Kelman. 2008. "The Meaning of 'Build Back Better': Evidence From Post-Tsunami Aceh and Sri Lanka." Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 16(1):24-36.

Keys, Angela, Helen Masterman-Smith and Drew Cottle. 2006. "The Political Economy of a Natural Disaster: The Boxing Day Tsunami 2004." Antipode 38(2): 195-204.

Knorr Cetina, Karin. 1997. "Sociology with Objects: Social Relations in Postsocial Knowledge Societies." Theory, Culture and Society 14(4):1-30.

____. 1999. Epistemic Cultures. Harvard University Press.

Korf, Benedikt. 2006. "Antinomies of Generosity: Moral Geographies and Post Tsunami Aid in Southeast Asia." Geoforum 38(2):366-78.

Kroll-Smith, J. Stephen, and Stephen R. Couch. 1990. The Real DisasterisAbove Ground. A Mine Fire and Social Conflict. University Press of Kentucky.

_____. 1991. "What Is a Disaster? An Ecological-Symbolic Approach to Resolving the Definitional Debate." International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 9(3):355-66.




Kroll-Smith, J. Stephen, Stephen R. Couch and Brent K. Marshall. 1997. "Sociology, Extreme Environments and Social Change." Current Sociology Ab(3): 1-18.

Kroll-Smith, J. Stephen, and Valerie J. Gunter. 1998. "Legislators, Interpreters, and Disasters. The Importance of How as Well as What is a Disaster." Pp.160-76. What Is A Disaster? Perspectives on the Question. Enrico L. Quarantelli, editor.

Routledge.

Kunreuther, Howard. 2006. "Disaster Mitigation and Insurance: Learning from Katrina." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

604(1 ):208-27.

Kunreuther, Howard, and Mark Pauly. 2006. "Rules Rather than Discretion: Lessons from Hurricane fa\r\na." Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 33{/\\A0/\-/\?.

Kutner, Nancy G. 2007. "Health Needs, Health Care, and Katrina." Pp.203-15. The Sociology of Katrina: Perspectives on a Modern Catastrophe. David L.

Brunsma, David Overfelt and J. Steven Picou, editors. Rowman & Littlefield.

Lash, Scott. 2001. "Technological Forms of Life." Theory, Culture and Society 18(1):105-20.

Laska, Shirley. 2008 [2004]. "What If Hurricane Ivan Had Not Missed New Orleans?"

Sociological Inquiry 78(2): 174-8.

Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Harvester Wheatsheaf.

_. 2004. Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Nature. Harvard

University Press.

Law, John, and Vicky Singleton. 2004. A Further Species of Trouble? Disaster and Narrative. Available at: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/sociology/papers/law singleton-further-species-of-trouble.pdf.

Marshall, Brent K., and J. Steven Picou. 2008. "Postnormal Science, Precautionary Principle, and Worst Cases: The Challenge of Twenty-First Century Catastrophes." Sociological Inquiry 78(2):230-47.

McConnell, Allan, and Lynn Drennan. 2006. "Mission Impossible? Planning and Preparing for Crisis." Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 14(2):59-70.

McEntire, David, Christopher Fuller, Chad Johnston and Richard Weber. 2002. "A

Comparison of Disaster Paradigms: The Search for a Holistic Policy Guide." Public Administration Review 62(3):267-81.

McKee, Yates. 2008. "Haunted Housing: Eco-Vanguardism, Eviction, and the

Biopolitics of Sustainability in New Orleans." Grey Room 30:84-113.




Menzel, Donald. 2006. "The Katrina Aftermath: A Failure of Federalism or

Leadership?" Public Administration Review 66(6):808-12.

Mileti, Dennis. 1999. Disasters by Design: A Reassessment of Natural Hazards in the United States. Joseph Henry Press.

O'Brien, Geoffrey, and Paul Read. 2005. "Future UK Emergency Management: New Wine, Old Skin?" Disaster Prevention and Management 14(3):353-61.

Pelling, Mark. 2001. "Natural Disasters?" Pp.170-88. Social Nature. Theory, Practice and Politics. Noel Castr?e and Bruce Braun, editors. Blackwell.

Perrow, Charles. 1999. Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies, Second Edition. Princeton University Press.

_. 2007. The Next Catastrophe: Reducing our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters. Princeton University Press.

Philo, Chris. 2005. "The geographies that wound." Population, Space and Place

11(6):441-54.

Pickering, Andrew. 1995. The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science.

University of Chicago Press.

_. 2005. Asian Eels and Global Warming: "A Posthumanist Perspective on

Society and the Environment." Ethics and the Environment 10(2):29-43.

Picou, J. Steven, and Brent K. Marshall. 2002. "Contemporary Conceptions of Environmental Risk: Implications for Resource Management and Policy." Sociological Practice: A Journal of Clinical and Applied Sociology 4(4) : 293-313.

_. 2007. "Introduction: Katrina as Paradigm Shift: Reflections on Disaster Research in the Twenty-First Century." Pp.1-20. The Sociology of Katrina:

Perspectives on a Modern Catastrophe. David L. Brunsma, David Overfelt and J. Steven Picou, editors. Rowman & Littlefield.

Picou, J. Steven, Brent K. Marshall and Duane A. Gill. 2004. "Disaster, Litigation, and the Corrosive Community." Social Forces 82(4): 1493-522.

Quarantelli, Enrico L. 1987. "What Should We Study? Questions and Suggestions for Researchers About the Concept of Disasters." International Journal of

Mass Emergencies and Disasters 5(1 ):7-32.

_. 1991. More and Worse Disasters in the Future: The Social Factors Involved,

University of Delaware Disaster Research Center, Newark, Preliminary Paper #173. Available at: http://dspace.udel.edu:8080/dspace/handle/19716/530.

_. 1997. "Ten Criteria for Evaluating the Management of Community Disasters." Disasters 21(1):39-56.




_. 2005. "A Social Science Research Agenda for the Disasters of the 21st

Century: Theoretical, Methodological and Empirical Issues and their Professional

Implementation." Pp.325-96. What is a Disaster?: New Answers to Old Question. Ronald W Perry and Enrico L. Quarantelli, editors. XLibris Corp.

Rojek, Jeff, and Michael Smith. 2007. "Law Enforcement Lessons Learned from Hurricane Katrina." Review of Policy Research 24(6): 589-608.

Sharma, Davinder. 2005. "Tsunami, Mangroves and Market Economy."//?afe Together. Available at: http://www.indiatogether.org/2005/jan/dsh-tsunami.htm.

Sims, Benjamin. 2007. "Things Fall Apart: Disaster, Infrastructure and Risk." Social Studies of Science 37(1 ):93-5.

Smith, Neil. 2006. There's No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster. Social Science Research Council. Available at: http://understandingkatrina.ssrc.org/Smith/.

Solecki, William, and Sarah Michaels. 1994. "Looking Through the Postdisaster

Policy Window." Environmental Management 18(4):587-95.

Srinivas, Hari, and Yuko Nakagawa. Forthcoming. "Environmental Implications for Disaster Preparedness: Lessons Learnt from the Indian Ocean Tsunami."

Journal of Environmental Management.

Steinberg, Laura J., Hatice Sengul and Ana Maria Cruz. 2008. "Natech Risk and

Management: An Assessment of the State of the Art." Natural Hazards

46(2): 143-52.

Tierney, Kathleen A. Forthcoming. "Hurricane Katrina: Catastrophic Impacts and

Alarming Lessons." Pp. 119-36. Risking House and Home: Disasters, Cities, Public Policy. John M. Quigley and Larry A. Rosenthal, editors. Berkeley Public Policy Press.

_. 20066. The Red Pill. Social Science Research Council. Available at: http:// understandingkatrina.ssrc.org/Tierney/.

_. 2007. "From the Margins to the Mainstream? Disaster Research at the Crossroads." Annual Review of Sociology 33:503-25.

_. 2008. "Hurricane in New Orleans? Who Knew? Anticipating Katrina and its Devastation." Sociological Inquiry 78(2): 179-83.

Tierney, Kathleen A., and Christine Bevq. 2007. "Disaster as War: Militarism and the Social Construction of Disaster in New Orleans." Pp.35-49. The Sociology of Katrina: Perspectives on a Modern Catastrophe. David L. Brunsma, David Overfelt and J. Steven Picou, editors. Rowman & Littlefield.

Van Heerden, Ivor, and Mike Bryan. 2006. The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina - The Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientist. Viking.




Whatmore, Sarah. 2002. Hybrid Geographies: Natures, Cultures, Spaces. Sage.

_. 2004. "Humanism's excess: some thoughts on the 'post-human/ist' agenda." Environment and Planning A 36(8): 1360-63.

White House, The. 2006. The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned. White House.

Woodhouse, Edward. 2007. "The Lessons of Katrina for Intelligent Public Decision

Making." Nature and Culture 2(1 ): 10-26.



Rethinking the Nature of Disaster: From Failed Instruments of Learning to a Post-Social...

Documents

Transcript of Rethinking the Nature of Disaster: From Failed Instruments of Learning to a Post-Social...