Lessons Learned from Research on Disasters
Files
Date
1988
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Disaster Research Center
Abstract
Description
Systematic studies on disasters in the social and behavioral sciences are essentially a post World War II phenomena. It is true that the earliest scientific work in the area was a Ph.D. in sociology done at Columbia University on the social change associated with a massive explosion in writings on the topic in the next tow decades (Carr, 1932; Kutak, 1938; Sorokin, 1942). However, these undertakings did not lead to any sustained or continuous research. But in the first few years of the early 1950s, a handful of sociologist in the United States initiated field research on the reactions of people especially in the emergency time periods of community disasters generated by agents ranging from tornadoes and earthquakes to explosions and plan crashes into residential areas (for a discussion of the historical context and development, see Quarantelli, 1986a; 1988c). These few scientific pioneers from sociology had very little idea that they were setting in motion the development of a new area for study, the considerable enterprise that exists today under the label of social science disaster research.
Keywords
disaster research, disaster studies