Sociology Of Disasters Research Articles

Construction Safety Management of High-Rise Buildings under the Basic Principles of Disaster Sociology

In order to reduce the risk of accidents in high-rise building construction, firstly, the potential disaster risk factors in the construction of high-rise buildings were systematically analyzed, including the distortion of accident information transmission, the lack of morality during disasters, the danger of high-altitude work, the complexity of the intersection of types of work, and the non-professionalism of construction management. Secondly, this paper focuses on the analysis of the current problems in the construction safety management of high-rise buildings, and considers the social risk factors, including the distortion of safety accident transmission, the lack of morality during disasters and the disaster safety awareness of construction personnel. Finally, from the perspective of disaster sociology, specific improvement measures for the safety management of high-rise building construction are proposed. The results show that social risk factors are equally important in construction safety management, which not only enriches the theoretical basis of construction safety management of high-rise buildings, but also provides a specific theoretical reference for safety management in practice.

Analysis of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation and Emergency Management under Disaster Sociology

Analysis of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation and Emergency Management under Disaster Sociology

Urban Space and Epidemics: Narrative Reflections on Socioeconomic Disparities in The City of Ember

This study delves into the depiction of socioeconomic disparities amidst a city-wide crisis in Jeanne DuPrau’s novel The City of Ember. Framed within the context of epidemics and urban spaces, this research employs a qualitative analysis approach to investigate the representation of social inequality within the narrative framework. The theoretical lens draws upon disaster sociology and social inequality theories to unravel the differential impact of crises on various segments of the city’s populace. The analysis focuses on the experiences of both privileged city inhabitants and marginalized slum dwellers within the constructed urban landscape of The City of Ember. Through close examination of character dynamics, societal structures, and resource allocation within the narrative, this study reveals the stark socioeconomic disparities exacerbated by the crisis. The findings underscore the profound disparities in access to resources, healthcare, and living conditions between the affluent city residents and the marginalized slum population. The narrative reflections within the novel illuminate the compounded vulnerabilities faced by the urban underclass, emphasizing the amplification of existing inequalities during times of crisis. This research contributes to the discourse on epidemic narratives and urban spaces, shedding light on the portrayal of socioeconomic divides in fictional cities amidst catastrophic events. The study advocates for a deeper understanding of societal inequalities within urban contexts, urging for inclusive and equitable disaster preparedness and response strategies to address these disparities in both fictional and real-world settings.

Analysıs of the 6 February 2023 Turkey earthquake as a challenge ın dısaster sociology under the guıdance of Bruno Latour and Terrestrıal

Current studies in disaster sociology, which were initiated and developed mostly in the USA upon the request of the army, are far from meeting the needs today. Today, more than ever, new theoretical and methodological approaches that are not human-centered are needed. The research, a part of which is presented here, aims to render invisible the damages and losses suffered by those who are marginalized by the powerful, in disasters in general and earthquakes in particular. The main question of this research is how to address the damages suffered by soil plants and animals, including immigrants in Turkey, due to the disaster on 6February 2023.(Based on this, the main question of the study is how to address the damages of the natural environment, including plants, animals and soils, as well as Syrian immigrants in Turkey, who were affected by the earthquakes centered in Kahramanmaraş on 6February 2023, which we experienced most recently, will be addressed with an antipositivist approach.) For this purpose, unlike classical sociological approaches, based on relational sociology, how immigrants, plants, animals and soil are affected together during the uncertainty and complexity in daily life has been analyzed based on available written and visual documents. The findings were discussed with a holistic view, based on the ‘One World’ terminology suggested by relational sociologist Bruno Latour. It has been revealed that due to the earthquake turning into a major disaster, the resident population has become openly or secretly immigrants, and they have been marginalized like other creatures, especially international immigrants, most of whom are Syrians, have been blamed, excluded and rendered invisible. While the research results reveal the inadequacy of classical essentialist sociological approaches based on the basic duality of nature and society, they also show that ‘differences’ and ‘uncertainties’ come to the fore in daily life instead of linear determinations. In addition, while the importance and contributions of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary studies with concepts such as ‘liminality’ and ‘turning point’ are exhibited, on the other hand, some suggestions are made based on Bruno Latour’s ‘One World’ approach.

Effects of February 6, 2023 Kahramanmaraş Earthquakes on Housing Preferences vis-à-vis Sociology of Disasters

Effects of February 6, 2023 Kahramanmaraş Earthquakes on Housing Preferences vis-à-vis Sociology of Disasters

Research on Safety Risk Assessment of Prefabricated Building Construction Based on Disaster Sociology

Nowadays, with the development of the economy and the needs of people's lives, the industrialization and informatization of construction have begun to develop rapidly. the rapid development of China's market economy. The original cast-in-place construction technology has become increasingly difficult to adapt to the new requirements of market economy and social construction development. However, prefabricated buildings are increasingly accepted by society due to their advantages of green environmental protection, low consumption, improved labor efficiency, and standardized production. With the promotion of a series of national policies, prefabricated buildings have begun to develop rapidly. However, in the actual construction process, safety accidents such as high-altitude falls, object strikes, lifting injuries, and collapses are constantly occurring. How to effectively reduce safety accidents has become one of the major problems that urgently need to be solved. Therefore, this article aims to establish a comprehensive and scientific safety risk assessment index system for prefabricated buildings by comprehensively analyzing the characteristics of safety accidents in prefabricated buildings and combining disaster sociology theory for similar projects.

How to activate nonprofit beneficiaries for community resilience? Examining the role of risk perception and evaluation of nonprofit services on prosocial behavior in the context of natural hazards

Nonprofit organizations serve an essential role in response to natural hazards by delivering services to affected communities and those in need. However, little is known about the drivers of nonprofit-resident engagement during and aftermath of emergencies. Utilizing survey data collected in Austin, Texas, we address this gap by analyzing how beneficiaries of nonprofit services become donors and/or volunteers. Specifically, this study empirically analyzes how risk awareness and perceived nonprofit responsiveness and satisfaction (i.e., evaluation of services) influence beneficiaries’ donation and volunteering during and after natural hazards. This relationship between risk awareness, evaluation of nonprofit services, and prosocial behaviors is understudied but extremely salient in the context of the expanding role of nonprofits on the frontlines of increasing frequency and duration of extreme weather events. The results indicate that the mediating role of citizens’ evaluation of nonprofit services in the relationship between risk awareness and prosocial behavior is evident, despite the lack of significant direct effects of risk awareness on prosocial behavior. This study offers new perspectives to understanding the co-production of nonprofit services and mobilizing community resources to prepare, respond, and recover from climate impacts and informs ongoing conversations in urban sociology and the sociology of disaster.

The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami: The highest casualties and largest reconstruction funds—Characteristics of major disasters and future challenges in developed countries

AbstractThe 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake was a disaster that led to the greatest number of casualties related to any form of natural disaster seen in developed countries since World War II. Furthermore, this earthquake occurred in an area where tsunami countermeasures had been prioritized. This disaster, therefore, led to the question “Is it impossible to reduce the number of victims of huge catastrophes, even in cases in which advanced disaster prevention measures have been taken?” Part of the reason this particular earthquake caused the largest number of deaths was because the tsunami that followed—which exceeded the “design load” of the seawall—hit the urban area. In addition, the tsunami, which also exceeded the “estimated loads” of the established disaster prevention plan, caused many “evacuation failures.” Another factor that contributed to the deaths was that the disaster prevention measures, up to that point, had relied primarily on the recognition that disasters could be prevented by the development of “hard,” or tangible, disaster prevention facilities in addition to “soft,” or intangible, measures, such as issuing warnings, without imposing space restrictions. Another characteristic of the Great East Japan Earthquake was that the largest reconstruction budget associated with any disaster in postwar Japan was compiled for it. Although the reconstruction project was over‐specified for the disaster‐afflicted area in terms of scale, cost, and duration of reconstruction, many unused land areas were also created in the new urban areas created during the reconstruction project. Furthermore, the reconstruction projects undertaken with the huge reconstruction budget were not based on the “choice to rebuild the lives” of the disaster‐afflicted areas and the victims, but were rather implemented while simultaneously “marginalizing” said victims and areas as a whole. The over‐specified reconstruction projects and the associated marginalization of disaster victims tend to exist in a mutually regulated relationship. Therefore, there are concerns about the future sustainability of the noted disaster‐afflicted areas, which are already suffering from a severe population decline. Based on the previously presented discussion, it is possible to highlight various issues associated with disaster measures implemented in developed countries. First, regardless of how advanced disaster measures are, a “surge in disaster damage” can occur, which can lead to a “black swan” event. Therefore, it is necessary to formulate disaster prevention measures based on the assumption that such crises will occur in the future. Second, it is necessary for developed countries to determine how best to formulate reconstruction policies to avoid marginalizing disaster victims as well as to prevent over‐specified reconstruction. In examining these two issues, the common problem that arises is how to conduct “risk assessment and enable its acceptance” most calmly immediately after a disaster and then formulate disaster prevention measures based on such assessment. Finally, the future of disaster sociology is detailed in this work. More specifically, in order for disaster sociology to escape its “marginal” status in sociology, it is necessary to consider “disaster” in the context of both a social structure and a social change—similar to how risk theory views the issue.

Pandemic publishing: A bibliometric review of COVID‐19 research in the crisis and disaster literature

Iconic events have traditionally instigated progression in the fields of crisis and disaster science. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the pressing question is how this global health emergency impacted the research agendas of our field. We reviewed contributions in ten important crisis and disaster journals in the two and a half years following the COVID-19 outbreak from 1 January 2020 to 30 June 2022. Specifically, we conducted a bibliometric review using thematic mapping analysis to distill the major themes covered by the emerging COVID-19 literature within crisis and disaster science (N = 239 articles). Our results indicate that several well-known topics are applied to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as risk, crisis communication, governance, resilience and vulnerability. The pandemic also gave rise to new topics, such as citizen behavior, state power, and the business and mental health impact of crisis measures. Several studies are already looking ahead by identifying lessons for preparedness and mitigation of future pandemics. By taking stock of the surge of COVID-19 studies while this academic literature is still taking shape, this review sets the stage for future contributions to the crisis and disaster literatures. It provides valuable lessons for what topics are studied and what themes need more attention. The COVID-19 pandemic is destined to become an iconic event for our literature that not only strengthens and deepens existing debates, but also clearly offers the opportunity to draw in new perspectives and broaden the horizon of crisis and disaster science.

Inequalities and interrelations: The sociology of disasters at a new crossroads

AbstractWhile the sociology of disasters was slow to incorporate the study of inequality in analyses, recent research in the field has centered the study of inequality. Powered by changing empirical terrain in the form of climate change and by theoretically engagement with other sociological subfields, our article showcases how this research analyzes inequality by tracing three research motifs of scale, time, and feedbacks. Using a data set of nearly 200 articles published in the field including all 57 articles published in 10 generalist sociology journals from 2008 to 2020, we relate this perspective on scale, time, and feedbacks to eight primary areas of work in the sociology of disasters: (1) community, social capital, and resilience; (2) migration and displacement; (3) race; (4) gender; (5) intersectionality; (6) health and wellness; (7) governance and policy; and (8) environment and climate change. Our discussion champions future research on feedbacks by providing a theoretical backing with social theory on relational inequality as well as by substantiating it empirically with the eight areas of research.

Pethik Laut Tradition as a Ritual of Repelling Bala (Study of Sociology Disaster)

<p class="06IsiAbstrak"><span lang="EN-US">Indonesia is an archipelagic country that is famous for its ethnic, racial, religious and cultural diversity</span><span lang="TH">. </span><span lang="EN-US">This diversity is widespread in every area from Sabang to Merauke</span><span lang="TH">. </span><span lang="EN-US">The diversity of ethnicity, race, religion, and culture is in line with the many traditions that exist in every region in Indonesia</span><span lang="TH">. </span><span lang="EN-US">Each region has traditions and rituals that have their own meaning and purpose</span><span lang="TH">. </span><span lang="EN-US">One of them is the sea picking tradition carried out by the Muncar community, Banyuwangi Regency</span><span lang="TH">. </span><span lang="EN-US">This tradition has its own meaning and purpose for the people around Muncar</span><span lang="TH">. </span><span lang="EN-US">This study uses a qualitative research method with a case study approach. </span><span lang="EN-US">This study aims to analyze the Petik Laut tradition with the perspective of the sociology of disaster</span><span lang="TH">. </span><span lang="EN-US">The results of this study indicate that the Picking Laut tradition carried out by the Muncar community is a ritual to ask for safety for fishermen to avoid disasters while looking for fish in the sea</span></p>

‘Supertanker is a Hero, the Government a Villain’: Politicization of Chile’s 2017 Forest Fires in the Media

This article analyses the politicization of natural disasters in the media and the narratives of crisis that contribute to these dynamics. In particular, it studies media coverage of the 2017 mega-fires in Chile and the way in which this coverage was framed by pre-existing political disputes over the performance of Michelle Bachelet’s government (2014–2018). It examines the print press coverage of the mega-fires, and the framing contests used to interpret the fire crisis. It pays special attention to the controversies that erupted over the foreign planes that were sent to help fight the fires: the American Supertanker and the Russian Ilyushin. We argue that press coverage of the mega-fires transformed a natural-social phenomenon into an emotionally charged political drama in which the Supertanker airplane was signified as the hero, and the Chilean government the villain. The Supertanker played a condensation symbol role. It was cast in the media as an external hero promising to control the fires that had overwhelmed local capabilities, and to overcome a government that was portrayed as inefficient and late to respond. The media functioned as an echo chamber for the cultural battle between the government and opposition. This article contributes to a cultural sociology of disasters, paying special attention to the role played by the symbolic representation of nature and socio-technical artefacts in political disputes.

Toward a cultural sociology of disaster: Introduction

• A discussion of how cultural sociology can contribute to disaster research and vice versa. • A review of pioneering studies in the cultural sociology of disaster. • A proposal of future agenda. • A summary of the articles in the special issue.

Development, Responsibility, and the Creation of Urban Hazard Risk

Scholarly attention has recently shifted to the creation and redevelopment of urban hazardscapes. This body of work demonstrates how housing is deployed in close proximity to hazards, and how the attendant risks have been communicated—or not—to potential residents. Utilizing the case of Calgary, Alberta, this article uses interview data collected from flood-impacted residents, and looks at their perceptions of development and risk creation. The analyses focus on how people attribute responsibility for development in flood-prone areas, and their views on future development in these areas. Results reveal that many residents argued for more government regulations preventing new development in floodplains. Moreover, they viewed developers as narrow-interested capitalists who fail to protect public safety and work to conceal risk from the public. Others wished to see large structural mitigation projects—dams, levees, or floodwalls—or insisted that homebuyers be informed of flood risk prior to purchase. The article concludes by addressing the implications for scholarly work in urban sociology, environmental sociology, and the sociology of disaster—all of which grapple with tensions between place-making and risk creation.

How narratives of disaster impact survivors’ emotionality: The case of Typhoon Morakot

Through a case study of Typhoon Morakot, which landed in Taiwan in 2008 and caused massive destruction to many aboriginal communities, this paper explores how narratives of disaster impact individual survivors’ emotionality and reflexivity. We draw on 45 in-depth interviews and engage the literatures on cultural trauma, emotion work, and reflexivity. We find that in framing their experiences, most survivors drew upon narratives of government incompetence or ethnic-environmental injustice, which circulated respectively in Taiwan's mainstream media and a counter-hegemonic public. To a lesser extent, some survivors hybridized these two frames while a few others followed the government's official narrative that the government did nothing wrong. Our analysis highlights a sharp contrast: the injustice frame prompted survivors to express ethnic pride, assert righteous anger, and display an eloquent reflexivity, whereas the other three frames prompted survivors to express their frustrations as grief rather than anger, and oftentimes engage in the emotion work of gratitude-display and self-censorship and ultimately develop a silenced or split reflexivity. This study advances the cultural sociology of disasters by conceptualizing how disaster narratives shape the emotional aspects of post-disaster recovery. Furthermore, we highlight how covert silences in ahistorical disaster narratives can be detrimental to all in an age of environmental crises.

Disaster Urbanization: The City Between Crisis and Calamity

This paper asks what critical urban theory can add to the sociology of disasters. If the fundamental insight of disaster studies is that there’s no such thing as a natural disaster, the starting point for critical urban studies is that capitalist urbanization is a disaster waiting to happen. Disasters are promoted and inflected by the specific forms of crisis and vulnerability created by neoliberal urbanization. Disasters are also ways in which urban space is produced and remade, in a process that can be called disaster urbanization. A critical account of the relationship between contemporary urbanization and disaster can help us better understand the disaster-prone, unevenly urbanizing future.

The sympathetic leviathan: Modern states’ cultural responses to disasters

The sociology of disaster has paid scant attention to states’ cultural response—states’ effort to use meaningful narratives and symbolic actions to address issues about citizens’ suffering and death to enhance their legitimacy and secure citizens’ support. Our paper starts to address this gap by asking: How do states culturally respond to massive disasters? How effective are their responses? What can explain the efficacy of their cultural responses? We propose a perspective based on the cultural sociology of the state and cultural theories of trauma, theodicy, and performance. We illustrate this perspective in a comparative study of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China and the 2005 Hurricane Katrina in the United States. We argue that the efficacy of their cultural responses depended on whether and how effectively they addressed the key components of the meaning structure of disasters through compassionate reaction to citizens’ suffering and death, convincing accounts of states’ accountability, and cogent narratives about the long-term consequences of disasters on citizens. Both states struggled to address these issues at various points in their respective disasters, and their cultural responses were shaped by their political structures. The findings also speak to an enduring debate over whether democratic or authoritarian regimes perform better in disaster responses. We eschew the exclusive focus of the debate on administrative responses and its simplistic correlation between regime type and responses.

Toward a Critical Race Theory of Prison Order in the Wake of COVID-19 and Its Afterlives: When Disaster Collides with Institutional Death by Design

In this article, I bridge critical sociological perspectives on penal institutions with insights from the sociology of disaster to advance a critical race theory of prison order in the wake of COVID-19 and its afterlives. Penal institutions officially categorize people as detainees, inmates, or prisoners in order to deliberately relegate human beings to a degraded social status, ultimately in service of an intentionally racist system. I theorize why prisons are natural epicenters for COVID-19, identifying the following institutional parameters as social factors: (1) death is by institutional design, where prison order is arranged so that people categorized as prisoners die socially, psychically, and physically; (2) promoting institutional survival rather than human survival is second nature during a disaster because the preexisting social organization of prison life serves this purpose; and (3) when a disaster strikes causing severe loss to people and resources, uncertainty is managed by implementing strategies that magnify the death(s) of incarcerated people in exchange for the life of the institution.

Theorizing disaster communitas

Disaster scholars have long complained that their field is theory light: they are much better at doing and saying than analyzing. The paucity of theory doubtless reflects an understandable focus on case studies and practical solutions. Yet this works against big picture thinking. Consequently, both our comprehension of social suffering and our ability to mitigate it are fragmented. Communitas is exemplary here. This refers to the improvisational acts of mutual help, collective feeling and utopian desires that emerge in the wake of disasters. It has been observed for as long as there has been a sociology of disasters. Within the field, there have been numerous efforts to name and describe it. Yet there has been far less enthusiasm to theorize it, which means that the disaster literature has not adequately explained the social conditions under which communitas arises (or fails to). In this article, we synthesize numerous case studies to do so. This takes us beyond simple statements of what communitas is and what it should be called, to considerations of the conditions under which it emerges, how it should be conceptualized, the factors that might prevent communitas, and how we might encourage it. While primarily a theoretical work, the identification of communitas’ facilitators and barriers have practical import for disaster risk reduction (DRR) policy as communitas has frequently proven to be a positive and potent force.

Predigen in Katastrophenzeiten

Preaching in times of disaster is a sparsely researched subject in homiletics. Based on a phase model in the sociology of disaster, the task of sermons is the preparation for such crises: It is precisely in the “good” times that the finitude and fragility of life, human suffering, and eschatological hope should be addressed. In the acute stage of a catastrophe, preachers need the courage to remain silent, lament, and comfort. And in the prolonged period of recovery it is the responsibility of sermons to interpret experiences and to offer practical support and counsel.