DISASTER RESEARCHthan from the direct physical impacts of disasters.
However, not all postimpact effects are negative;
sometimes, the experience of undergoing a disas-
ter results in positive self-images and closer social
ties among victims.
Organizations. Organizational changes, wheth-
er for planning for disasters or for other purposes
in the postimpact period, is not common and
selective at best. Most modifications are simply
accelerations of noncrisis-related changes already
planned or underway. Postimpact discussion of
how to improve disaster planning seldom gets
translated into concrete actions (unlike civil distur-
bances which in American society in the 1960s led
to many changes in organizations). However, over-
all, both in the United States and elsewhere, there
have been in recent decades the growth of small,
locally based, formal social groups primarily con-
cerned with emergency time disaster planning and
management. Partly because of seemingly con-
stantly escalating economic losses, certain busi-
nesses in such sectors as banking and insurance
have increasingly become interested in disaster
preparedness and recovery.
Communities. There are selective longer-run
outcomes and changes in communities that have
been impacted by disasters. There can be accelera-
tion of some ongoing and functional community
trends (e.g., in local governmental arrangements
and power structures), and generation of some
limited new patterns (e.g., in providing local men-
tal-health services or some mitigation measures
such as floodproofing regulations). On the other
hand, particularly as the result of rehousing and
rebuilding, there can be magnifications of preimpact
community conflicts as well as the generation of
new ones; some of the latter is manifested in blame
assignation, which, however, tends to deflect at-
tention away from social structural flaws to mass-
media–influenced search for individual scapegoats.
It is also being recognized after disasters that
changes in technology that create diffuse networks
and systems, such as among lifeline organizations,
are increasingly creating the need for regional
rather than just community-based disaster planning.
Societies. In developed societies, there are few
long-run negative consequences of disaster losses
whether of people or property, since such effects
are absorbed by the larger system. In developing
societies and very small countries, this is not neces-
sarily true; a catastrophic disaster may reduce the
gross national product five to ten percent as well as
producing tens of thousands of casualties. Never-
theless, changes or improvement in national disas-
ter planning often does not occur except in certain
cases such as after the Mexico City earthquake
where an unusual set of circumstances existed,
including a ‘‘political will’’ to do something. But
increasingly, in the aftermath of major disasters, to
the extent that planning is instituted or improved,
it is being linked to developmental planning, a
move strongly supported by international agen-
cies such as the World Bank.UNIVERSALITY OF GENERALIZATIONS
FROM AN UNEVEN RESEARCH BASECross-societal and comparative research increased
markedly in the 1990s. Studies have ranged from
cooperative work on local mass-media reporting
of community disasters in Japan and the United
States (Mikami, Hiroi, Quarantelli, and Wenger
1992) and flood responses and crisis management
in four Western European countries (Rosenthal
and Hart 1998), to comparisons of perceptions of
recurrent floods in Bangladesh by European engi-
neers and local residents (Schmuck-Widmann
1996), and cross-national analyses of post-disaster
political unrest in a dozen countries (Olson and
Drury 1997), as well as methodological issues in-
volved in cross-societal research in Italy, Mexico,
Turkey, Peru, the United States, and Yugoslavia
(Bates and Peacock 1993). However, this kind of
comparative empirical research so far has been
limited. Furthermore, although the bulk of disas-
ters occur in developing countries, the majority of
studies from which the generalizations advanced
have been derived, have been done in developed
societies. Thus, the question of the universality of
disaster behaviors in different social systems has
increasingly been raised. Some universals appear
to have been found: Prosocial rather than antiso-
cial behavior clearly predominates in responses
everywhere; household members and significant
others are crucial in validating warning messages,
and the larger kin system is vital in providing
emergency assistance; emergent groups always ap-
pear at the height of the crisis period; organiza-
tions have relatively more difficulty in adjusting to
and coping with disasters than do individuals and