AN EXPLORATORY RESEARCH AGENDA FOR STUDYING THE POPULAR CULTURE OF DISASTERS (PCD): ITS CHARACTERISTICS, CONDITIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES An Exploratory Research Agenda for Studying the Popular Culture of Disasters (PCD): Its Characteristics, Conditions, and Consequences by E. L. Quarantelli and Ian Davis Disaster Research Center (DRC) Newark, Delaware Cover illustration provided by David Alexander This publication has been produced by The Disaster Research Center University of Delaware Newark, Delaware © 2011, Disaster Research Center E. L. (Henry) Quarantelli Professor Emeritus Disaster Research Center University of Delaware [email protected] www.udel.edu/DRC Ian Robert Davis Senior Professor Risk Management for Sustainable Development Lund University, Sweden and Visiting Professor in Cranfield, Oxford Brookes and Kyoto Universities [email protected] An Exploratory Research Agenda for Studying PCD ACTIVITIES OF THE DISASTER RESEARCH CENTER (DRC) The final draft manuscript of this book was written at DRC in February 2011. The work done and the data used were by writers and professionals linked with the Center or who had indirect access to it. As such, this is basically a DRC produced publication. The Center was the first social science research center in the world dedicated to the study of disasters. It was established in 1963 at the Ohio State University. An initial tendency to view disaster questions primarily in a sociological framework evolved into a later use of a broader social science orientation. DRC moved to the University of Delaware in January 1985 where the social science framework was used even more and in this last decade the Center’s work has become even more multi-disciplinary with the formal infusion of ideas, faculty members and projects out of the civil engineering area. The Center currently has approximately 50 members. This includes a number of graduate and undergraduate students. Their training is considered an integral part of DRC’s mission. The Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice offers a graduate concentration in Collective Behavior, Social Movements and Disasters as well as an undergraduate concentration in Emergency and Environmental Management. The School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy has just initiated a new interdisciplinary graduate degree program in Disaster Science and Management. DRC has conducted more than 680 field studies throughout the United States and internationally in such countries as Japan, Italy, India, Mexico, Iran, Turkey, and Sri Lanka. The Center currently has research cooperative agreements in place with crisis-oriented organizations in China, Sweden, India, and the Netherlands. In the past, it has worked cooperatively with disaster researchers from such countries as Germany, Japan, Canada, the former Soviet Union, and Mexico. The Center specializes in field and survey research to study natural and technological disasters as well as other community wide crises such as large-scale terrorist attacks, and university student disturbances, as well as “race” riots. Studies obtain interview/observational/documentary/ statistical data on the mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery phases of such socially disruptive occasions. This kind of research, through the use of modeling and theoretical analyses, provides behavioral and engineering knowledge and understanding that can be applied to developing more effective policies and programs for coping with disasters and catastrophes. Funding for the Center’s research has been obtained from a variety of sources including: the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Japanese NHK Foundation, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Sea Grant Program, the Ohio Council of Churches, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Association of Broadcasters, the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER), the Public Entity Risk Institute (PERI), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Health Resources Administration, the Law i An Exploratory Research Agenda for Studying PCD Enforcement Assistance Administration, and the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez (UPRM) Sea Grant Program. Recent titles of Center projects include the following: Interaction between Building and Occupant during Collapse; New Methods for Measuring, Monitoring, and Evaluating Post- disaster Recovery; Technology, Weather Forecasts, and Warnings: Integrating the End-user Community; Collaborative Research Proposal on Improvisation and Sensemaking in Sudden Crisis; Learning from a Large Scale Flood Exercise in the Netherlands; Scientific Insights on Preparedness for Public health Emergencies; Resiliency of Transportation Corridors Before, During, and After Catastrophic Natural Hazards; Integrated Optimization of Evacuation and Sheltering for Hurricanes; Multi-organizational Collaborative Leaderships; Modeling Post- earthquake Fire Spread; Infrastructure Security and Emergency Preparedness; FEMA’s USAR Task Force Deployments: Implication for the Emergency Response; Contending with Material Convergence: Optimal Control, Coordination and Delivery of Critical Supplies to the Site of Extreme Events. Investment Planning for Regional Natural Disaster Mitigation; Post-earthquake Water Supply Restoration; Population Compositions, Geographic Distribution, and Natural Hazards: Vulnerability in the Coastal Regions of Puerto Rico; Characterization of the Supply Chains in the Aftermath of an Extreme Event: The Gulf Coast Experience; Development of a Performance-based Seismic Design Philosophy for Mid-rise Woodframe Construction. The Center maintains its own databases and serves as a repository for relevant disaster related materials collected by other organizations and researchers. DRC’s specialized Resource Collection which contains the world’s most complete collection on the social and behavioral aspects of disasters – now numbering more than 56,000 items – is open to both interested scholars and agencies. Visitors are welcomed. This premier collection includes documents and publications not readily available, if at all, elsewhere. DRC has its own book, monograph, preliminary paper and report series with over 1,300 publications, many of which can be freely downloaded online. Our book on the popular culture of disasters was in fact initially produced in a shorter, less well documented and as a not-up-to- date version, in July 2010 as DRC Working Paper No. 92. This book will be listed in the book and monograph series within the DRC publications as DRC Book No. 35. ii An Exploratory Research Agenda for Studying PCD THE LOCATION OF DRC AND CONTACT SOURCES THE DISASTER RESEARCH CENTER at THE UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE 166 GRAHAM HALL NEWARK DE 19716-7399 For more information on the Disaster Research Center, visit its web site at www.udel.edu/DRC For general inquiries regarding DRC, contact Victoria Becker at [email protected] For further information about copies of DRC publications, contact Pat Young at [email protected] For inquiries regarding other DRC programs including its Masters and Ph.D. programs, contact Gail Kracyla at [email protected] iii An Exploratory Research Agenda for Studying PCD TABLE OF CONTENT Chapter 1: Introduction………………………………………………………………… 32 Chapter 2: The Historical Background and a Starting Point…………………………… 37 Chapter 3: Different Conceptions of Disasters and Disaster Typologies……………… 41 Chapter 4: A New PCD Classification Scheme……………………………………….. 48 Chapter 5: A Tentative Basic Framework…………………………………………….. 71 Chapter 6: The Production Process……………………………………………………. 78 Chapter 7: The Distribution Process…………………………………………………... 105 Chapter 8: The Consumption Process…………………………………………………. 113 Chapter 9: Social Conditions for PCD………………………………………………… 121 Chapter 10: The Social Consequences of PCD……………………………………….. 130 Chapter 11: Children: Producers and Users of PCD………………………………….. 143 Chapter 12: Concluding Observations………………………………………………… 158 Chapter 13: A Glance Back…………………………………………………………… 162 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………… 166 iv An Exploratory Research Agenda for Studying PCD Acknowledgements First, the authors want to acknowledge our use of the ideas of all non-DRC persons that we have mentioned by name in the text. Without their prior work, this book could not have been started in the first place. However, as is usually the case, we found the contributions of several persons need to be specifically noted. Professor Charles Scawthorn in the Department of Urban Management in Kyoto University provided a wealth of detailed information about disaster memorials both by his publications and email communications. His very informative personal reactions to specific memorials and how to find them could not have been given to us by anyone else. We were very fortunate to have his perspective and thank him for all his help. Assistant Professor Yasamin Izadkhah of the Risk Management Research Center, IIEES, in Tehran provided a translated song as well as a photo of children singing about what they had learned on how to act in an earthquake. This information was conveyed through her email communications with Ian Davis. Without her help we would not even have known about this disaster related-educational activity and we thank her for her assistance. Professor