Disasters in the Twenty-First Century: Modern Destruction

and Future Instruction

David Brunsma, J. Steven Picou

Social Forces, Volume 87, Number 2, December 2008, pp. 983-991 (Article)

Published by Oxford University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.0.0149

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/259284

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A Special Section
Disasters in the Twenty-First Century:
Modern Destruction and Future Instruction
Editor David Brunsma, University of Missouri
Co-Editor J. Steven Picou, University of South Alabama

Sociologists are becoming increasingly aware of the changing nature

of risk in late modernity and the shifting landscape of the sociological
study of disasters. This increased “consciousness of catastrophe” is
directly related to the empirical fact that the number of “natural” and
“technological” disasters have increased substantially over the past 30
years. In the past eight years, some 422 disaster declarations have been
issued in the United States alone – etching disasters as an important part
of contemporary American experience (Bogues 2008). The number of
people and communities affected by this most recent spate of catastrophic
events reflects a global intensification of death and destruction that invites
analytical and empirical application of a critical sociological imagination.
While affecting society as a whole, these “focusing events,” or “destabilizing
events,” have also had an impact on scholarly enterprises, shifting the
attention of sociologists from more traditional areas of professional inquiry
to the expansion and application of innovative concepts and methods
to the study of disasters (Birkland 1997; Picou and Marshall 2007). This
paradigm shift means that disaster research is being actively re-imagined
throughout the broader discipline.
Disasters have always threatened human communities. Indeed, the
myths and folklore documenting the devastation of such events are
legend (Rosenberg 1997). Nonetheless, the last quarter of the 20th century
and the first decade of the 21st century seem to have offered more than
their fair share: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Exxon Valdez, Hurricane
Andrew, 9-11, Hurricane Katrina, the Indian Ocean Tsunami, the Sichuan
earthquake and Hurricane Ike. These exemplars of modern destruction
have all become global mass media spectacles dramatically delivered
to living rooms throughout the world. Leading disaster researchers have
revised their conceptualizations of disasters to include ideas about the
“social amplification of disasters and crisis” and the existence of “trans-
system social ruptures.” (Quarantelli et al. 2006) The former reflects
traditional disasters, such as heat waves and blackouts that are amplified
by population density, and the latter, low probability/high consequence
events such as asteroid strikes and global nuclear war (Quarantelli et al.
2006). Future global catastrophes also threaten the human community
as the pandemic spread of diseases and the inevitable daily threat of
terrorism pose risks for the future.
© The University of North Carolina Press Social Forces 87(2), December 2008
984 • Social Forces 87(2)

More than 30 years ago Kai Erikson (1976, 1994) sounded the alarm that
sociologists and human communities would be confronted with a type of
collective trauma that signaled a “new species of trouble.” Later, Ulrich
Beck (1992) introduced sociology to the perils of “risk society” and the
increasing inevitability of “worst imaginable disasters.” Most recently, Lee
Clarke (2006) invited social scientists and emergency response specialists to
creatively engage in “possibilistic thinking” to foster our understanding and
preparation for “worst-case” catastrophes. It is apparent that a revitalized
sociology of disaster will be required to theoretically, practically and publicly
respond to these challenges to community survival in the 21st century.
Theoretical tradition in disaster research has emphasized a structural-
functional systems approach (Fritz 1961; Kreps 1985; Porfiriev 1998).
Furthermore, the social construction processes of vulnerability and
social change have been viewed as the proper focus for disaster studies
(Perry 2006). A more hazards-based model has recently emerged, which
views disasters in terms of society and community vulnerability and the
identification of resources that promote or hinder patterns of social resiliency
(Hewitt 1995; Cutter et al. 2003; Laska and Morrow 2006). In social structural
terms, vulnerability has been defined as “…the characteristics of a person
or group and their situation that influence their capacity to anticipate, cope
with, resist and recover from the impact of a natural hazard.” (Wisner et al.
2004:11) This hazards-vulnerability framework also incorporates concerns
of social structural inequality that relate class, race, ethnicity, gender and
poverty as organizing concepts for understanding and predicting disaster
effects and subsequent differential patterns of collective recovery (Bolin
2006; Oliver-Smith 1996; Fothergill and Peek 2004). This social structural
model has served as the predominate paradigm for disaster research
in American sociology and fostered our understanding of the impact of
disasters, recovery and institutional responses over the past 50 years.
This structural vulnerability paradigm was vividly portrayed to the
public by the global media attention accorded to Hurricane Katrina
(Beck 2006; Jones-Deweever and Hartmann 2006; Barnshaw and Trainor
2007). Nonetheless, this paradigm has not been without critics, as well
as proponents, of alternative areas and topics of inquiry (Tierney 2007).
Embedded within the structural vulnerability paradigm is the issue of
disaster etiology and subsequent differential patterns of community
recovery that characterizes different agents of disaster. As noted over
the years by Erikson (1976), Horlick-Jones (1995), Freudenburg (1997),
Hewitt (1995) and Kroll-Smith and Gunter (1998), among others, alternative
analytical approaches must be creatively utilized to address 21st century
disasters. These concerns are not “replacement areas” for the current
theoretical emphasis, but rather creative research expansions that
address new disaster risks, the viability of institutions of public safety,
 Disasters in the Twenty-First Century • 985

“missing voices,” interpretive accounts, corrosive communities and

applied responses to the lack of timely community recovery for survivors
of modern disasters. In short, the aftermath of major catastrophes over
the past decade mandates “a reorientation and redirection of important
themes throughout the discipline of sociology” for future disaster inquiry
(Picou and Marshall 2007:1).
We suggest that the primary reason for the necessity of this post-
normative paradigm shift is the anthropogenic recontextualization
of disasters in the modern world. Initially identified and addressed in
the early “technological” disaster literature from revelations regarding
contested discourses – which included public blame directed toward
government and corporate organizations and the documentation of
chronic corrosive processes of collective trauma – these institutional
failures revictimized survivors and became sources for chronic disaster
effects (Freudenburg 1997; Marshall et al. 2004). Most notably, protracted
litigation has been documented as being one dominant, driving stressor
which has perpetuated long-term community disruption and psychological
stress for survivors of the worst ecological disaster in North American
history, i.e., the Exxon Valdez oil spill (Picou et al. 2004). Indeed, such an
anthropogenic scenario characterized the aftermath of the 9-11 terrorist
attacks and Hurricane Katrina when perpetrators, responsible agencies
and the failure of institutional response systems were all blamed as
“causes” for the observed death and destruction by both survivors and
the media. Litigation and toxic exposure has characterized both of these
modern catastrophes and chronic physical and mental health ailments
persist for survivors (Brunsma et al. 2007).
As such, Hurricane Katrina has been viewed as a natech disaster, that
is, a catastrophe that combines the most debilitating consequences of
both “natural” and “technological” disasters (Steinberg and Cruz 2004;
Picou and Marshall 2006). Natech disasters occur when natural disasters
produce direct, indirect and/or purposeful releases of toxic and hazardous
materials into the biophysical environment. Natech disaster scenarios
are related to “increases in the number of natural disasters, as well as
increases in population density in disaster prone areas and technological
and industrial expansion.” (Young et al. 2004:5) As a contamination event,
Katrina spawned the second largest oil spill in North American history (8
million gallons) and contaminated the sediment of the greater New Orleans
area with dangerous levels of arsenic, diesel fuel and other toxic chemicals
(Picou and Marshall 2006, 2007). Similar to the risks and effects posed
by modern terrorism, natech disasters focus blame on anthropogenic
sources, produce lawsuits, threaten the physical health of survivors and
portend long-term physical and mental health issues linked to the lack of
timely community recovery (Picou and Marshall 2007).
986 • Social Forces 87(2)

Given the proliferation of books, articles and special issues of journals

dedicated to an expanded social science scrutiny of Hurricane Katrina,
the present special section was conceived to provide perspectives that
reach beyond the “normal science” of disaster studies. That is, the editors
solicited manuscripts that were innovative, synthetic and controversial
writings that extended and went beyond the traditional disaster research
paradigm in sociology. As such, analytical accounts of theoretical and
conceptual issues were of interest, as well as innovative interpretations
of quantitative and qualitative information. The initial submission of 42
manuscripts was surprising. We sent 20 of those manuscripts out for peer
review, and as our editorial mandate was to accept less than a third, we
had to reject an overwhelming number of excellent papers. This special
section includes the six best that we received.
In “Population Composition, Migration and Inequality: The Influence of
Demographic Changes on Disaster Risk and Vulnerability,” William Donner
and Hávidan Rodríguez offer a roadmap of our modern risk society. This
article, focusing on vulnerabilities, clearly illustrates that it is a multifaceted
subject, stating that “it is only in rare cases that a single dimension of the
social structure is responsible for vulnerability.” The authors anchor the
special section by offering a critical review of the shape of vulnerability and
the resiliency of social systems in the face of increasing disasters. Looking
closely at the U.S. stratification system, Donner and Rodriguez discuss
the impact of population growth, urbanization, coastal development,
immigration and internal migrations, cultural capital, poverty, minority
status, gender, family composition, age and disability as these all affect
every facet of the disaster process – from disaster through recovery. This
article suggests that those who study disasters and those who create
policy regarding disaster preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery
should conceptualize, respect and create models, which recognize that
exposure to disaster and vulnerabilities are centrally embedded in the
intersection of inequalities and that population growth, composition and
spatial distribution drive these processes.
In the tradition of Peck (2006), Kevin Fox Gotham and Miriam
Greenberg take an empirical stab at the question: In the 21st century,
what does “disaster recovery” mean? “Post-Disaster Recovery and
Rebuilding in New York and New Orleans,” investigates the impact of
the contemporary neoliberal, market-centered political economy on the
processes of rebuilding and recovery. First, 9/11, then Hurricane Katrina,
represent a significant shift from the post-disaster reconstruction once
directed at disadvantaged populations and providing incentives to spur
reinvestment to the more modern tax breaks and private sector subsidies
– fundamentally shifting what recovery, reconstruction and rebuilding
mean, and for whom. Bringing together a wide variety of data and a
 Disasters in the Twenty-First Century • 987

sharp critical analytical sociological imagination, Gotham and Greenberg

identify the disjuncture between the ideology and implementation of
neoliberalism and the everyday reality of consequences for people.
While scholars have found policy rooted in the neoliberal model (health
care, finance, national security, education, housing, etc.), this article
shows that disaster response is conceptualized by officials within this
framework as well – finding that it removes the process from the people,
worsens extant inequalities, makes the rich richer, and perpetuates
post-disaster spatial vulnerability to future disasters. It asks sociology of
disaster research to take stock of the political structure of disasters.
The third article in the special section, focusing on the 1993 flood of
the upper Mississippi River Valley and the Katrina-related destruction of
New Orleans, continues to document the disastrous political-economic
decisions for hazard creation. In their article, “Organizing Hazards,
Engineering Disasters? Improving the Recognition of Political-Economic
Factors in the Creation of Disasters,” William Freudenburg, Robert Gramling,
Shirley Laska and Kai T. Erikson, theoretically and empirically zero in on
three primary factors that created these empirical examples of disaster:
spreading the costs, concentrating the economic benefits and hiding the
real risks. Joining an elite group of researchers, these authors choose to
ask whether hazard creation is non-random, patterned and by design. In
these cases, it appears that money was taken from the many for the benefit
of the few. Instead of solely focusing on how people and communities
respond to disasters, this research asks, what creates the disasters in
the first place? The answer is embodied within a “triple tragedy,” wherein
politically powerful networks cause serious environmental harm. This harm
makes the effects of natural disasters worse (damaging both humans and
the economy), and those who are most vulnerable suffer the most.
While panic, as collective response, is extremely rare in disasters, the
idea and fear of panic endures. It endures because of political, institutional
and elite interests attribute panic to the powerless. But what of the
powerful? To begin theorizing how power and the power elite function
within moments of disaster, Lee Clarke and Caron Chess have crafted
a provocative article, “Elites and Panic: More to Fear than Fear Itself,”
wherein they consider several relationships between elites and panic –
that elites can and do fear public panic, that elites can cause panic, and
that elites themselves can panic – with implications for the sociology of
disasters. Using a diverse array of data, the authors push us to consider
not only panic, but other central orienting concepts within the sociology
of disasters. Their work has empirical and theoretical ramifications for
understanding the political dimensions of disaster creation, response,
recovery, reconstruction as, when the powerful panic, their dis-ease moves
resources and energizes organizational and institutional activity. Having
988 • Social Forces 87(2)

theorized panic and power, Clarke and Chess call for more systematic
cross-cultural as well as organizational research on panic.
In “Rethinking the Nature of Disaster: From Failed Instruments of
Learning to a Post-Social Understanding,” Stewart Williams provides an
epistemological critique of disaster and risk management research as
traditionally embedded within an “instrumental scientific reason” and
encourages a more reflexive, “post-social” approach to understanding
disaster and risk. Citing the need to incorporate the physical and human
environments as already interwoven in our work, the need to acknowledge
the agency and power of nonhuman nature, and humans’ constitutive
relationship with space, place and landscape, Williams pushes extant
conceptualizations and encourages new research. Looking at the risk
management practices utilized during Hurricane Katrina and the Indian
Ocean Tsunami reveals a theoretically problematic separation between
society and the environment, and, consequently, he argues, a paradigm
shift towards a relational approach. Ultimately, this article encourages
radical thinking about a persistent issue in the sociology of disaster – the
relationship between society and the “natural” world.
The special section is rounded out by a unique and fresh new approach
to understanding disasters and their aftermath. Lynn Letukas and John
Barnshaw look at the “upper limits of theory for disaster” by moving
away from middle range theoretical approaches to an exploration of the
possibilities of utilizing World-Systems theory in the sociology of disasters.
In “A World-Systems Approach to Post-Catastrophe International Relief,”
an impressive data set is brought together to explore how perceptions of
aid vary by economic zones and nation-states in the contemporary world
system after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Disaster research, the authors
argue, can benefit from a heightened attention to the ways that centuries
of economic, military, political and cultural development can affect both
how disaster research is done within each zone or state, but also how
these affect preparedness, response and recovery. We hope this special
section encourages new ways to think and spawns new research.
We would like to dedicate this special section to our dear colleague,
Brent K. Marshall, who passed away on April 27, 2008. His spirit of inquiry
and of the desire to live the examined life infuses both the enterprise of
Social Forces in general and, more specifically, the scholarship across
these six articles.
Putting together a special section like this in a highly respected
international journal of sociological research, involves many actors. We
would first like to acknowledge our deepest thanks to the managing
editor, Jane Shealy, who worked utterly tirelessly on this special section
– a special section which had disastrous elements of its own (including
delayed reviews due to Hurricane Gustav). The cadre of reviewers for
 Disasters in the Twenty-First Century • 989

this section was immense. We would like to thank the following people
for their assistance in reviewing the manuscripts and hope that we have
remembered everyone who worked on this process. Without their help,
this section simply would not have been possible: Charles Perrow, Joel
Devine, Steve Kroll-Smith, Kirsten Dellinger, Tom Hood, John Greene, Kai
Erikson, Alan Rudy, David Pellow, Scott Kinnell, Rebecca Scott, Lisa Eargle,
JoAnn Darlington, David Overfelt, Bob Gramling, Hávidan Rodríguez, Laura
Senier, John Barnshaw, James Kendra, Tom Shriver, Ortwin Renn, Jan-
Martijn Meij, Anna Wesselink, Kishi Animashaun, Barbara Allen, Gene Rosa,
Kathleen Tierney, William Freudenburg, Nicole Dash, Augustine Kposowa,
Sabrina McCormick, Elizabeth Fussell, Penelope Canan and Phillipa Clarke.
Two reviewers get the gold star award for reviewing multiple manuscripts
when asked: Christine Bevc and Lee Clarke. Thank you so much! Sociology
and sociological inquiry have been at the center of disaster research for
years. However, as these articles show, contemporary disasters have
taken on significantly different forms, and future catastrophes may have
predictable, yet different contours. Clearly sociology can help provide an
understanding of society’s reactions to these catastrophes and these
articles make a significant set of contributions towards that understanding
of modern destruction and its future instruction.

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