Summary
The latter half of the 20th century has witnessed an increase in
frequency and intensity of disasters of both natural and technological
origin. This disturbing trend is due in large part to the increasing
conditions of vulnerability in which ever larger numbers of people
live. In addition, human societies have generated new forms of hazard
and disaster agents. As the world becomes increasingly integrated
by expanding global systems of communication and commerce, technological
or environmental changes in one locale may trigger radical events
or changes producing disasters half a world away.
Coincident with the increase in number and severity
of disasters and the growing vulnerability of human populations, the field of
anthropology has experienced a major intensification of interest concerning the
issues that surround both hazards and disasters. Disasters are totalizing events.
Like crystals focusing all rays into one intense beam, disasters illuminate the
complex interactions of physical, biological and sociocultural systems. The holistic
perspective and methodologies of anthropology ideally equip the field to address
the multidimensionality of disasters expressed in the complex interactions of
ecological, political economic, and sociocultural contexts that unfold when catastrophic
events and processes occur.
The advanced seminar which co-chairs Tony Oliver-Smith
of the University of Florida and Susanna Hoffman, an independent anthropologist,
convened at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe in October of 1997 explored
the dual potentials of establishing common ground among the ecological, political
economic, and sociocultural forms of disaster analysis and, by doing so, developing
a coherent theoretical and methodological framework for the anthropology of disaster.
Participants included anthropologists working in the fields of archaeology, cultural
ecology, political economy, cultural studies, and history. Foci spanned a broad
array of naturally, technologically, and socially generated hazards and disasters,
and areas of research included all continents.
The broad theoretical, methodological, and thematic
diversity represented by the participants highlighted the difficulties embodied
in harmonizing the various approaches. The different epistemologies of the natural
and social sciences are both required for complete analysis of disasters, which
are both physical events and culturally constructed processes. However, the diversity
of approaches represented in the seminar also generated dynamic discussions and
pointed the way toward a synthesis of crosscutting themes.
"A lot of disaster research has been purely physical
or purely sociological and ahistorical. We had a real array here—hard-core
materialists to postmodernists—and each participant had a unique perspective
on disaster. The idea was to find areas of commonality," said Oliver-Smith.
Hoffman added, "We began and ended with definitional problems: What is a
disaster? What are risk, danger, and hazard? Each of us also tends to enter this
research from a personal experience with disaster. People left saying the seminar
met and exceeded every expectation."
The themes that were addressed included hazards,
environment, and culture over time, in order to underscore the necessity of a
deep temporal context to disaster; the cultural construction of catastrophe as
expressed through the articulation among ecology, social organization, and ideology;
pre-disaster sociocultural conditions and their effect on the ways cultures respond
to catastrophe, including the reemergence of traditional culture, cultural change,
and cultural survival; and especially how disaster exposes the adaptability of
culture to stress and altered circumstance.
Issues confronted in the discussion entailed the vast
differences in disaster causality and in time and scope represented by such varying
phenomena as droughts, earthquakes, tornados, toxic exposure, and nuclear accident.
Matters of safety, value, and cost; the acute disaster versus the chronic; and
the flow of danger into risk and hazard into calamity also arose. The concept
of vulnerability as a socially grounded set of conditions, culturally and economically
generated, materially experienced, and politically framed also challenged participants.
"The need for an understanding of disaster has
urgency," stated Oliver-Smith. "In the framework of current rapid change,
some disasters are playing the role of the canary in the mine in our global society.
Human interventions have brought about a reduction of functional diversity in
human communities along with increased spatial homogeneity, magnifying the complexity
of disasters, generating new forms of hazards, and often compromising our ability
to adapt and react."
"A synthesis of disaster knowledge can contribute
significantly to efforts to aid disaster victims and prevent disaster from occurring
to at-risk populations," noted Hoffman. "Our purpose in the seminar
was explicitly theoretical, but it is both appropriate and necessary that this
theoretical project be linked to policy and practice."
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