Sociology of Disaster

Natural or man-made disasters cause traumas in communities, causing social breakdown. The Italian legislation on post-emergency living is meagre, it lacks a social and environmental perspective. This unprecedented approach, not only in Italy, foresees the trauma recovery through the open space: a constant element regardless of the housing systems adopted. Here the regeneration of the community can take place. Design tools for open spaces are proposed as resilient method for sociality in post-disaster temporary settlements.

Smottamenti si inserisce all'interno del panorama antropologico italiano offrendo spunti preziosi all'ancora poco copioso ambito degli studi sui di-sastri. L'autrice elabora una riflessione tanto importante quanto originale partendo dall'evento disastroso che l'ha vista coinvolta. L'1 ottobre del 2009 un'intensa alluvione interessò l'hinterland della città di Messina, travolgen-do soprattutto Giampilieri e Scaletta Zanclea (comune di nascita dell'autri-ce) causando la morte di 37 persone e provocando ingenti danni. Il libro, diviso in tre parti e composto da otto capitoli, si sviluppa a partire da un dato sostanziale: sebbene gli eventi catastrofici vengano classificati dalle scienze tecno-ingegneristiche secondo caratteristiche ed esiti simili, i disastri-altro dal semplice evento calamitoso-non sono tutti uguali. In quanto fenomeni poliedrici e multifattoriali dal profondo valore polisemi-co, assumono significati diversi all'interno dei differenti orizzonti culturali contro i quali si stagliano. L'antropologa dimostra come la parola disastro, sebbene storicamente abbia assunto significati differenti in diversi ambiti disciplinari, sia stata e sia tuttora oggetto di figurazioni e narrazioni differenti elaborate da diverse soggettività (giornalisti, politici, tecnici, accademici e più in generale l'opi-nione pubblica). Secondo l'autrice le modalità attraverso le quali gli eventi calamitosi sono percepiti e contestualizzati giocano un ruolo decisivo non solo nella produzione di risposte all'evento ma anche rispetto a come ne viene concepita la prevenzione. La comprensione antropologica del disastro in questo lavoro emerge allora come un'impresa pratica: un tentativo di fare senso in uno sforzo intellettuale che connette mondi sociali differenti, in-terpretando e traducendo concetti localmente prodotti che risultano a loro volta da soggettive interpretazioni della realtà. L'autrice parte dalla sua esperienza di " vittima " , offrendo un esempio altis-simo di auto etnografia, metodologia ancora poco sviluppata nel panorama scientifico italiano e che presenta numerose difficoltà dal punto di vista della narrazione e della relazione con l'oggetto di studio. Falconieri definisce il suo lavoro, non solo come un " racconto etnografico di una storia reale e

Dear Colleague,

It is my great pleasure to invite you to participate in the 6th ICT Forum that will be held in October 14-16, 2014 in Nis, Serbia.
Additional information on the 6th ICT Forum is enclosed and can be found at the following website www.ictforum.rpkni.rs.

Marko Stosic

What happened, in the years leading up to Valentine's Day 2014, that made a canister of nuclear waste burst open and spew out fire underground at a US facility for the long-term disposal of radioactive military waste? According to one widely publicized scenario, a simple run-of-the-mill typo led to organic kitty litter mistakenly being used to soak up liquid in the drum instead of another kind of absorbent material. This ultimately led to a reaction that made heat and pressure build up in the drum, causing it to erupt. But was that "simple" clerical error symptomatic of a much deeper, system-wide problem-- involving a US Energy Department plan to rush the pace of nuclear waste disposal? What were the political, social, and financial elements involved in making Los Alamos' waste drum #68660 erupt that February night? What can be done to prevent similar accidents – which can have price tags of hundreds of millions of dollars or more – from happening again in the future? A cultural anthropologist spent 10 weeks onsite after the event, logging 43 interviews and trying to answer these questions. Here is what he found.

Proyecto para optar a Diplomatura en Arquitectura Pública y Evaluación Social de Proyectos: "Construcción infraestructura de control aluvional en Río Salado para Barrio Relocalización Damnificados inundaciones 25 de Marzo de 2015, sector El Salado, Región de Atacama"

Informe Final Formulación, Análisis Preinversional y Evaluación Social de Proyecto Teórico Infraestructura Hidráulica de Control Aluvional para Río Salado, Provincia de Chañaral, Región de Atacama.

This chapter argues that crowds can provide the mutual support, co-ordinated activity and other features of resilience that enable people to cope psychologically with mass emergencies and disasters. I begin by showing how the practices and policies that flow from the concept of ‘resilience’ stand in stark opposition to policies based on an assumption of (psychosocial) vulnerability. These competing assumptions of ‘vulnerability’ and ‘resilience’ are evident in the various theories of mass emergency behaviour. The most well-known of these theories — ‘mass panic’, with its implication of pathological over-reaction and reversion to primitive ‘instincts’ in the face of danger — has largely been discredited by the research evidence. Contemporary theories of both mass emergency behaviour and ‘collective resilience’ refer instead to the influence of existing social bonds. Ties of family relationships, affiliation, social roles and networks would appear to explain why most emergencies and disasters are characterized by social, adaptive behaviour, and indeed why helping among survivors is so widespread. However, I will show that there is another, crucial, source of collective resilience in emergencies and disasters, over and above pre-existing social bonds. Specifically, people in a crowd tend to come together, both psychologically and behaviourally, simply by virtue of sharing a ‘common fate’ in relation to the emergency or disaster. This spontaneous ‘togetherness’ can be understood psychologically as the shift from a personal to a shared social identity that occurs when the context itself shifts to being structured in terms of inter-group rather than inter-personal relations (Turner, 1982). This is explained in the Social Identity (SI) model of collective resilience which can be used to develop a set of predictions concerning the antecedents and consequences of shared social identity in mass emergencies and disasters. In this chapter, I  consider the evidence that supports these predictions before drawing out the practical and policy implications of the SI model. While the crowd has traditionally been seen as a ‘social problem’, this chapter shows how crowd psychology can be the ‘social solution’ that enables us to cope with the most catastrophic of crises.

In February 2014 at the WIPP transuranic waste repository in New Mexico, a drum erupted in fire. It exposed 22 people to radiation, shut down the underground facility for 35 months and cost the United States over a billion dollars. Heat and pressure had built up in the drum due to chemical reactions with an organic kitty litter, Swheat Scoop, which had been mistakenly added to it at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb. This article disrupts two prominent narratives: (a) that the accident was induced by a typographical error made after a waste packaging operations supervisor misheard 'inorganic kitty litter' as 'an organic kitty litter' during a meeting, and (b) that it was induced primarily by 'mismanagement' at WIPP, Los Alamos and the DOE's New Mexico field offices. It does so by exploring how a series of overambitious political initiatives, fraught labor relationships, financialized subcontracting arrangements and US Department of Energy (DOE) performance incentives set the stage for Los Alamos's notorious error by accelerating US waste packaging, shipping and repository emplacement rates beyond systemic capacity. Attention to operational temporalities shows how an often-overlooked nexus of schedule pressures, political-economic imperatives and regulatory breakdowns converged to modulate nuclear waste management workflows and, ultimately, trigger a radiological accident.

This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. This article explains and corrects these misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies.

"This study addresses the life of indigenous people in a village community on Sumba, an island of Eastern Indonesia that is particularly prone to natural disasters. Over the past two decades the people of Sumba have experienced problems such as locust pest/Locusta Migratoria Manilensis  (1998-2005),  Tai  Kabala  grass/Chromolina odorata (2006), whirlwind (2007), earthquakes (2007 and 2009), famine (2007), and barrenness or drought (every year). Wunga  village,  deemed  to  be  the  place  the  Sumbanese  ancestors  arrived  at  when  they  first  came  to Sumba, was also affected by the disasters mentioned, and was hit especially hard.

By using an ethno-ecology approach, the  present  research  found  that Wunga  people, of whom 85,4% follow Marapu  (the  local  religion  in Sumba), have created their own meanings (based on emic view) for natural disasters that differ from the views of scholars and from the Indonesian government’s policy as the global perspective. This difference stems from the creation by the Wunga people of their own taxonomies and perspectives on their ecology.

This paper aims to answer questions about how the Marapu followers in Wunga village view their own vulnerable ecology, what meanings and behavioral responses the Marapu followers in Wunga village ascribe to natural disasters, and the factors that contribute to the formation of these meanings and behaviors. We will see how local identity among Marapu followers gives rise to a discourse of natural disaster that is distinct from constructions of the globalization. In addition, issues of politics of environment and market power will also be used as a framework of interpretation to see the problem of poverty in Wunga as a risk factor of disasters that could happen in the future.

Keywords: Marapu, ethnoecology, natural disaster, meaning, and response.
"

Published on the fifth anniversary of the March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima meltdown, this book explores the ways that many of Japan's most important poets have written about and represented the disasters in their work.  This book contains a study of the themes, functions, and issues in that literature as well as copious translations of the original poetry. 

"In a time that for many of us in Tokyo and beyond feels far removed from the events of March 11, 2011, when we are not sure how to retain and respect those moments and their aftermath, this collection does exactly that. Jeffrey Angles' smart, useful introduction and the poems in this collection help us find a language of grace, dignity and poignancy, not only to look back but also to look forward." --David H. Slater

Phronetic organizational research is an approach to the study of management and organizations focusing on ethics and power. It is based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, usually as ‘prudence’. Phronesis is the ability to think and act in relation to values, to deliberate about ‘things that are good or bad for humans’ in the words of Aristotle (1976:1140a24–b12). Phronetic organizational research effectively provides answers to the following four value-rational questions, for specific problematics in management and organization studies: 1. Where are we going with this specific management problematic? 2. Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? 3. Is this development desirable? 4. What, if anything, should we do about it?

The Aalborg Project may be interpreted as a metaphor of modern politics, modern administration and planning, and of modernity itself. The basic idea of the project was comprehensive, coherent, and innovative, and it was based on rational and democratic argument. During implementation, however, when idea met reality, the play of Machiavellian princes, Nietzschean will to power, and Foucauldian rationality-as-rationalization resulted in the fragmentation of the project.

At the same time that case studies are widely used and have produced canonical texts, it may be observed that the case study as a methodology is generally held in low regard, or is simply ignored, within the academy. For example, only 2 of the 30 top-ranked U.S. graduate programs in political science require a dedicated graduate course in case study or qualitative methods, and a full third of these programs do not even offer such a course. In contrast, all of the top 30 programs offer courses in quantitative methods and almost all of them require training in such methods, often several courses. In identifying this paradox of the case study’s wide use and low regard, Gerring rightly remarks that the case study survives in a “curious methodological limbo,” and that the reason is that the method is poorly understood. In what follows, we will try to resolve Gerring’s paradox and help case study research gain wider use and acceptance.

This paper attempts to explain the impact of disaster on women as their roles in disaster management have largely been ignored. They are portrayed as a " Victims " of disasters and their strength and coping strategy are largely been ignored in the policy framework. Despite having provisions for inclusion of women representatives in local governance processes, gender relationship are bias towards males does not allow women to meaningfully participate in decision making fora. While lapses in good governance practices alienate women's voices further, leaving virtually no room to meaningfully contribute towards the reduction of their vulnerability.Hence, it is significant to explore and analyze the impact of disaster on gender, as the gender roles varies between men and women so as the impact of disaster varies between both socially, economically and psychologically.

Afetlerin toplumsal hayat açısından incelenmesi klasik sosyolojiye hatta toplum felsefecilerine kadar dayanmaktadır. Zira insan grupları için hayati kırılmaları ifade eden doğal ya da yapay afetler, temelde toplumsal değişme olgusunu beraberinde getirmektedir. Bu da afet ve sosyoloji arasında kaçınılmaz bir bağlantıya işaret etmektedir. Bu çalışma, toplum felsefesinden günümüz afet çalışmalarına değin afetlerin sosyoloji literatüründe ele alınışını, bahsedilen bağlantıyı göz önünde bulundurarak ortaya koymayı amaçlamaktadır. Çalışmada sosyoloji ve afet ilişkisi, afet sosyolojisi çalışmalarında ortaya çıkan ya da önerilen metodolojik tartışmalar, afetlerin farklı toplumsal gruplar (bilhassa dezavantajlı gruplar) tarafından tecrübe edilişine ilişkin çalışmalar, günümüz afet sosyolojisi literatürüne etki eden “afet yönetimi” süreci ve bu süreçten kaynaklı terimler/argümanlar ve son olarak Türkçe literatürde afet sosyolojisi kapsamında yazılan ya da bu kapsamda ele alınabilecek çalışmalar betimsel ve dönemsel bir incelemeye tabi tutulmuştur.

In this paper we argue that the use of the communicative theory of Jürgen Habermas in planning theory is problematic because it hampers an understanding of how power shapes planning. We posit an alternative approach based on the power analytics of Michel Foucault which focuses on ‘what is actually done’, as opposed to Habermas’s focus on ‘what should be done’. We discuss how the Foucauldian stance problematises planning, asking difficult questions about the treatment of legitimacy, rationality, knowledge and spatiality. We conclude that Foucault offers a type of analytic planning theory which offers better prospects than does Habermas for those interested in understanding and bringing about democratic social change through planning.

This article presents results from the first statistically significant study of cost escalation in transportation infrastructure projects. Based on a sample of 258 transportation infrastructure projects worth US$90 billion and representing different project types, geographical regions, and historical periods, it is found with overwhelming statistical significance that the cost estimates used to decide whether such projects should be built are highly and systematically misleading. Underestimation cannot be explained by error and is best explained by strategic misrepresentation, that is, lying. The policy implications are clear: legislators, administrators, investors, media representatives, and members of the public who value honest numbers should not trust cost estimates and cost-benefit analyses produced by project promoters and their analysts.

This article presents the theoretical and methodological considerations behind a research method which the author calls ‘phronetic planning research’. Such research sets out to answer four questions of power and values for specific instances of planning: (1) Where are we going with planning? (2) Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? (3) Is this development desirable? (4) What, if anything, should we do about it? A central task of phronetic planning research is to provide concrete examples and detailed narratives of the ways in which power and values work in planning and with what consequences to whom, and to suggest how relations of power and values could be changed to work with other consequences. Insofar as planning situations become clear, they are clarified by detailed stories of who is doing what to whom. Clarifications of that kind are a principal concern for phronetic planning research and provide the main link to praxis.

Megaproject Planning and Management: Essential Readings contains the seminal articles from the growing body of research on megaproject planning and management along with an original introduction by the editor, Bent Flyvbjerg. The leading and most cited authority in the field, Flyvbjerg has used crowdsourcing and 25 years of experience to cherry-pick from several hundred articles and books the writings that define the field. This volume will be an indispensable source for those wishing to speak with authority about how megaprojects are prepared, delivered, and fought over. The target audience is students, academics, practitioners, and media pundits alike, as well as communities affected by megaprojects.

Este libro es una contribución de la Red de Desastres Asociados a Fenómenos Hidrometeorológicos y Climáticos (REDESClim-CONACYT), que tiene por propósito mejorar el conocimiento y la capacidad de respuesta a la variabilidad climática y a las manifestaciones naturales intensas como los huracanes, inundaciones, ondas de calor, sequías y todo tipo de fenómenos hidrometeorológicos que pudieran resultar amenazantes para la sociedad. Con tal propósito, la REDESClim promueve cinco líneas temáticas: 1) Monitoreo, bases de datos y diseminación de información. 2) Diagnóstico y análisis de procesos. 3) Pronóstico meteorológico y prevención de desastres. 4) Modelación climática y análisis de procesos físicos. y 5) Políticas públicas y estrategia de comunicación.
Por lo anterior, este libro se gestó con la idea de mostrar ese quehacer científico a partir de tres líneas temáticas que inciden en los fenómenos hidrometeorológicos:
1. Las respuestas institucionales y políticas frente a fenómenos hidrometeorológicos;
2. El monitoreo y análisis de fenómenos hidrometeorológicos;
3. Las respuestas sociales a eventos hidrometeorológicos en zonas costeras.
En conjunto, los capítulos muestran al lector un catálogo de métodos y técnicas que permiten analizar tanto las manifestaciones naturales, como los riesgos, vulnerabilidades y las respuestas que las sociedades han desplegado para monitorear, mitigar y enfrentar ciertas amenazas naturales.

Back cover text: If the new fin de siècle marks a recurrence of the real, Bent Flyvbjerg’s Rationality and Power epitomizes that development and sets new standards for social and political inquiry. The Danish town of Aalborg is to Flyvbjerg what Florence was to Machiavelli: a laboratory for understanding the real workings of power, and for grasping what they mean to our more general concerns of social and political organization. Politics, administration, and planning are examined in ways that allow  a rare, in-depth understanding. The reader witnesses, firsthand, the classic and endless drama which defines what modernity and democracy are and can be.

Back cover text: Megaprojects and Risk provides the first detailed examination of the phenomenon of megaprojects. It is a fascinating account of how the promoters of multi-billion dollar megaprojects systematically and self-servingly misinform parliaments, the public and the media in order to get projects approved and built. It shows, in unusual depth, how the formula for approval is an unhealthy cocktail of underestimated costs, overestimated revenues, undervalued environmental impacts and overvalued economic development effects. This results in projects that are extremely risky, but where the risk is concealed from MPs, taxpayers and investors. The authors not only explore the problems but also suggest practical solutions drawing on theory, experience and hard, scientific evidence from the several hundred projects in twenty nations and five continents that illustrate the book. Accessibly written, it will be the standard reference for students, scholars, planners, economists, auditors, politicians and interested citizens for many years to come.

This report presents the findings of the literature review carried out as part of a project to assess the impacts of the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfires on the Indigenous peoples of the region.  This report will review key literature in four areas: (1) methodologies for the assessment of disaster impacts on Indigenous communities; (2) the vulnerabilities of Indigenous peoples to wildfires and other natural disasters, (3) the development of general and specific resilience in Indigenous communities, and (4) the integration of Indigenous Traditional Knowledge into disaster recovery and disaster risk and recovery plans.  The report will present the basic analytical framework that will guide the impact assessment and will serve as a useful reference guide for professionals and scholars working in the fields of wildfires, natural disasters, and Indigenous peoples.

The article first describes characteristics of major infrastructure projects. Second, it documents a much neglected topic in economics: that ex ante estimates of costs and benefits are often very different from actual ex post costs and benefits. For large infrastructure projects the consequences are cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and the systematic underestimation of risks. Third, implications for cost–benefit analysis are described, including that such analysis is not to be trusted for major infrastructure projects. Fourth, the article uncovers the causes of this state of affairs in terms of perverse incentives that encourage promoters to underestimate costs and overestimate benefits in the business cases for their projects. But the projects that are made to look best on paper are the projects that amass the highest cost overruns and benefit shortfalls in reality. The article depicts this situation as ‘survival of the unfittest’. Fifth, the article sets out to explain how the problem may be solved, with a view to arriving at more efficient and more democratic projects, and avoiding the scandals that often accompany major infrastructure investments. Finally, the article identifies current trends in major infrastructure development. It is argued that a rapid increase in stimulus spending, combined with more investments in emerging economies, combined with more spending on information technology is catapulting infrastructure investment from the frying pan into the fire.