Emergency
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Disaster Research Center
Abstract
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In everyday speech, the word "emergency" usually signifies a
sudden and unexpected condition calling for immediate action. In
the last four decades, social scientists starting from popular
usages of the term, have increasingly attempted to conceptualize
emergency as part of the social situation generated by natural
and technological disasters or catastrophes. In fact, to a considerable
extent, the theoretical work and empirical research on
the social aspects of disasters is the equivalent of the social
scientific analysis and study of emergencies. Actually whether
the term "disaster", "catastrophe" or "emergency" is primarily
used, seems to depend on the particular language involved. For
example, Italian social scientists have somewhat preferred to use
the term "emergency" whereas Americans have been inclined to
employ the word "disaster" even though the substantive phenomena
-being discussed is about the same in both cases. However, since
most of the social scientific literature what exists in the area
uses "disaster" rather than "emergency" or "catastrophe", we will
in this article mostly but not exclusively use the first term. Part of this tendency and also lack of complete consensus can be
attributed to the fact that social science studies in the area
are but about four decades old, and until recently, were
primarily undertaken in the United States.
Consequently, we will first generally describe the sociohistorical
development of this area of study. Then the various
conceptualizations advanced of the key term, disaster, are
discussed. This is followed by an overview of major research
codification efforts made up to the present and then selected but
important substantive research findings are summarized. We
conclude with a brief statement about the general applicability
of findings across all societies, and end with a projection of studies needed in the future.