DISASTER RESEARCHas the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and
some European countries, the emergency-man-
agement and disaster-planning community has be-
come more open to recognizing the practical im-
plications of social science research.
However, a caveat is in order for the generally
correct view that studies by sociologists and others
have increasingly influenced policy decisions and
operational activities in the disaster area. Research
results and questions are sometimes more than
counterbalanced by other factors: These include
the vested interests of powerful professional and
bureaucratic elites to maintain traditional stances,
resistance to seriously questioning the viabilities
and competencies of specific organizations, and
an unwillingness to face up to false assumptions of
some cultural beliefs and values. Research to the
contrary, for example, has had little effect on the
fad-like spread of the ‘‘Incident Command Sys-
tem’’ as a model for the emergency time opera-
tions of organizations, or an ever-spreading ac-
ceptance that victims are likely to suffer posttraumatic
stress disorders, or the current common belief
that mitigation measures are necessarily a better
strategy for disaster planning than giving priority
to improving resilience and response to crises.
RELATIONSHIP TO SOCIOLOGYAlthough not true everywhere, sociologists have
been increasingly accepted as having an important
contribution to make to disaster planning and
management. In part this stems from the fact that
in many countries such as Germany, Italy, Russia,
and the United States, they have played the lead
role among social scientists in undertaking disas-
ter studies. While many reasons account for this,
probably the crucial factor has been that much in
general sociology can be used in doing research in
the area.
There has been a close relationship between
disaster studies and sociology from the earliest
days of work in the area. In part this is because
sociologists, being among the leading pioneers
and researchers in the area, have tended to use
what they could from their discipline. Thus, soci-
ology has contributed to the research techniques
used (e.g., field studies and open-ended interview-
ing), the research methodology utilized (e.g., the
‘‘grounded theory’’ approach and the employ-
ment of inductive analytical models), the theoreti-
cal ideas used (e.g., the notion of emergence from
collective-behavior thinking and the idea of infor-
mal and formal structures of organizations), and
the general perspectives employed (e.g., that there
can be latent as well as dysfunctional aspects of any
behavior and that societies and communities have
a social history that is not easily set aside). In the
volume entitled Sociology of Disasters: Contributions
of Sociology to Disaster Research (Dynes, De Marchi,
and Pelanda 1987), these and other contributions
to disaster theory, disaster research methods, dis-
aster models, and disaster concepts are set forth in
considerable detail.The relationship has not been one-sided, since
disaster research has also contributed to sociology.
The field of collective behavior has been most
influenced and this has been explicitly noted
(Wenger 1987). Other significant contributions
include the study of formal organizations, social
roles, social problems, organizational and social
change, mass communications, medical sociology,
and the urban community (see Drabek 1986; Dynes,
De Marchi, and Pelanda 1987; Dynes and Tierney
1994). A symposium on social structure and disas-
ter, coattended by disaster researchers and promi-
nent sociological theorists, examined how disaster
studies not only are informed by but could also
inform sociological theory; the proceedings were
published in Social Structure and Disaster (Kreps
1989). It is also perhaps of interest that for several
decades now, many introductory sociology text-
books have a section on disaster behavior, usually
in the collective behavior chapter.REFERENCES
Barton, Allan 1969 Communities in Disaster: A Sociological
Analysis. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor.
Bates, F., and W. Peacock 1993 Living Conditions, Disas-
ters and Development: An Approach to Cross-Cultural
Comparisons. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press.
Cutter, Susan,ed. 1994 Environmental Risks and Hazards.
Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Drabek, Thomas 1986 Human System Responses to Disas-
ters: An Inventory of Sociological Findings. New York:
Springer Verlag.
Dynes, R. R.,ed. 1988 ‘‘Disaster Classics Special Issue.’’
International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters
6:209–395.