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Browsing Articles by Author "Quarantelli, E. L."
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Item Community Response To Disasters(1985) Quarantelli, E. L.; Dynes, Russell R.Item Conceptualizing Disasters from a Sociological Perspective(Research Committee on Disasters, International Sociological Association, 1989-11) Quarantelli, E. L.Item Conventional Beliefs and Counterintuitive Realities(The New School for Social Research, 2008) Quarantelli, E. L.This paper discusses major myths and widely held incorrect beliefs about individual and group behaviors in disaster contexts. Why can we categorize such views as invalid? Because now there has been more than half a century of systematic social science studies (and an earlier half century of less well known scattered works) that have established the actual parameters of the behavior of individuals and groups in natural and technological disaster situations (for recent summaries of the extensive research literature, see Lindell, Perry, and Prater, 2006; National Research Council, 2006; and Rodriguez, Quarantelli, and Dynes, 2006). All is not known, and serious gaps remain in knowledge about important topics, but we are at this time far beyond just educated guesses on many dimensions of the relevant behaviors. Our focus is on six different behavioral aspects of disasters, primarily occurring around the impact time period of such crises. Stated in just a few words, we look at panic flight and at antisocial looting behavior, supposed passivity in emergencies, role conflict and abandonment, severe mental health consequences, and the locus of whatever problems surface. We present what is often assumed, believed, or stated on these matters—at least in popular discourse and to a varying extent in policy, planning, and operational circles—as over against what study and research has found.Item Converting Disaster Scholarship into Effective Disaster Planning and Managing: Possibilities and Limitations(Research Committee on Disasters, International Sociological Association, 1993-03) Quarantelli, E. L.I have spent most of my professional life since the 1950s doing research on the social aspects of disasters. This social science research in which I have participated, is of course part of a much larger body of studies undertaken in the last 40 years, could be characterized in a whole variety of ways as to findings, motifs, implications, uses, etc. But there is one theme that runs through the bulk of the work that has been done up to now: according to research findings much of what is generally believed about disaster related individual and group behavior is not true or correct. As I and others have phrased it, we are embedded in a great number of misconceptions or myths about behavior in disasters. This disaster mythology clearly does not make for effective planning for or managing of such crisis occasions.Item Disaster Studies: An Analysis of the Social Historical Factors Affecting the Development of Research in the Area(1987-11) Quarantelli, E. L.Almost nothing has been written about the social historical emergence and development of social and behavioral research on disasters. This paper provides a description and a sociology of scientific knowledge analysis of the factors affecting the initiation of studies in the area in the United States. First, we note how disaster research on group and behavioral aspects of disasters had their roots, almost exclusively, in rather narrowly focused applied questions or practical concerns. Second, we point out how this led to certain kinds of selective emphases in terms of what and how the research was undertaken in the pioneering days, but with substantive consequences which we still see operative today.Item Disaster Studies: The Consequences of the Historical Use of a Sociological Approach in the Development of Research(1994-03) Quarantelli, E. L.An earlier article discussing the initial days of disaster studies noted that the roots of the area in the applied concerns of research funders led to a pattern of how research was done and what was studied that still prevails today. However, this paper stresses that a certain sociological orientation and particular sociological ideas implicitly came to permeate much of the early work and many of the observations and findings made. We also indicate that the research approach, initiated with a mixture of applied concerns and basic sociological questions, has had up to now primarily functional consequences on the development of the field of study of disasters. But the paper concludes with a statement that the field currently needs a fundamental reconceptualization of disaster. It is argued that the impetus for that is more likely to come out of a questioning of basic ideas as well as the growing internationalization of disaster studies than from practical concerns.Item Editors' Introduction(SAGE Publications Limited, 1970) Quarantelli, E. L.; Dynes, Russell R.Item Looting in Civil Disorders: An Index of Social Change(Sage Publications LTD, 1968-03) Quarantelli, E. L.; Dynes, Russell R.Item The NORC Research on the Arkansas Tornado: A Fountainhead Study(Research Committee on Disasters, International Sociological Association, 1988-11) Quarantelli, E. L.In this review and analysis of the research effort in the disaster area by NORC [National Opinion Research Center] we shall present: (1) the general background of the work; (2)the nature of the field research undertaken; (3) a selective summary of the substantive focus and findings from the largest single field study within the NORC work, namely on the Arkansas tornado; (4) a brief overall assessment of the research done, and (5) some of the important consequences of what NORC did in the disaster area.Item Origin and History of the International Research Committee on Disasters (RC-39)(International Research Committee on Disasters, 2009) Quarantelli, E. L.This version of the origin and history of RC-39 was prepared by E. L. Quarantelli, President Emeritus of the RC-39 and Professor Emeritus, University of Delaware (USA). The RC-39 developed out of the fact that sociologists predominated in the pioneering stage of disaster studies.Item People's Reactions To Emergency Warnings(1983-08) Quarantelli, E. L.Item Role Simplification In Disaster(1986) Dynes, Russell R.; Quarantelli, E. L.Item Social Support Systems: Some Behavioral Patterns In The Context Of Mass Evacuation Activities(1985) Quarantelli, E. L.Item What Is Disaster? The Need For Clarification In Definition And Conceptualization In Research(1985) Quarantelli, E. L.Item What Looting in Civil Disturbances Really Means(Washington University in St. Louis, 1968-05) Dynes, Russell R.; Quarantelli, E. L.Item What Should We Study? Questions and Suggestions for Researchers About the Concept of Disasters(Research Committee on Disasters, International Sociological Association, 1987-03) Quarantelli, E. L.