From the Margins to the Mainstream? Disaster Research at the Crossroads

Kathleen Tierney
Professor, Department of Sociology
University of Colorado at Boulder

Tuesday, November 7, 2006
4:00–5:30 p.m.
CUE 518

The sociological study of disasters can be critiqued on a number of fronts. The field remains bogged down in outdated conceptual frameworks and has proven remarkably resistant to new theoretical developments. Over more than 5 decades, disaster research has revealed much about the societal dimensions of disasters, but also has systematically ignored important topics such as the social construction of disaster, the social production of disaster, conflict during disasters, and the manner in which axes of inequality intersect with hazards disasters to produce differential patterns of vulnerability and victimization. Ways of bringing disaster sociology into the mainstream include the development of linkages with closely allied areas of specialization, including the sociology of risk, organizational sociology, and in particular environmental sociology.

Kathleen Tierney is Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Institute of Behavioral Sciences and Director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She has over 25 years of experience conducting research on social and behavioral responses to extreme events and is the author of dozens of publications. Her other current and recent research includes studies on risk communication, the business impacts of disasters, and the use of information technologies in disaster response.