Anthropological Research on Hazards and Disasters

Abstract

▪ Abstract Recent perspectives in anthropological research define a disaster as a process/event involving the combination of a potentially destructive agent(s) from the natural and/or technological environment and a population in a socially and technologically produced condition of vulnerability. From this basic understanding three general topical areas have developed: (a) a behavioral and organizational response approach, (b) a social change approach, and (c) a political economic/environmental approach, focusing on the historical-structural dimensions of vulnerability to hazards, particularly in the developing world. Applied anthropological contributions to disaster management are discussed as well as research on perception and assessment of hazard risk. The article closes with a discussion of potentials in hazard and disaster research for theory building in anthropology, particularly in issues of human-environment relations and sociocultural change.

Chernobyl: Living with risk and uncertainty

“…According to Oliver-Smith (1996), post-disaster social transformation can occur because the disaster-event becomes an opportunity and cause for local political socialization and mobilization, or because the disaster causes changes in the relationship between the community and organs of the state. We suggest that the absence of these processes in the Chernobyl region is attributable to an erosion of trust and social cohesiveness in post-soviet societies as well as a pervasive lack of resources.…”

“…However, it also appears that, rather than weighing different sources expert evidence against each other, or against lay epidemiology, there is a tendency among informants to discount health risks because of paramount concerns for economic survival. Oliver-Smith (1996) has argued that many disasters occur at the interface of society, technology and the environment, and therefore affect virtually all elements of community life. Due to their totalizing nature (Torry 1979), victims of disasters typically perceive these as isolated cataclysmic events which give rise to risk structures which, themselves, are uniquely and directly linked to the respective event.…”

Towards a Clearer Understanding of 'Vulnerability' in Relation to Chronic Poverty

“…The older paradigm in the study of hazards, termed the behavioural paradigm, views the cause of a disaster as being 'extreme forces of nature', and the poor perception of hazards and risk. It believes in the ability of technology, prediction, bureaucratic organisation and modernisation to mitigate disasters (Bankoff 2001, Smith 1996). 3 The competing structuralist paradigm gives secondary importance to a 'natural' hazard as a determinant of a disaster ).…”

Death Anxiety Resilience; a Mixed Methods Investigation

“…The use of this qualitative method was deemed appropriate given: (i) The paucity of prior qualitative research on this topic [9,27]; (ii) Evidence that qualitative methods are well tolerated by trauma survivors (e.g. [28][29][30][31]; (iii) The potential for this qualitative approach to elucidate the underlying/mediating mechanisms involved in the relationship between trauma and death anxiety, therefore informing future quantitative studies; (iv) The evidence that mixed methods approaches (i.e. the integrated use of qualitative and quantitative methods) can provide a more comprehensive level of insight and understanding into the studied phenomena [30][31][32].…”