What Is a Disaster?

WHAT IS A DISASTER? WHAT IS A DISASTER? New Answers to Old Questions Ronald W. Perry E.L. Quarantelli Editors Copyright © 2005 by International Research Committee on Disasters. Library of Congress Number: 2004195094 ISBN : Hardcover 1-4134-7986-3 Softcover 1-4134-7985-5 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner. This book was printed in the United States of America. To order additional copies of this book, contact: Xlibris Corporation 1-888-795-4274 www.Xlibris.com [email protected] 27509 CONTENTS Contributors ..............................................................................11 Forward ......................................................................................13 Introduction ..............................................................................19 PART I 1: An Interpretation Of Disaster In Terms Of Changes In Culture, Society And International Relations David Alexander ...........................................................25 2: Are We Asking The Right Question? Susan L. Cutter .............................................................39 3: Disaster: A “Reality” Or Construct”? Perspective From The “East” Rohit Jigyasu ................................................................49 4: What’s A Word? Opening Up The Debate Neil R. Britton .............................................................60 5: Not Every Move Is A Step Forward: A Critique Of David Alexander, Susan L. Cutter, Rohit Jigyasu And Neil Britton Wolf R. Dombrowsky...................................................79 6: The Meaning Of Disaster: A Reply To Wolf Dombrowsky David Alexander ...........................................................97 7: Pragmatism And Relevance: A Response To Wolf R. Dombrowsky Susan L. Cutter .......................................................... 104 8: Defining The Definition For Addressing The “Reality” Rohit Jigyasu ............................................................. 107 9: Dog Or Demon? Neil R. Britton .......................................................... 113 PART II 10: Disaster And Collective Stress Allen H. Barton ......................................................... 125 11: From Crisis To Disaster: Towards An Integrative Perspective Arjen Boin.................................................................. 153 12: Disaster: Mandated Definitions, Local Knowledge And Complexity Philip Buckle ............................................................. 173 13: In The Eyes Of The Beholder? Making Sense Of The System(s) Of Disaster(s) Denis Smith............................................................... 201 14: Disaster, Crisis, Collective Stress, And Mass Deprivation Robert Stallings ......................................................... 237 15: A Response To Robert Stallings: Ideal Type Concepts And Generalized Analytic Theory Allen H. Barton ......................................................... 275 16: Back To Nature? A Reply To Stallings Arjen Boin.................................................................. 280 17: Response To Robert Stallings Philip Buckle ............................................................. 286 18: Through A Glass Darkly: A Response To Stallings Denis Smith............................................................... 292 PART III 19: Disasters, Definitions And Theory Construction Ronald W. Perry......................................................... 311 20: A Social Science Research Agenda For The Disasters Of The 21st Century: Theoretical, Methodological And Empirical Issues And Their Professional Implementation E. L. (Henry) Quarantelli ........................................ 325 Bibliography ........................................................................... 397 LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Globalization, modernity and their implications for disaster .......................................... 207 Table 2. Elements of the crisis timeline ................................. 219 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Disaster: towards an initial construction ................ 209 Figure 2. Elements of disaster research .................................. 214 Figure 3. Towards a root definition of disaster ...................... 223 Figure 4. Shifting definitions of the disaster process in three stages ............................................ 225 Figure 5. Space-place-time and the development of disaster potential ................................................ 228 Figure 6. Learning and the incubation process within disasters .......................................... 229 Figure 7. Issues for disaster research ...................................... 235 In memory of Fred Bates and Ritsuo Akimoto, Disaster Research Pioneers CONTRIBUTORS David Alexander is Scientific Director of the Region of Lombardy School of Civil Protection, based in Milan, Italy. [[email protected]] Allen H. Barton was for many years a Professor of Sociology and Director of the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University, and has retired to North Carolina at 118 Wolf’s Trail, Chapel Hill, NC 27516 USA. [[email protected]] Arjen Boin is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Public Administration, Leiden University, The Netherlands. [[email protected]] Neil R. Britton is Team Leader (International Disaster Reduction Strategies Research) and EqTAP Project Chief Coordinator, at the Earthquake Disaster Mitigation Research Centre, National Research Institute of Earth Sciences and Disaster Prevention, Kobe, Japan. [[email protected]]. Philip Buckle is a Senior Lecturer in the Coventry Centre for Disaster Management, Coventry University, Priory Street, Coventry CV1 5FB United Kingdom. [[email protected]] Susan L. Cutter is a Carolina Distinguished Professor and Director of the Hazards Research in the Department of Geography at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208 USA. [[email protected]] Wolf R. Dombrowsky is Director of the Katastrophenfor- schungsstelle (KFS) [Disaster Research Unit], Christian- Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Olshausenstraße 40, Kiel D- 24098, Germany. [[email protected]] 11 12 (EDITED BY) RONALD W. P ERRY & E.L. QUARANTELLI Rohit Jigyasu is a conservation architect and planner and visiting faculty in the Department of Architectural Conservation, School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, India. [[email protected]] Ronald W. Perry is Professor of Public Affairs in the School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287 USA [[email protected]] E. L. Quarantelli is Emeritus Professor at the Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716, USA. [[email protected]] Denis Smith is Professor of Management and Director of the Management School at the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom. [[email protected]] Robert A. Stallings is Professor of Public Policy and Sociology, Program in Public Policy, School of Policy, Planning, and Development, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089-0626, USA. [[email protected]] FORWARD T. Joseph Scanlon Professor Emeritus and Director, Emergency Communications Research Unit, Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario, Canada On the morning of September 11, 2001, I received a phone call from Canada’s public radio system, the CBC, asking me to comment on the terrorist attack on the United States. I said among other things that New York City had enormous resources and that these resources would give it the resilience needed to cope with and recover from the events of that day. My host was to say the least skeptical. Mesmerized by the visuals of the planes hitting the towers and the towers collapsing, she was—at least at that moment—incapable of grasping the concept of resilience or of what Susan Cutter might call an “affordable disaster”. This volume—What is a Disaster? Perspectives on the Question— is the fourth volume in our series of books on disaster, the second to tackle the definition of disaster. Reading it, I was struck by how much of the debate was—or so it seemed to me—influenced by awareness of various events and how much of that awareness was media related. That was of course especially true of 9/11, an event which most, but not all of the contributors to this volume, felt compelled to mention, and an event that was not even in the back of our minds when the first volume was published, yet an event that has changed the way many think about disaster. As Neil Britton writes: “ . the fundamentals of conventional organized emergency 13 14 (EDITED BY) RONALD W. P ERRY & E.L. QUARANTELLI management are now about fifty years old. During that period, the practice of emergency management has changed from an essentially reactive and response-focused command-and-control civil defence approach, which grew out of the 1940s World War II and 1950s Korean War eras, phased into a comprehensive and integrated approach during the late 1970s, and from the 1990s started to re-emerge around the twin concepts of risk management and sustainable hazard mitigation.” However, recent events connected with highly organized terrorist attacks in different parts of the world, most notably in the USA whereby a strong reaction has resulted in its lead disaster agency being subsumed into a federal homeland security mega-department, might see

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