From Yardstick to Gyroscope -
Interdisciplinary Methods for the Long-Term Study of Social-Ecological Systems
Natural & Unnatural Disasters: Assessing risk, vulnerability, and adaptability
Instructor - Anthony Oliver-Smith
Date - April 14

Oliver-Smith, A. (2002). Theorizing Disasters: Nature, Power, Culture. Catastrophe and Culture: The Anthropology of Disaster. S. M. Hoffman and A. Oliver-Smith. Santa Fe, NM, SAR Press: 23-48. Publication

Disasters have become a metaphor for many processes and events currently unfolding in the contemporary world. Although the concept of disaster is often appropriately linked to undeniably important issues, apart from a few notably exceptions, the disaster emanating from the problem discussed is rarely dealt with in any detail or depth. Part of the problem is that disaster is often considered an event rather than a process. Disasters are also difficult to think about because of their multidimensionality - they are all-encompassing occurrences sweeping across every aspect of human life, impacting environmental, social, economic, political, and biological conditions. Disasters come into existence in both the material and the social worlds, and perhaps, in some hybrid space between them. It is to the theoretical challenge of hybridity and to the implications of disaster research for anthropological theory that I wish to direct my attention in this chapter.