Download or read book Critical Perspectives on Natural Disasters written by Jennifer Viegas and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2006-07-15 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents seventeen articles that were originally published in "Scientific American" dating from 1998 to 2005.
Download or read book The Legacy of Hurricane Mitch written by Marisa O. Ensor and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2022-05-10 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Around the world disaster vulnerability is on the rise. The incidence and intensity of disasters have increased in recent decades with lives being shattered and resources being destroyed across broad geographic regions each year. As it swept across the Honduran landscape, the exceptional size, power and duration of Hurricane Mitch abruptly and brutally altered the already diminished economic, social, and environmental conditions of the population. In the aftermath of the disaster a group of seven socio-environmental scientists set out to investigate the root causes of the heightened vulnerability that characterized pre-Mitch Honduras, the impact of the catastrophe on the local society, and the subsequent recovery efforts. Edited by Marisa O. Ensor, this volume presents the findings of their investigation. The Legacy of Hurricane Mitch offers a comprehensive analysis of the immediate and long-term consequences of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras. Based on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork and environmental assessments, this volume illustrates the importance of adopting an approach to disaster research and practice that places “natural” trigger events within their political, cultural, and socio-economic contexts. The contributors make a compelling case against post-disaster recovery efforts that limit themselves to alleviating the symptoms, rather than confronting the root causes of the vulnerability that prefigured the disaster.
Download or read book Critical Disaster Studies written by Jacob A.C. Remes and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2021-08-20 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book announces the new, interdisciplinary field of critical disaster studies. Unlike most existing approaches to disaster, critical disaster studies begins with the idea that disasters are not objective facts, but rather are interpretive fictions—and they shape the way people see the world. By questioning the concept of disaster itself, critical disaster studies reveals the stakes of defining people or places as vulnerable, resilient, or at risk. As social constructs, disaster, vulnerability, resilience, and risk shape and are shaped by contests over power. Managers and technocrats often herald the goals of disaster response and recovery as objective, quantifiable, or self-evident. In reality, the goals are subjective, and usually contested. Critical disaster studies attends to the ways powerful people often use claims of technocratic expertise to maintain power. Moreover, rather than existing as isolated events, disasters take place over time. People commonly imagine disasters to be unexpected and sudden, making structural conditions appear contingent, widespread conditions appear local, and chronic conditions appear acute. By placing disasters in broader contexts, critical disaster studies peels away that veneer. With chapters by scholars of five continents and seven disciplines, Critical Disaster Studies asks how disasters come to be known as disasters, how disasters are used as tools of governance and politics, and how people imagine and anticipate disasters. The volume will be of interest to scholars of disaster in any discipline and especially to those teaching the growing number of courses on disaster studies.
Download or read book Dealing with Disasters written by Diana Riboli and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2021-11-24 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing a fresh look at some of the pressing issues of our world today, this collection focuses on experiential and ritualized coping practices in response to a multitude of environmental challenges—cyclones, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes, warfare and displacements of peoples and environmental resource exploitation. Eco-cosmological practices conducted by skilled healing practitioners utilize knowledge embedded in the cosmological grounding of place and experiences of place and the landscapes in which such experience is encapsulated. A range of geographic case studies are presented in this volume, exploring Asia, Europe, the Pacific, and South America. With special reference throughout to ritual as a mode of seeking the stabilization, renewal, and continuity of life processes, this volume will be of particular interest to readers working in shamanic and healing practices, environmental concerns surrounding sustainability and conservation, ethnomedical systems, and religious and ritual studies.
Download or read book The Economic Impacts of Natural Disasters written by Debarati Guha-Sapir and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-23 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work combines research and empirical evidence on the economic costs of disasters with theoretical approaches. It provides new insights on how to assess and manage the costs and impacts of disaster prevention, mitigation, recovery and adaption, and much more.
Download or read book Ten Years after Katrina written by Mary Ruth Marotte and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hurricane Katrina blasted the Gulf Coast in 2005, leaving an unparalleled trail of physical destruction. In addition to that damage, the storm wrought massive psychological and cultural trauma on Gulf Coast residents and on America as a whole. Details of the devastation were quickly reported—and misreported—by media outlets, and a slew of articles and books followed, offering a spectrum of socio-political commentaries and analyses. But beyond the reportage and the commentary, a series of fictional and creative accounts of the Katrina-experience have emerged in various mediums: novels, plays, films, television shows, songs, graphic novels, collections of photographs, and works of creative non-fiction that blur the lines between reportage, memoir, and poetry. The creative outpouring brings to mind Salman Rushdie’s observation that, “Man is the storytelling animal, the only creature on earth that tells itself stories to understand what kind of creature it is.” This book accepts the urge behind Rushdie’s formula: humans tell stories in order to understand ourselves, our world, and our place in it. Indeed, the creative output on Katrina represents efforts to construct a cohesive narrative out of the wreckage of a cataclysmic event. However, this book goes further than merely cataloguing the ways that Katrina narratives support Rushdie’s rich claim. This collection represents a concentrated attempt to chart the effects of Katrina on our cultural identity; it seeks to not merely catalogue the trauma of the event but to explore the ways that such an event functions in and on the literature that represents it. The body of work that sprung out of Katrina offers a unique critical opportunity to better understand the genres that structure our stories and the ways stories reflect and produce culture and identity. These essays raise new questions about the representative genres themselves. The stories are efforts to represent and understand the human condition, but so are the organizing principles that communicate the stories. That is, Katrina-narratives present an opportunity to interrogate the ways that specific narrative structures inform our understanding and develop our cultural identity. This book offers a critical processing of the newly emerging and diverse canon of Katrina texts.
Download or read book Disaster Resilience from a Sociological Perspective written by Barbara Lucini and published by Springer Science & Business. This book was released on 2014-05-03 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Natural disasters traumatize individuals, disrupt families, and destabilize communities.Surviving these harrowing events calls for courage, tenacity, and resilience. Professional planning requires specific types of knowledge of how people meet and cope with extreme challenges. Disaster Resilience from a Sociological Perspective examines three major earthquakes occurring in Italy over a fourteen - year period for a well-documented analysis of populations' responses to and recovery from disaster, the social variables involved, and the participation of public agencies. This timely volume reviews sociological definitions and models of disaster, identifying core features of vulnerability and multiple levels of individual and social resilience. The analysis contrasts the structural and supportive roles of Italy's civil protection and civil defense services in emergency planning and management as examples of what the author terms professional resilience. And testimony from earthquake survivors and volunteers gives voice to the social processes characteristic of disaster. Among the areas covered: Social context for concepts of disaster, vulnerability, risk, and resilience Types of resilience: a multidimensional analysis, focused on a physical, ecological, and ecosystem perspective Findings from three earthquakes: loss, hope, and community. Two systems of organizational response to emergencies Toward a relational approach to disaster resilience planning Plus helpful tables, methodological notes, and appendices For researchers in disaster preparedness, psychology, and sociology, Disaster Resilience from a Sociological Perspective raises--and addresses--salient questions about people and communities in crisis, and how studying them can improve preparedness in an uncertain future.
Download or read book International Perspectives on Natural Disasters Occurrence Mitigation and Consequences written by Joseph P. Stoltman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-03-11 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reports of natural disasters fill the media with regularity. Places in the world are affected by natural disaster events every day. Such events include earthquakes, cyclones, tsunamis, wildfires – the list could go on for considerable length. In the 1990s there was a concentrated focus on natural disaster information and mitigation during the International Decade for Natural Disasters Reduction (IDNDR). The information was technical and provided the basis for major initiatives in building structures designed for seismic safety, slope stability, severe storm warning systems, and global monitoring and reporting. Mitigation, or planning in the event that natural hazards prevalent in a region would suddenly become natural disasters, was a major goal of the decade-long program. During the IDNDR, this book was conceptualized, and planning for its completion began. The editors saw the need for a book that would reach a broad range of readers who were not actively or directly engaged in natural disasters relief or mitigation planning, but who were in decision-making positions that provided an open window for addressing natural disaster issues. Those people were largely elected public officials, teachers, non-governmental organization staff, and staff of faith-based organizations. Those people, for the most part, come to know very well the human and physical characteristics of the place in which they are based. With that local outreach in mind, the editors intended the book to encourage readers to: 1.
Download or read book Increasing National Resilience to Hazards and Disasters written by The National Academies and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-09-26 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Natural disasters are having an increasing effect on the lives of people in the United States and throughout the world. Every decade, property damage caused by natural disasters and hazards doubles or triples in the United States. More than half of the U.S. population lives within 50 miles of a coast, and all Americans are at risk from such hazards as fires, earthquakes, floods, and wind. The year 2010 saw 950 natural catastrophes around the world--the second highest annual total ever--with overall losses estimated at $130 billion. The increasing impact of natural disasters and hazards points to increasing importance of resilience, the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, or more successfully adapt to actual or potential adverse events, at the individual , local, state, national, and global levels. Assessing National Resilience to Hazards and Disasters reviews the effects of Hurricane Katrina and other natural and human-induced disasters on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Mississippi and to learn more about the resilience of those areas to future disasters. Topics explored in the workshop range from insurance, building codes, and critical infrastructure to private-sector issues, public health, nongovernmental organizations and governance. This workshop summary provides a rich foundation of information to help increase the nation's resilience through actionable recommendations and guidance on the best approaches to reduce adverse impacts from hazards and disasters.
Download or read book Public Health Humanitarian Responses to Natural Disasters written by Emily Ying Yang Chan and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-02-10 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The pressure of climate change, environmental degradation, and urbanisation, as well as the widening of socio- economic disparities have rendered the global population increasingly vulnerable to the impact of natural disasters. With a primary focus on medical and public health humanitarian response to disasters, Public Health Humanitarian Responses to Natural Disasters provides a timely critical analysis of public health responses to natural disasters. Using a number of case studies and examples of innovative disaster response measures developed by international agencies and stakeholders, this book illustrates how theoretical understanding of public health issues can be practically applied in the context of humanitarian relief response. Starting with an introduction to public health principles within the context of medical and public health disaster and humanitarian response, the book goes on to explore key trends, threats and challenges in contemporary disaster medical response. This book provides a comprehensive overview of an emergent discipline and offers a unique multidisciplinary perspective across a range of relevant topics including the concepts of disaster preparedness and resilience, and key challenges in human health needs for the twenty-first century. This book will be of interest to students of public health, disaster and emergency medicine and development studies, as well as to development and medical practitioners working within NGOs, development agencies, health authorities and public administration.
Download or read book Natural Hazards UnNatural Disasters written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2010-11-10 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how to ensure that the preventive measures are worthwhile and effective, and how people can make decisions individually and collectively at different levels of government.
Download or read book Cultural Psychology of Coping with Disasters written by Manfred Zaumseil and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-21 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a broad theoretical foundation by relating and contrasting relevant international literature with the outcomes of a particular research project. It provides a critical reevaluation of the complex phenomena of coping with disasters on a general level by applying this integrative theory of disaster coping to a specific context. A cultural psychological model is developed in order to suggest ways of understanding and assessing local and cultural specificity. This interaction of the general and locally specific is central to our understanding of cultural psychology of coping with disaster. The book provides a basic overview, by presenting various approaches to coping with natural disasters and relating them to each other in a coherent manner. So far, most research approaches either focus on technical, social, psychological or cultural aspects of coping, neglecting their interconnectedness. Coping is seldom seen as an extensive, long-term process, in which disaster relief complexly interacts and is integrated with the local actors and conditions. Until now, a perspective is missing, in which the mentioned modes of coping are integrated with cultural interpretations and practices and long-standing forms of communal self-help, which possibly develop in places that are frequently threatened by natural disasters.
Download or read book The Sociology of Katrina written by David L. Brunsma and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2010 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second edition of The Sociology of Katrina brings together the nation's top sociological researchers in an effort to deepen our understanding of the modern catastrophe that is Hurricane Katrina. Five years after the storm, its profound impact continues to be felt. This new edition explores emerging themes, as well as ongoing issues that continue to besiege survivors. The book has been updated and revised throughout--from data about recovery efforts and environmental conditions, to discussions of major social issues in education, health care, the economy, and crime. The authors thoroughly review the important topic of recovery, both in New Orleans and in the wider area of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. This new edition features a new chapter focused on the Katrina experience for people in the primary impact area, or "ground zero," five years after the storm. This chapter uncovers many challenges in overcoming the critical problems caused by the storm of the century. From this important update of the acclaimed first edition, it is apparent that "the storm is not over," as Katrina continues to generate political, economic, community, and personal controversy.
Download or read book Perils of a Restless Planet written by Ernest Zebrowski and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From epidemics and earthquakes to tornadoes and tidal waves, the overwhelming power of Nature never ceases to instil humankind with both terror and awe. As natural disasters continue to claim human lives and wreak havoc in their wake, Perils of a Restless Planet examines our attempts to understand and anticipate such phenomena. Drawing upon case studies from ancient to present times, this book focuses on scientific inquiry, technological innovation and public policy to provide a lucid and riveting look at natural disasters. While shedding light on the elusive quality of Nature and the limits scientific study and laboratory replication impose on our understanding of her mercurial ways, the author extrapolates from the history of science to suggest how we may someday learn to warn and protect vulnerable populations on our small and tempestuous planet. Anyone interested in the power of Nature will find this book compelling and informative.
Download or read book The Economics of Natural Disasters written by Douglas C. Dacy and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Impact of Natural Disasters on Systemic Political and Social Inequities in the U S written by Paul S. Adams and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-11-16 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Impact of Natural Disasters on Systemic Political and Social Inequities in the U.S. examines how natural disasters impact social inequality in the United States. The contributors cover topics such as criminal justice, demographics, economics, history, political science, and sociology to show how effects of natural disasters vary by social and economic class in the United States. This volumestudies social and political mechanisms in disaster response and relief that enable natural disasters to worsen inequalities in America and offers potential solutions.
Download or read book Confronting Catastrophe written by David Alexander and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2000 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The current models habitually used to interpret disasters are now decades old and relate to a time when society held markedly different views. The author of this provocative new book, a physical geographer and survivor of a major earthquake in southern Italy (1980), reconceptualizes the story of disaster in terms of present-day trends and tendencies.
